Social Impacts of Tourism: Perceptions of Mykonos' City Residents.

traditional way of living, since tourism was perceived mainly as a financially beneficial
activity.
Tourism seemed to be the way to provide resources for living as the rocky soil, lack
of water and difficult weather conditions were giving limited opportunities. Mykoniati
in the process paid attention to this new activity, which generated income that was so
important for their physical survival. The component also of financial reciprocation
determined the nature of the social exchanges, which were advantageous, and
residents’ behaviors were stimulated accordingly.
The islands’ dependency on tourism appears also in the gross product, which is
consisted 94% of the service sector and 6% of the primary sector (GDIB, 1991). The
fact that residents rely to such a degree directly and indirectly on tourism is an
indication of economic dependence. Skepticism is noted for any instability that could
be affecting negatively the tourism inflows which, makes the island's future very
vulnerable.
In the meantime, the way people used to live was changing. Women became more
financially independent after working in hospitality in contrast to their restriction at
home in the past times. The old fashion institution of dowry has also faded away and
arranged marriages became a rare phenomenon. Customs and traditions to an
extent have been exploited by the locals to entertain tourists i.e. the celebration of
name days in many occasions have been especially organized to attract tourists.
However, some patterns such as eating habits have changed. According to
Rousounellos (2001) eating habits and cooking methods were completely replaced
by others. In old days for example people used to cook eggs on oxen excrement and
used to eat pigeon soup, which is rare in our days. Most restaurants promote
international cuisine rather than the local one, as it is believed this would be more
convenient for the tourists resulting to minimization of practicing and consequent
elimination of the collective history.
The same results were drawn from the answers key informants provided. Initially, the
tourists' stereotypes revealed feelings of preference to some nationalities for
utilitarian reasons (high spenders) and xenophobia to others due to cultural
differences. However, the majority of their tourism inflows are gay. Surprisingly,
locals kept intentionally a sentimental distance from the phenomenon of gay tourism
by avoiding discussing about it. In fact, when the natives in general refer to gay
tourism they use the English words gay tourism instead of the Greek homofilofyllikos
tourismos (homosexual tourism). In this way, they avoid including sentiments into the
content of words and they feel that they keep some distance from the phenomenon.
However, the interviewees were of the opinion that this ‘infamous reputation’ of the
island does not annoy the majority of their upscale visitors who own summerhouses
on the island. On the contrary, they can co-exist and share various recreation
facilities. This reserved stance in verbal stating was interpreted as tolerance behavior
that usually is the forerunner of destination decline (Dogan, 1989).
The following also suggests destination decline. Locals think that tourism has
reached a point that ‘it is enough’ meaning that it is difficult to accommodate sheer
sizes of visitors on a small island like Mykonos. From one hand many families
managed to increase their income, on the other hand when tourist numbers
increased, the need for labor also increased resulting in social implications.
Newcomers opened up businesses that because of high rentals and high starting
expenses, the only way to ‘make it’ is by increasing the prices of goods. The