Tourism Restructuring and the Politics of Sustainability: A Critical View From the European Periphery (The Canary Islands)

There has been considerable discussion of sustainable tourism development, in both theory and practice. Less attention has been paid to the discourses, ideologies and power relations which help to shape 'sustainable' tourism policies and planning instruments. This paper analyses recent initiatives introduced by the regional government of the Canary Islands, designed to bring about a more sustainable model of regional tourism, including a temporary moratorium on tourism development and the drafting of a strategic and normative set of guidelines for sustainable tourism. The paper considers the contested nature of the public debate that accompanied these initiatives within the wider context of the regionally distinct pattern of tourism and capitalist development. It is argued that the legacy of uneven development, and the entrenched power of regional economic and political élites, is likely to undermine the prospects for a just model of sustainable tourism, and to consolidate the continuing privatisation of space and socio-spatial inequalities across the region.     

The Aotearoa Traditional Maori Performing Arts Festival 1972–2000. A Case Study of Cultural Event Maturation

This article describes the history of the Aotearoa Traditional Maori Performing Arts Festival between the years of 1972–2000. It reveals a series of tensions between a need to express a cultural identity and financial constraint, between a wish for expressing independence, and a subsequent dependency upon state grants, between the traditional and the contemporary in performance. The history also shows the significance of key personalities. Yet through these discourses has emerged a successful and important Festival that attracts increasing numbers of participants and which is a dynamic component of Maori culture in contemporary New Zealand. A significant tourism event, by reason of primarily appealing to Maori it still, to a large extent, lies outside of the conventional tourism structures of New Zealand, dominated as these are by overseas visitors and non-Maori New Zealand domestic demand. Yet its very success is bringing it to the attention of a wider market, with all that implies for possible future development. The article also proposes dimensions of festival evolution and maturation.     

World Trade Law,Culture, Heritage and Tourism. Towards a Holistic Conceptual Approach?

This article argues that law is an important factor in the consideration of the evolution of tourism discourse. Thus it is important for academics to consider the law-tourism connection. But law is a dynamic phenomenon that is experiencing change. Within law, the domain of world trade is increasingly significant. In addition, the conceptualisation of culture and heritage is ongoing and as the law has implications for the development of those concepts, then correspondingly the law-culture and heritage connection should be considered. World trade law in turn has culture and heritage implications. Tourism will be affected by both the evolution of world trade and evolving conceptions of culture and heritage, not least legal ones. Accordingly, as a result of the increasing interpenetration and interconnections of issues, it is submitted that consideration of the four conceptual domains of world trade, law, tourism and culture and heritage, suggests the desirability of a holistic approach to (or awareness of) the consideration of certain issues that may fall into the intellectual space advanced by the potential intersection of these issues. This is especially justifiable in view of the multiplicity of academic viewpoints that studies of tourism embrace. It may be necessary in order to provide options for the solution of legal issues that involve these factors. Thus it is argued that it is important to consider the domain delineated above in a holistic way, recognising that the forces of development act reflexively on each other as a start in order to overcome inevitable epistemological difficulties.     

When Hosts Become Guests: Return Visits and Diasporic Identities in a Commonwealth Eastern Caribbean Community

The broad intent of this paper is to further contribute to the existing literature that addresses VFR tourism. It suggests that the return visit may ultimately be positioned as a form or type of travel within the larger category of VFR tourism, but a form or type that has built within it a more clear understanding of historic and social contexts and processes. The other broad intent of the paper is to highlight the importance of the relationship between the returning visitor, originating from diasporic communities abroad, and the host community as a stage for the negotiation of identities. The return visit is shown to reflect such underlying processes yet continue to incorporate aspects of individual motivation, which when taken together demonstrate the fluidity of diasporic spaces and transnational identity structures. Using data obtained from ethnographic fieldwork among social networks within the Commonwealth Eastern Caribbean community in Toronto, Canada, it is suggested that return visits are used to retain social histories and contextualise social and cultural backgrounds after migration. The implications for VFR tourism and the relationship between diasporas, transnationalism and tourism are discussed, as is a conceptual model of the return visit.     

Tourism and the Precautionary Principle

The precautionary principle is an emerging norm of international environmental policy affirmed in many treaties and laws. The principle, congruent to the ideal of sustainable development, is a controversial future-focused planning and regulatory mechanism which mandates that to protect against threats of serious and irreversible damage, precaution should be exercised even before harm can be scientifically demonstrated. The intent of this paper is to provide a literature review of the precautionary principle, examine the fundamental concepts underlying the principle and present an introductory discussion regarding its applicability to the tourism industry. Time and again numerous direct and indirect impacts are produced by the tourism industry, yet the potential for integrating precaution into tourism planning has not been examined. The authors consider the critical elements of the principle (uncertainty, risk, costbenefit analysis and science) in relation to the tourism industry, and provide examples of reference to the principle in the policy documents of non-governmental tourism organisations. An adapted framework is proposed for incorporating the precautionary principle into better tourism-industry decision-making. The precautionary principle is predicated as a viable tourism development tool and planning mechanism that safeguards environmental and human health by anticipating and controlling for future impacts of tourism.     

