This House believes tourism is a viable development strategy for poor states.

Tourism vastly increases income within a particular state or region, not only through direct spending by tourists, but also as a result of increases in tax revenue and the growth of local markets for food, services and luxury goods. Tourism provides a boost to the amount of capital available in an area that purely local spending cannot achieve, even if assisted by government subsidies or tax breaks for domestic businesses.

In many developing states, tourism acts as an alternative to cash crops, improving terms of trade, both within the country’s internal market and with its neighbours. Tourism helps to diversify economies, reducing reliance on finite or export-led economic activities such as mining and agricultural production. Both farming and mineral extraction are largely dependent on export markets and the customs charges and cross-border trade agreements that facilitate them. Tourism is set apart from this type of economic activity. The processes of production and exchange that define tourism take place within the host state itself, while the capital that drives these activities originates outside its borders. Foreign corporate investment- in the form of casinos, hotels and travel ports- is supplemented by the commerce that it attracts.

Developing states can dictate the extent to which tourists’ spending is taxed, without having to make the concessions and trade-offs inherent in trading with other national entities. Trading with tourists also gives states a supply-side advantage when it comes to selling luxury goods. As large business entities, importers are better able to use bulk purchasing and collective bargaining to acquire discounts on food stuffs, clothing and jewellery from nations with underdeveloped export economies. By contrast, trade with tourists allows a larger number of indigenous retailers to demand broadly higher prices – tourists do not buy in bulk, nor do they bargain collectively.

Revenues from tourism can be used to enhance a developing state’s infrastructure, providing quantities of capital that may normally be out of reach to central government or to aid providers. Via taxes levied on hotels, tourists and goods providers, funding can be generated for the construction of roads, hospitals, power stations and schools. Reinvestment of this type can be used to spur further diversification within a state’s economy. It can make doing business within the state a more attractive proposition for foreign investors.

Even if the tourist trade is used as a launch pad for an economy seeking diversity and stability, it must still consent to spending an extended period of time completely dependent on the funds of tourists and tour operators. This constitutes a significant risk. There is no guarantee that a particular state or region will remain a popular tourist destination. Further, tourist-led economies are highly vulnerable to the effects of natural disasters, political and humanitarian disasters (such as wars and pandemics) and financial fluctuations.

Weather events and earthquakes can rapidly destroy large portions of the infrastructure of a tourist economy. Hotels collapse, beaches are ruined; air and sea ports become unusable. Even if infrastructural damage is minimal, aesthetic damage and the humanitarian cost of a natural disaster can depress tourist numbers in a region for years afterwards.

Pandemic diseases have had an even more marked effect on the industry. Such events, by definition, affect wide areas, disrupting multiple economies. The bird-flu and swine-flue outbreaks caused a severe downturn in the tourist trades in China and South America respectively. News reports and alarmist press coverage contributed to a general concern that the disease was running rampant throughout these regions. In Mexico the second quarter of 2009 saw tourist arrivals down by 19.2% year on year.[i] This slump also happened in other South American states despite negligible infection rates.[ii] Comparable reductions in tourist numbers have happened in south and east Asia following the 2004 tsunami, the 2002 terrorist bombings in Bali and the 1997 terrorist attacks in Luxor. In each case, the total number of visitors to a large geographical region dropped as a result of violence or calamity in one, small area of that region.

Both direct and indirect damage hampers the ability of tourism dependent economies to begin the process of expansion and diversification. Commercial reconstruction in disaster affected areas tends to focus on rebuilding hospitality facilities, ensuring that insurance payments or capital saved for an emergency is invested, once again, in the tourist trade.

[i] ‘Mexico's arrival numbers continue to decline’, eTN Global Travel Industry News, 2 February 2010, http://www.eturbonews.com/14176/mexicos-arrival-numbers-continue-decline

[ii] Smink, Veronica, ‘Swine flu infects Argentine economy’, BBC Mundo, 10 July 2009, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8141996.stm

Forming close ties with resource extraction firms and manufacturers is a popular development strategy for many poorer states, but it offers significant disadvantages in comparison to tourism. Not only does resource extraction, by its very nature, require states to consent to its territory sustaining pervasive and long-term environmental damage, it also tends to incentivise infrastructure projects that are only of use to the resource extraction industry. Roads can ferry medical supplies to communities as easily as they ferry tourists. An oil pipeline will only ever be useful for transporting oil.

