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anti-tourism
Anti-tourism is a generic term for adverse criticism
of tourists and tourism. Tourism has always had
its critics, often members of elite groups who have
themselves been frequent tourists. In the early
nineteenth century, European aristocrats ridiculed
middle-class tourists arriving at locations formerly
patronised only by the privileged. Later, the
middle classes themselves made fun of workingclass
trippers taking seaside excursions as the
railways opened up more places to more people.
The main criticisms of tourists were that they
travelled in large conformist groups, had little
knowledge of the areas or cultures they were
visiting, were spoon-fed elementary information,
were crass in their behaviour, and strove to ape
the lifestyles of their betters. Inter-class friction at
destinations was a common theme in serious and
satirical literature well into the twentieth century.
In the twentieth century, an influential variant of
anti-tourism polemic has come from writers who
nostalgically lament that travel is being replaced by
its banal substitute: tourism. The historical validity
of the distinction between travel and tourism is
debatable. Early pilgrims, for example, often
travelled in large groups, used guidebooks for
instant information and behaved badly `en route'.
Moreover, the Grand Tour, the supposed
apotheosis of independent travel, was a conformist
itinerary of set-piece stops, undertaken by young
aristocrats who took tutor-guides with them to
explain the sights, and who were often as likely to
drink and fornicate as the `lager louts' of
contemporary mass tourism. The first use of
the word `tourist' in a periodical of 1800 indicates
that tourists and travellers were synonymous.
Today, the rhetoric of anti-tourism has shifted
from the inadequacies of the tourist to the negative
sociocultural and environmental impacts of
tourism as a social process. Anti-tourism factions
include social scientists who have often been
caustic about the tourism industry and its
impacts, and who have advocated a
conservationist, protection-from-tourists attitude
to `traditional' cultures and environments abroad
�while preserving their own rights to go anywhere).
For anti-tourism commentators, the tourist problem
is nearly always other people, not those like
themselves. Ironically, anti-tourism has created
marketing opportunities for the tourism industry.
Specialist tour operators now promote exclusive
products to affluent markets by calling them `travel'
rather than `tourism' packages. Other operators
have developed alternative tourism products
for those unwilling to see themselves as `ordinary'
tourists.
Further reading
Boorstin, D. �1964) The Image:A Guide to Pseudo
Events in America, New York: Atheneum.
Mitchell, R.J. �1964) The Spring Voyage:The Jerusalem
Pilgrimage, 1458, London: John Murray.
Wheeller, B. �1993) `Sustaining the ego?', Journal of
Sustainable Tourism 1�2).
appropriate tourism
A.V. SEATON, UK
Appropriate tourism emerged as a response to
political and sociocultural quests of the past two
decades, as well as to disllusionment with mass
tourism. It is associated with sustainable and soft
tourism forms. It emphasises small-scale development,
recognition of needs other than those of
material consumption, and preservation of the
quality and stability of both natural resources
and human resources.
See also: alternative tourism
appropriation
appropriation 27
YORGHOS APOSTOLOPOULOS, USA
In tourism, appropriation usually refers to the
transfer of ownership or control of the industry in
destination areas from local to outside interests.
Related to dependency theory and neocolonialism,
it also describes the process
whereby local communities become economically
and culturally dependent on a foreign-dominated
tourism industry. As regards heritage or culture,