Book Reviews

John Tribe's paper 'Education for Ethical Tourism Action' (10 (4), 2002) proposes an action-oriented ethical tourism curriculum based on Aristotle's notion of phronesis, aimed at developing a disposition towards 'good' action rather than 'correct' action. This paper investigates the implications of Tribe's paper for the pedagogy and practice of sustainable tourism. Drawing upon Aristotle, it is argued that principles are an important guide to developing and exercising phronesis (practical wisdom) for living a good life, and for the practice of sustainable tourism. The paper also examines issues related to theoretical or scientific knowledge (episteme) and skill development (techne), and argues for a praxis-oriented curriculum that incorporates: (1) knowledge of sustainable-tourism principles, and (2) practice in which learned principles and phronesis (practical wisdom) constitutively guide tourism action and good conduct. The study also suggests that scholars and practitioners need to be more proactive and cognisant of the telos (purpose) and good of various tourism activities and curricula, for the individual and for the destination. Especially lacking in the study of sustainable tourism is discussion of the development of virtues and character for a good life in and through tourism. Virtue ethics offers potential for supplementing existing theories of rightness and obligation in sustainable tourism, and for conceptualising the meaning of 'good tourism'.     

Supranationalist Alliances and Tourism: Insights from ASEAN and SAARC

This paper examines the influences of international free-trade alliances/regional trading blocs on tourism development. While relatively few of these coalitions mention tourism specifically, most of them deal with issues that are directly pertinent to tourism, such as environmental conservation, flows of people, regional promotion, infrastructure and transportation and trade in goods and services. This paper scans these issues in the tourism context as they pertain specifically to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC). While the paper argues primarily that such alliances have potential for positive outcomes, their negative effects are also considered and many of the roadblocks to achieving successful multilateral regional blocs are highlighted.     

Incarcerating Travels: Travel Stories,Tourist Orders,and the Politics of the 'Hawai'ian Paradise'

This article explores how travel practices are structured and harnessed to politics. While travel practices operate through claims of innocence, curiosity and adventure, they are deeply political practices that participate in projects and programmes ranging from statecraft to appropriation of peoples and places in the service of global finanscapes. In Michel de Certeau's words, travelling in economies of desire, travel practices partake in the 'production of specific politico-cultural orders' in travel spaces that often articulate narrow horizons in identity, ethnicity, nation, participation and governmentality. In worst cases, travel practices are instrumental in the production of orders that create and simultaneously hide the alterity of peoples and their places. This article reflects on the politics of travel that escapes notice or is concealed in travel discourses and representations in Hawai'i. More specifically, it examines how travel acts participate in the production of (1) a politico-cultural order in Hawai'i that creates and hides the alterity of Hawai'i's indigenous peoples, (2) a plural nation-story of the United States that operates through the interstices of the tourist orders and (3) a capital story that enlists both indigenous resources and predominant political powers to excavate profits.     

An Analysis of Tourism Trends in Mauritius 1979 to 1998

A longitudinal analysis of tourism trends in Mauritius is conducted using published statistics and reports compiled by the Government of Mauritius. A number of trend indicators and ratios are derived and plotted as time series data from 1979 to 1998. Interesting trends emerge that may be of value to other Indian Ocean Island tourism agencies and analysts. The ratios calculated are as follows: number of nights spent per tourist, discounted earnings per tourist, discounted earnings per night, contribution to GDP per tourism earnings, discounted contribution to GDP per tourist, percentage of nights spent in hotels, nights spent per tourist in hotels and nights spent per tourist in informal accommodation, average expenditure per tourist accommodated in hotels and average expenditure per tourist accommodated in informal accommodation (private bungalows, boarding/guest houses and homes of friends/relatives).

The main findings are that the continued success of tourism in Mauritius rests significantly on tourists accommodated in the informal accommodation sector and that tourist spending in real terms in Mauritius has declined from 1990 to 1997.     

'Heritage' Tourism in Northern Ireland: Opportunity Under Peace

Having endured terrorist violence for 30 years, Northern Ireland is on the verge of achieving a lasting peace. Tourism is well poised to benefit from the prospects of peace and the economic growth that is anticipated to follow. In this paper the first section, based on an analysis of secondary tourism data collected between 1994 and 1997 (a period during which the Irish Republican Army declared two cease-fires), assesses the extent to which tourism can benefit within a climate of peace. Heritage tourism within Northern Ireland is examined, on the basis that the majority of tourist attractions and the tourism experiences being sold to visitors fall under the heritage label. Heritage and heritage tourism is discussed within the Northern Ireland context. The second half of the paper examines what are emerging as the key challenges and issues facing the tourism industry in Northern Ireland and the opportunities for long-term growth. The paper reveals that tourism benefited for the yearsin which a cease-fire held, but that the heritage attraction is somewhat complex, with a range of heritage types ranging from natural to industrial. Discussion centres on how this 'heritage' experience is to be planned and managed, and the challenge of ensuring sustainability of a product that has the support of both 'communities' in Northern Ireland.