Tourists’ cash can be employed in efforts to reduce the negative externalities generated by leisure travel. Ecological damage resulting from increased volumes of air and sea traffic and the construction of hospitality facilities is frequently cited as a reason to limit the growth of the tourism industry in developing nations.

Dependence on the industry for jobs and investment is seen as reducing the amount of control that developing states can exercise over potentially exploitative firms – if a firm pulls out in response to assertive government action- taking jobs and money with it- that government will become unpopular. However, the more money that a state makes from tourism, the more money it has to invest in other sectors of its economy. By incentivising the development of alternative forms of business and employment, a state can feasibly release itself from dependence on the tourist trade. As profits from tourism grow, a state will become freer to dictate the terms on which tour operators, hotel owners and tourists themselves do business – tourists’ money will have been used to create other sources of growth, investment and employment within that economy.

Examples of this process in action can be found in the Bahamas, the Seychelles and South Africa. The minute Bahamian island of Bimini came under threat from a large scale development plan proposed, in part, by the Hilton Hotels group. Development of the island would have resulted in the destruction of mangroves and fish habitats, compromising the livelihood of the island’s residents.[i] Two decades earlier, the introduction of laws allowing minimally regulated and discrete incorporation of offshore business entities enabled the Bahamian economy to diversify into the field of financial services, reducing its dependence on tourism. Revenue from tourist activities had enabled the Bahamian state to fund the investment in infrastructure, services and expertise that underlay this process of reform.[ii] As a result of economic diversification, the government of the Bahamas was able to compel Hilton to restrict its activities. Reliable funding of state institutions and subsidy and welfare programmes used by the residents of Bimini, reduced demand for jobs supplied by the hotel group.

[i] TourismConcern, ‘Save Bimini’, http://www.tourismconcern.org.uk/bimini.html

[ii] A Paradise for The Americas, http://www.geographia.com/bahamas/investment/toursm01.htm

While the resolution may suggest that income from tourism will serve to adjust the inequality in bargaining power between the poor residence of tourist destinations and wealthy tour firms, an area’s identity as a tourist destination often inhibits development. The purchase of land by tour companies may expropriate existing occupants who hold land subject to poorly defined rights or customary principles that are not recognised in courts of law. The repurposing of land to serve the tourist trade often excludes the possibility of economic diversification – land occupied by a hotel cannot also be used as farmland. The construction of ports inhibits the development of marine life across a wide area of surrounding coast line. Governments may be reluctant to intervene to address economic inequalities of this type, for fear that seizing a firm’s assets might prompt capital flight or costly legal challenges.

Local hostility in many locations is already giving rise to litigation and disruptive or illegal direct action. An increasing number of disputes are emerging between locals and tour operators over access to private beeches, diving areas, water resources and grazing land.

Although tourism may enhance growth and productivity within a country, tourism inevitably requires the use of land and infrastructure – both finite resources. Economic diversification and independence come at the cost of purchasing land and building new forms of infrastructure. Neither of these strategies is possible if hotel facilities have already laid claim to sizeable portions of a state. A prosperous tourist industry comes at the cost creating other forms of productivity activity that may provide better development prospects in the long term.

Managed properly, tourism and the conservation of wildlife habitats and areas of archaeological significance need not be mutually exclusive activities. Indeed, recent trends in ecotourism have demonstrated that tourists themselves can be co-opted to monitor and survey the environments that they are visiting. The fees paid by tourists to gain access to heritage locations such as Pompeii, the valley of kings and Machu Pichu can be funnelled into restoration and preservation schemes on those sites.

Recommendations by bodies such as UNESCO are aimed at maintaining the accessibility of sites to the paying public, while ensuring that the revenues tourist interest generates are used to reinforced locations against the erosion caused by the presence of so many individuals.[i] Similarly, research projects in Belize have found a willing source of free labour among leisure divers who come to explore the country’s reefs. Cooperation with tourists allows scientists to teach divers how to minimise the damage that their presence may cause to reef structures, without restricting tourists movements or driving away a potential source of commerce.

[i] Pedersen, Arthur, ‘Managing Tourism at World Heritage Sites’, World Heritage manuals, 2002, http://whc.unesco.org/uploads/activities/documents/activity-113-2.pdf

The damage that tourists cause is not limited to archaeological sites and local ecosystems. The presence of tourists can also destabilise and perturb the routines and traditions of an area’s communities. Within developing states, tourists can cause significant disruption and damage to the patterns of ordinary life. Religious, artistic, medical and agricultural knowledge is considered to be an important resource by a wide range of aboriginal and forth world communities. What tourists may assume to be innocent queries can constitute an attempt to acquire carefully taught skills and practices, bound closely to a group’s identity and history.

