| 1 | 1 | | This is the European Year of Tourism. The holiday industry, having survived two |
| 2 | | decades of price wars, closures and charter airline crises, ought to be celebrating. |
| 3 | | Numbers are still healthy - Britons will take around 50 million holidays at home and |
| 4 | | abroad this year - and by the year 2000, when modern tourism will still not have reached |
| 5 | | its 50th birthday, it will almost certainly be the biggest industry in the world. |
| 2 | 6 | | But instead of rejoicing, in fact, there is unprecedented criticism. The Archbishop |
| 7 | | of Canterbury, for example, has declared at a London conference that tourism can |
| 8 | | heighten prejudice and cause pollution, prostitution, economic exploitation and |
| 9 | | 'wholesale disregard for native lifestyles'. What has gone wrong? Whatever happened to |
| 10 | | 'world peace through travel', the motto of the Hilton hotel chain? What of those brave |
| 11 | | hopes expressed in the Sixties that tourism would be a 'passport to development' for |
| 12 | | third world countries, a clean, green industry with enormous job potential? |
| 3 | 13 | | The truth is that the economic advantages of tourism have been greatly |
| 14 | | exaggerated. Tourist complexes in the poorer countries are outposts of Western |
| 15 | | capitalism - hence the charge that tourism is 'leisure imperialism', colonialism in |
| 16 | | disguise. They are, in many cases, foreign-owned and built from imported materials. |
| 17 | | Tourism draws people off the land so that food, too, has to be imported. Tax reductions |
| 18 | | for hotel chains mean, absurdly, that the world's poorest people are subsidising the |
| 19 | | holidays of its richest. |
| 4 | 20 | | No one doubts that tourism can strengthen conservation. Wildlife in the parks of |
| 21 | | East Africa owes its survival, however uncertain, to the safari market. Vet despite the |
| 22 | | immense potential of tourism for sustaining habitats1), the gains, so far, are vastly |
| 23 | | outweighed by the losses. Tourism has seriously damaged two of the most fragile |
| 24 | | ecosystems in the world, the Alps and the Mediterranean. It fuels a booming and largely |
| 25 | | illegal trade in souvenir wildlife products. It threatens habitats and endangers species. By |
| 26 | | overloading waste disposal and sewage systems, it almost invariably produces coastal |
| 27 | | pollution. |
| 5 | 28 | | One solution is to isolate tourists in purpose-built, culturally sterilised holiday |
| 29 | | ghettos. Such destinations as Bali and the Maldives quarantine tourism on designated |
| 30 | | beaches and islands. Tourism expert professor Krippendorf describes such ghettos as |
| 31 | | 'basically honest'. Mass tourism needs large facilities, he argues. Sterilising it in |
| 32 | | reservations stops the host culture being infected. However, they are only a partial and |
| 33 | | temporary solution. We need, says Krippendorf, to examine why we go on holiday - and |
| 34 | | whether we should go on holiday at all. |
| 6 | 35 | | Research points to one fundamental and intriguing fact. Tourists do not so much |
| 36 | | travel to places as escape from places. According to anthropologists, tourism is a search |
| 37 | | for an authenticity and freedom increasingly denied people in daily life. |
| 7 | 38 | | But reality frequently fails to match expectations. Everywhere there is talk of beach |
| 39 | | densities, the tourist 'irritation index'. The sad fact is that, for the masses, escape has |
| 40 | | become impossible. Fantasy islands everywhere have been turned into high-rise estates. If |
| 41 | | travel is to change, says Krippendorf, everyday life must change: 'A sick society cannot |
| 42 | | produce healthy tourists.' |
| 8 | 43 | | Krippendorf advocates a 'new travel culture', involving the humanisation of work, |
| 44 | | more neighbourly, beautiful cities, less consumerism, more time for family and friends, |
| 45 | | for 'being rather than having'. Take a 'holiday towards yourself: take off the watch, feel |
| 46 | | the wind and the rain, be creative, play games. You might even stay at home and explore |
| 47 | | the neighbourhood. |
| | | |
| | | from 'The Independent on Sunday', August 5, 1990 |
