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SEPTEMBER 1996
SELF-INFLICTED WOUNDS
WorldDiary
Tourism destroys tourism
By Crocker Snow Jr.
European travelers arriving in the Indian state of Goa in l990 were met a=
t
the airport by animal effluence and epithets. Protesters saluted the buse=
s
carrying them to their hotels with cow dung and shouts of "Tourist go hom=
e!"
Four years later, Europeans and Latin Americans visiting the sunshine sta=
te
of Florida got an unexpected "freebie" from tourist authorities-special m=
aps
showing the safest routes to take from the airport. Earlier, several
jet-lagged Germans and Scandinavians had been robbed and killed when they
wandered into Miami ghetto areas. Some 6,000 miles to the east, hard
currency tourists in Egypt were openly warned by Islamic fundamentalist
groups that they were the latest targets of terrorism. Their trespass?
Spending money that supported the establishment.
The World Travel and Tourism Council touts travel and tourism as the worl=
d's
biggest business, grossing some US$3.6 trillion annually. Many a developi=
ng
country is lured by the bright lights, big city aspect of this, seeing
tourism as an easy way to exploit their natural attractions for the benef=
it
of national development.
But as Goa and Florida at either end of the development pipeline attest,
ever lurking is a backlash that can quickly rupture the El Dorado aspect =
of
tourism. Those countries who have profited-as Spain so notably did beginn=
ing
in the early 1960s-and have managed to turn tourism into a fungible
commodity are far outnumbered by those who have been burned and lost
interest.
Tourism as a development strategy is on the lips and in the plans of most
national economic development ministers. But it enjoys little recognition
within the world's largest development bureaucracy, the World Bank. And
there's a very good reason why. Countries using tourism in the struggle t=
o
develop may win the currency battle, but all too often at the expense of
losing cultural wars.
Pattaya in Thailand is a case in point. Before it was discovered in the
1960s as a prime rest and recreation area for American soldiers during th=
e
Vietnam War, it was a relatively pristine beach 75 miles south of Bangkok=
on
the Gulf of Siam. Once discovered, it exploded into a vast, honky tonk
combination of Hawaii's Waikiki and Rio's Copacabana that was fueled by w=
arm
Singha beer and warmer Thai girls. It soon boasted the world's biggest
brothel, offering a dizzying array of sex tourism for the American,
Japanese, and German visitors who flocked there, obscuring the Buddhist
kingdom's gentle pleasures and traditions.
On the international tourist map, Pattaya bars replaced Chiang Mai wooden
bungalows as Thailand's symbols. Crude replaced grace. Only the combined
efforts of embarrassed government officials and the passions of Thai
citizens like Kason Srisang, the self anointed and outspoken executive
secretary of the Ecumenical Coalition on Third World Tourism, turned the
tide. During the early 1990s, Srisang argued that there is no saving grac=
e
to tourism in a third world context-it is a failure culturally, spiritual=
ly,
and economically.
Srisang's message took. Pattaya and the equally prurient Patpong area of
downtown Bangkok were riddled with sexual disease-including some of Asia'=
s
first AIDS cases-and the number of visitors began to fall off. The Thai
government earmarked substantial funds to try to transform the tawdry
Pattaya into the Cannes of Southeast Asia.
Today in Southeast Asia, where market mechanisms are in ascendancy, touri=
sm
is something of an exception. The supply and demand equation in resorts l=
ike
Penang in Malaysia or Bagio in The Philippines, is influenced in part by
government regulation and decree. Thailand's example has convinced others=
in
the area that market forces alone can fail, that authentic cultural and
comparative advantage can be swallowed up by the homogenized and the slea=
zy.
Demographic pressures are one root cause. A recently completed report for
the US-based Institute of Current World Affairs about the impact of touri=
sm
on the old Zapotec ruins in the southern tip of Mexico highlights this. T=
he
report's author, William Foote, documents how Oaxaca, like many a third
world town, has experienced a tenfold population explosion since 1960. Th=
e
increase from 40,000 residents to 450,000, coupled with Oaxaca's "discove=
ry"
by the tourist trade, has raised frictions of every kind. Archeologists w=
ant
to preserve the treasures, native campesinos want access to the lucre of =
the
tourists. A state agency , the National Institute of Anthropology and
History, has authorized 40 guides to sell phony Zapotec artifacts to
preserve the real ones, while visitors want the real thing.
Foote's report, "Tourist Traps and Housing Flaps," captures the Catch 22
effect of tourism on self respect and national development in a country
faced with a booming population and rising expectations due to the North
American Free Trade Agreement, better known as NAFTA. "The threat of the
present over-running the past underscores a basic question for developing
countries that are rich in history but poor in resources," writes Foote, =
a
former financial analyst for the Lehman Brothers Emerging Markets Group.
"How do you strike a balance between revering the past, and using it to t=
urn
profits? To date, the answer has eluded Mexico."
Tourism as a tool of economic development has proven a mixed bag. It is
getting ever more mixed. As a national development policy, it is caught i=
n
the bind of a growing global population with a growing capacity to travel=
,
and more retired people with an appetite to do so. More and more,
international pleasure travel is by packaged groups destined for often
ill-equipped and unprepared locales. Its adverse environmental and cultur=
al
impact is well documented by Thailand and Mexico.
As a 1990 OECD report bluntly put it, "tourism destroys tourism."
Crocker Snow Jr. is editor-in-chief of the The WorldPaper.
=A9 The WorldPaper (US). All Rights reserved.
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