Further, the construction of tourist accommodation- even in wealthy, developed states- is often driven by concerns over cost and a desire to maximise profit margins. Attempts to remain true to local architectural vernaculars and to create building that are unobtrusive and aesthetically pleasing are often talked about by hoteliers, but rarely implemented.

Tourism vastly increases income within a particular state or region, not only through direct spending by tourists, but also as a result of increases in tax revenue and the growth of local markets for food, services and luxury goods. Tourism provides a boost to the amount of capital available in an area that purely local spending cannot achieve, even if assisted by government subsidies or tax breaks for domestic businesses.

In many developing states, tourism acts as an alternative to cash crops, improving terms of trade, both within the country’s internal market and with its neighbours. Tourism helps to diversify economies, reducing reliance on finite or export-led economic activities such as mining and agricultural production. Both farming and mineral extraction are largely dependent on export markets and the customs charges and cross-border trade agreements that facilitate them. Tourism is set apart from this type of economic activity. The processes of production and exchange that define tourism take place within the host state itself, while the capital that drives these activities originates outside its borders. Foreign corporate investment- in the form of casinos, hotels and travel ports- is supplemented by the commerce that it attracts.

Developing states can dictate the extent to which tourists’ spending is taxed, without having to make the concessions and trade-offs inherent in trading with other national entities. Trading with tourists also gives states a supply-side advantage when it comes to selling luxury goods. As large business entities, importers are better able to use bulk purchasing and collective bargaining to acquire discounts on food stuffs, clothing and jewellery from nations with underdeveloped export economies. By contrast, trade with tourists allows a larger number of indigenous retailers to demand broadly higher prices – tourists do not buy in bulk, nor do they bargain collectively.

Revenues from tourism can be used to enhance a developing state’s infrastructure, providing quantities of capital that may normally be out of reach to central government or to aid providers. Via taxes levied on hotels, tourists and goods providers, funding can be generated for the construction of roads, hospitals, power stations and schools. Reinvestment of this type can be used to spur further diversification within a state’s economy. It can make doing business within the state a more attractive proposition for foreign investors.

Even if the tourist trade is used as a launch pad for an economy seeking diversity and stability, it must still consent to spending an extended period of time completely dependent on the funds of tourists and tour operators. This constitutes a significant risk. There is no guarantee that a particular state or region will remain a popular tourist destination. Further, tourist-led economies are highly vulnerable to the effects of natural disasters, political and humanitarian disasters (such as wars and pandemics) and financial fluctuations.

Weather events and earthquakes can rapidly destroy large portions of the infrastructure of a tourist economy. Hotels collapse, beaches are ruined; air and sea ports become unusable. Even if infrastructural damage is minimal, aesthetic damage and the humanitarian cost of a natural disaster can depress tourist numbers in a region for years afterwards.

Pandemic diseases have had an even more marked effect on the industry. Such events, by definition, affect wide areas, disrupting multiple economies. The bird-flu and swine-flue outbreaks caused a severe downturn in the tourist trades in China and South America respectively. News reports and alarmist press coverage contributed to a general concern that the disease was running rampant throughout these regions. In Mexico the second quarter of 2009 saw tourist arrivals down by 19.2% year on year.[i] This slump also happened in other South American states despite negligible infection rates.[ii] Comparable reductions in tourist numbers have happened in south and east Asia following the 2004 tsunami, the 2002 terrorist bombings in Bali and the 1997 terrorist attacks in Luxor. In each case, the total number of visitors to a large geographical region dropped as a result of violence or calamity in one, small area of that region.

Both direct and indirect damage hampers the ability of tourism dependent economies to begin the process of expansion and diversification. Commercial reconstruction in disaster affected areas tends to focus on rebuilding hospitality facilities, ensuring that insurance payments or capital saved for an emergency is invested, once again, in the tourist trade.

[i] ‘Mexico's arrival numbers continue to decline’, eTN Global Travel Industry News, 2 February 2010, http://www.eturbonews.com/14176/mexicos-arrival-numbers-continue-decline

[ii] Smink, Veronica, ‘Swine flu infects Argentine economy’, BBC Mundo, 10 July 2009, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8141996.stm

Forming close ties with resource extraction firms and manufacturers is a popular development strategy for many poorer states, but it offers significant disadvantages in comparison to tourism. Not only does resource extraction, by its very nature, require states to consent to its territory sustaining pervasive and long-term environmental damage, it also tends to incentivise infrastructure projects that are only of use to the resource extraction industry. Roads can ferry medical supplies to communities as easily as they ferry tourists. An oil pipeline will only ever be useful for transporting oil.

Tourists’ cash can be employed in efforts to reduce the negative externalities generated by leisure travel. Ecological damage resulting from increased volumes of air and sea traffic and the construction of hospitality facilities is frequently cited as a reason to limit the growth of the tourism industry in developing nations.

Dependence on the industry for jobs and investment is seen as reducing the amount of control that developing states can exercise over potentially exploitative firms – if a firm pulls out in response to assertive government action- taking jobs and money with it- that government will become unpopular. However, the more money that a state makes from tourism, the more money it has to invest in other sectors of its economy. By incentivising the development of alternative forms of business and employment, a state can feasibly release itself from dependence on the tourist trade. As profits from tourism grow, a state will become freer to dictate the terms on which tour operators, hotel owners and tourists themselves do business – tourists’ money will have been used to create other sources of growth, investment and employment within that economy.

Examples of this process in action can be found in the Bahamas, the Seychelles and South Africa. The minute Bahamian island of Bimini came under threat from a large scale development plan proposed, in part, by the Hilton Hotels group. Development of the island would have resulted in the destruction of mangroves and fish habitats, compromising the livelihood of the island’s residents.[i] Two decades earlier, the introduction of laws allowing minimally regulated and discrete incorporation of offshore business entities enabled the Bahamian economy to diversify into the field of financial services, reducing its dependence on tourism. Revenue from tourist activities had enabled the Bahamian state to fund the investment in infrastructure, services and expertise that underlay this process of reform.[ii] As a result of economic diversification, the government of the Bahamas was able to compel Hilton to restrict its activities. Reliable funding of state institutions and subsidy and welfare programmes used by the residents of Bimini, reduced demand for jobs supplied by the hotel group.

[i] TourismConcern, ‘Save Bimini’, http://www.tourismconcern.org.uk/bimini.html

[ii] A Paradise for The Americas, http://www.geographia.com/bahamas/investment/toursm01.htm

While the resolution may suggest that income from tourism will serve to adjust the inequality in bargaining power between the poor residence of tourist destinations and wealthy tour firms, an area’s identity as a tourist destination often inhibits development. The purchase of land by tour companies may expropriate existing occupants who hold land subject to poorly defined rights or customary principles that are not recognised in courts of law. The repurposing of land to serve the tourist trade often excludes the possibility of economic diversification – land occupied by a hotel cannot also be used as farmland. The construction of ports inhibits the development of marine life across a wide area of surrounding coast line. Governments may be reluctant to intervene to address economic inequalities of this type, for fear that seizing a firm’s assets might prompt capital flight or costly legal challenges.

Local hostility in many locations is already giving rise to litigation and disruptive or illegal direct action. An increasing number of disputes are emerging between locals and tour operators over access to private beeches, diving areas, water resources and grazing land.

Although tourism may enhance growth and productivity within a country, tourism inevitably requires the use of land and infrastructure – both finite resources. Economic diversification and independence come at the cost of purchasing land and building new forms of infrastructure. Neither of these strategies is possible if hotel facilities have already laid claim to sizeable portions of a state. A prosperous tourist industry comes at the cost creating other forms of productivity activity that may provide better development prospects in the long term.

Managed properly, tourism and the conservation of wildlife habitats and areas of archaeological significance need not be mutually exclusive activities. Indeed, recent trends in ecotourism have demonstrated that tourists themselves can be co-opted to monitor and survey the environments that they are visiting. The fees paid by tourists to gain access to heritage locations such as Pompeii, the valley of kings and Machu Pichu can be funnelled into restoration and preservation schemes on those sites.

Recommendations by bodies such as UNESCO are aimed at maintaining the accessibility of sites to the paying public, while ensuring that the revenues tourist interest generates are used to reinforced locations against the erosion caused by the presence of so many individuals.[i] Similarly, research projects in Belize have found a willing source of free labour among leisure divers who come to explore the country’s reefs. Cooperation with tourists allows scientists to teach divers how to minimise the damage that their presence may cause to reef structures, without restricting tourists movements or driving away a potential source of commerce.

[i] Pedersen, Arthur, ‘Managing Tourism at World Heritage Sites’, World Heritage manuals, 2002, http://whc.unesco.org/uploads/activities/documents/activity-113-2.pdf

The damage that tourists cause is not limited to archaeological sites and local ecosystems. The presence of tourists can also destabilise and perturb the routines and traditions of an area’s communities. Within developing states, tourists can cause significant disruption and damage to the patterns of ordinary life. Religious, artistic, medical and agricultural knowledge is considered to be an important resource by a wide range of aboriginal and forth world communities. What tourists may assume to be innocent queries can constitute an attempt to acquire carefully taught skills and practices, bound closely to a group’s identity and history.

Further, the construction of tourist accommodation- even in wealthy, developed states- is often driven by concerns over cost and a desire to maximise profit margins. Attempts to remain true to local architectural vernaculars and to create building that are unobtrusive and aesthetically pleasing are often talked about by hoteliers, but rarely implemented.

The tourism industry sells experiences. Travel agents and tour operators all but guarantee that holidaymakers will encounter particular cultural activities and particular festivals; will see certain sights and interact with a certain type of people. Tourism, at its most commercial, changes diverse and dynamic environments and societies into commodities, sold to travellers on the strength of stereotypes and characterisations. The image of Hawaii projected by travel agents will always comprise ukuleles, flower garlands, grass skirts and sunshine. Central Australia will always be associated with romanticised images of a timeless (and largely fictional) aboriginal culture, which only serve to mask the extent of prejudice and marginalisation within Australian aboriginal communities. In order to guarantee that the Seychelles will always remain associated with crisp, uncluttered beeches and palm groves, tour companies have spent increasing amounts of money buying up and privatising stretches of seashore.

In short, the tour industry demands that popular tour destinations conform to a certain, caricatured image of themselves. In order to maintain this illusion, to maintain the idea of destination-as-commodity, tour operators obstruct development and modernisation. Further, the demands of local tour industries often require the full-time inhabitants of tour destinations to conform to stereotypes of their own culture.

“Encounters” with local inhabitants and fourth world communities within tourist areas indicate apparent cooperation between hoteliers and locals, but this could not be further from the truth. In Tanzania, following the development of luxury Safari lodges on the Ngorongoro crater, the Thomson and Serena hotel groups have begun to employ members of the Masai community to sell beads or meet with groups of tourists. Concurrently, however, security guards and local police officers on the pay rolls of these companies have begun to turn away Masai cattle herds from pasture land contained within grounds of the resorts. For the Masai, work on hotel premises pays at a subsistence rate, while cattle and grazing rights constitute the most valuable forms of asset held by their community. Loss of grazing land has led to a decline in incomes that has left 70% of the Tanzanian Masai population living below the poverty line.[i]

As a result of images propagated by their own marketing departments and populist, orientalist myths about “unspoilt”, “uninhabited” tropical locations and timeless, “traditional” peoples living “simpler” lives, tour operators are incentivised to restrict economic growth and expansion in developing nations.

[i] Planetsafari, ‘Pastoralism versus tourism in Tanzania’, 5 September 2010, http://www.planetsafaris.com/index.php/highlights/pastoralism_versus_tourism_in_tanzania/

There is a strong didactic tradition within western tourism, which emphasises the role of travellers in fostering cultural contact and exchange. It can be argued that positive, open and value neutral attitudes to travel still exist, albeit in different forms.

Volunteer schemes operated by organisations such as the VSO are increasingly being promoted as travel experiences, as well as charitable endeavours. Such schemes forcibly confront young travellers with the underdeveloped conditions of the communities that they offer their services to. They allow unmediated contact with the inhabitants of developing states.

As noted below, western tourists should not be portrayed as barely educated dupes, in thrall to the promises made in tour companies’ brochures. While some companies do offer tourists “packaged” experiences, many more simply facilitate travel to and between places that their customers find interesting.

Travel of this type confers all of the advantages of trade with tourists on host economies, while minimising potential disputes over land ownership and infrastructure.

The dispute surrounding land rights within the Ngorongoro crater has been driven largely by purchases of land an entertainment facilities by senior members of various Arabian royal families. This is not characteristic of the difficulties encountered by popular tourist destinations generally. It is contended that senior members of elite, unaccountable and stratified institutions such as the Saudi royal family will always be likely to use their wealth and influence to evade democratic controls on land use. Attention should be drawn to the plight of the Tanzanian Masai, but restriction of other tourist activities in other territories would be counterproductive.

The resolution supposes that the developing states currently trading with tour operators have functioning polities, systems of financial accountability and state institutions that are capable of upholding the rule of law. This assumption is misguided. Highly integrated, long term development strategies of the sort set out by side proposition can only be implemented by an accountable, effective government; without a strong administrative state, development will be, at best, uncoordinated and at worst non-existent.

Corruption is likely to reduce the amount of tourist revenue accessible to ordinary people. Rent-seeking and bribery have led to the subversion and manipulation of land deals between local authorities and tour companies in Tanzania, Kenya, South Africa and India. It is rare for local populations in developing countries to be consulted on the terms of land deals, with state authorities taking a paternalist approach to the terms of any settlement. This then comes full circle as corruption discourages tourists from visiting a country that they would otherwise be interested in visiting as they know that there is likely to be a lot of extra charges that they have not budgeted for.[i]

[i] Tolentino, Francis N., ‘Tourism and corruption index’, Manila Bulletin Publishing Corporation, 11 March 2009, http://www.mb.com.ph/node/198488

The opposition appear to be arguing in favour of ensuring that tour operators exercise greater caution when assessing and review the political and legal practices of destination states. The opposition side’s points do nothing to disprove that tourism is beneficial for developing states in general.

It is ridiculous to expect tour operators to attempt to critique and dismantle dictatorial regimes. The most that can be expected of them is thorough scrutiny of new business partners. Large firms are as likely to be the targets of corruption as they are to benefit from it. The stakes- and sums of money- associated with the tourist trade are not as high as in the oil industry. In other words, tour operators are unlikely to be able to bribe officials and will be reluctant to comply with requests to pay bribes.

Far from entrenching dictatorial or corrupt governments, tourism may help in ousting them. Touring politically contentious areas may serve to bring home the flaws and depredations of oppressive regimes to some of the west’s wealthiest and most highly educated citizens.

Restricting and boycotting tourist activity may serve to reform developing states that are slipping toward extreme forms of authoritarianism and oppression. High profile boycotts of sporting events in South Africa (the 1985 grand prix, the 1970 on South African participation in international cricket and its suspension from FIFA in 1961)[i] brought political and racial oppression within the country to a wider international audience.

[i] Laverty, Alex, ‘Sports Diplomacy and Apartheid South Africa’, The African File, http://theafricanfile.com/academics/usc/sports-diplomacy-and-apartheid-south-africa/

Tourists, by their very nature, are temporary and fleeting inhabitant of the areas that they visit. Consequently, they have little time to familiarise themselves with the norms and values of local inhabitants. In developed nations this may lead to little more than mild inconvenience and demands that influxes of leisure travellers be limited and managed by taxation and segregation into tourist districts (as in Venice).

Within developing communities, however, tourists can cause significant disruption and damage to the patterns of ordinary life. Religious, artistic, medical and agricultural knowledge is considered to be an important resource by a wide range of aboriginal and forth world communities. What tourists may assume to be innocent queries can constitute an attempt to acquire carefully taught skills and practices, bound closely to a group’s identity and history. More prosaically, tour companies’ tendency to present communities as part of a managed experience, rather than functioning social spaces in which people work and make their homes, can lead to invasions of privacy. As a correspondent for the Guardian noted in 2011, residents of the remote Columbian town of “that some tourists can’t distinguish between the wildlife and the Amazon’s residents, snapping photos of indigenous families as if they were another animal.”[i]

[i] Muse, Toby, ‘Amazon town bans tourists’, guardian.co.uk, 25 March 2011, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/mar/25/indigenous-peoples-amazon-tourism-pressures

This argument assumes that tourists are undereducated dupes who are unable to understand that they should conduct themselves conservatively when visiting foreign communities.

The vast majority of western tourists- especially those inclined to spend large amounts of time and money locating and visiting fourth world communities- are highly educated. Side opposition that the problems presented by prying or curious tourists are intractable. In reality, a gentle reminder is usually all that is required to remind tourists that they are visiting sacred sites or working communities. Secular or non-Christian tourists in the United Kingdom fall uncomplainingly silent when visiting Cathedrals and churches. Visitors to America’s war memorials and to the world trade centre memorial site adopt sombre and reverent tones. There is no reason to believe that rational, intelligent individuals will not adapt their behaviour to the communities that they visit if asked to do so.