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Musings Report 2024-11 3-16-24 Global Tourism: From Authenticity to Simulation to Dependency
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Global Tourism: From Authenticity to Simulation to Dependency
I've lived my entire life in regions that are dependent on tourism to some degree for jobs and revenues, and as a tourist I've visited other regions similarly dependent on global tourism. In the most tourism-reliant areas, I've witnessed the economic consequence of this dependency, a transition from authenticity to simulation to hollowed-out dependency.
Much of the world has now reached this terminal state of hollowed-out dependency on a simulation of what was once authentic generating revenues from global tourism, generally to the detriment of the environment and local populace.
Both well-traveled tourists and those of us who live in tourist-dependent regions know the central irony of the expansion of global mobility / cheap airfares: what first attracted visitors has often been destroyed by the arrival of mass tourism.
In the initial stage of authenticity, the beautiful town square, the temple, the cathedral, the scenic bay, etc. all served the local populace. The few foreigners who arrived were embedded in a place and culture that served the resident populace. Tourists were already visiting Venice in the 1600s, for example, and Isabella Bird traveled in Hawaii in the 1800s; her account is titled Six Months in the Sandwich Islands.
As air travel became affordable to the masses circa the mid-1960s (the 747 jumbo jet entered service in 1970, vastly increasing the passenger capacity of airlines), famous destinations began harvesting tourist revenues by creating simulations of what had once been local and authentic.
Authentic dances were modified and performed daily to entertain tourists, local foods were modified to be mass-produced and palatable to tourist tastes, white-water rafting and kayak tours burgeoned in places that had once been quiet backwaters, shops catering to tourists replaced shops serving residents, and so on.
The end result: low-quality "authentic" frozen meals microwaved in overpriced cafes surrounding the square, temple or cathedral, tacky shops clog the streets, the local forests trampled and littered with trash, the reefs decimated and the local economy hollowed out by the arrival of global wealth and cheap imports.
In the initial influx of new revenue, the local populace favors tourism as a source of additional jobs and economic growth. I recall a sense of pride when Hawaii's annual visitor count exceeded 1.5 million in 1969.
But by the time the visitor count exceeded 10 million annually in 2019, residents no longer reckoned the benefits outweighed the costs and consequences, and when the pandemic shut down tourism in 2020, there was widespread relief, expressed as "We got our island back and it's wonderful."
Here's a photo of me and an empty beach when the pandemic stifled tourism:
The sense that tourism has gutted whatever made the city / locale attractive and vibrant is global: residents of Barcelona, Spain whom we know said mass tourism has ruined the city.
Large cities such as Paris, New York and Tokyo can absorb millions of tourists without losing neighborhoods--walk around the 16th Arrondissement in Paris, for example, and you won't encounter many tourists--but the floodtide of global wealth is distorting even the largest metropolitan areas, rendering housing unaffordable to the majority of residents.
The consequences are far more dire in small cities and locales. In the village of Hanalei on Kauai, Hawaii, for example, the average house near the famous bay is worth $5 million, and if it's on the beach, the price is astronomical. A typical mansion right on the bay rents for $32,000 a week.
The number of super-wealthy people globally is now so large that small places are quickly transformed into hollowed-out enclaves for the wealthy. This is a global phenomenon.
It's worth exploring this pernicious dynamic of authenticity decaying to simulation and then to complete dependence on global wealth and global supply chains in some detail.
When the desirable locale was still serving the residents, i.e. authentic, local farmers provided the food--eggs, dairy, meat, fruit and vegetables--from backyards and small-scale agriculture.
As demand from tourists soared, these small-scale local sources couldn't meet either demand or the pressure from owners of hotels / tourist destinations to lower costs to boost profits. Once volume reached a critical level, it became cheaper to import food from global Big Ag sources. Unable to compete on price and pushed off the land to make room for larger resorts, local farming was extinguished.
This dynamic affected every pre-mass-tourist sector: nothing could compete with the profits flowing from tourism, building condominiums for visitors to buy, and so on, so all other sectors withered away, leaving the entire economy dependent on mass tourism.
The fake, phony simulations of local culture and the exploitation of local sites erodes the culture as the line between what was real and what was staged for the benefit of visitors blurs. The latest iteration is this decay is to generate a higher-order simulation of local culture and hire locals as "cultural advisors." This is a step up from tacky tourist traps but it is still a simulation.
(I worked weekends in such a tourist trap in the early 1970s, Paradise Park, which we employees called Parasite Park, for it was indeed a parasitic entity, devoid of native plants, filled with exotic flora and fauna imported from elsewhere, a completely simulated kitsch version of Hawaii more like a backstage movie lot than "Hawaii," featuring a collection of parrots, which are not native to Hawaii.)
The short-term rental craze--earn vast sums by buying up homes and flats in desirable tourist locales and renting them to visitors at outrageous rates--has added additional pressure on housing costs and infrastructure.
In response, tourist destinations are finally clamping down on short-term rentals and imposing lotteries on visitors to over-used natural sites. Fees on tourist attractions are rising to generate revenue to offset the ecological damage caused by millions of visitors (or thousands of visitors in small, fragile environments).
Now that so many local economies have become dependent on tourism for their economic survival, the residents face a bleak no-win choice: either restrict tourism to save what's left and watch the economy crater, or attempt to thread the needle by limiting specific instances of over-use and raising fees to extract more revenues from tourists.
More than a few residents would welcome a global Depression that effectively ended mass tourism, but the financial pain that such a collapse would generate would be immense.
Then there's our choice of response as tourists. Ironically, tourist destinations that are what we might call authentically ersatz such as Disneyland limit the environmental damage of tourism by funneling the millions of visitors into limited areas designed to handle the crowds.
If we rent a residential flat, we can rent from a local family so at least the money stays in the local economy. We can be quiet and respectful, and buy food from street vendors who serve local residents. Put another way, we can embed ourselves in the residents' existing economy, in effect living as a temporary resident.
Another response is to consciously avoid giving money to phony simulations marketed as "real": the elephant rides (when no locals ever rode elephants), etc., and try not to overwhelm "unspoiled" places being exploited by those seeking to profit from the ruination of once pristine places: now that tourism has ruined X, take our tour to "unspoiled" Y, soon to be devastated by crowds seeking an "authentic" experience.
It is possible to visit places that are still predominantly serving local residents, but it means staying well off the beaten paths of guidebooks and the thousands of travel-promoting websites. Sometimes this can be as easy as walking a few blocks away from over-crowded tourist streets and looking for cafes filled with locals.
For example, if you only hear French being spoken by the wait staff and customers, that's a pretty good sign it's not a place designed to serve tourists. (Go ahead and use your schoolboy/schoolgirl French; it will do.) If there are no gaijin / farangs in the place, that's also a good indicator that it's serving residents.
There is no perfect response for either local authorities trying to limit the predation / destruction generated by global wealth and mass tourism, or by us tourists trying to limit the potential damage generated by our wanderlust. But until a global Depression ends mass tourism, any effort to limit the damage is a positive step.
Highlights of the Blog
America the Snackable 3/14/24
Best Thing That Happened To Me This Week
Took a muddy 900-foot elevation-climb hike with family friends visiting Hawaii. Note that I'm holding my "Hawaiian Hiking Boots" a.k.a. rubber slippers, as it was more secure to walk barefoot in the mud and tree roots. Good fun to be barefoot.
From Left Field
NOTE TO NEW READERS: This list is not comprised of articles I agree with or that I judge to be correct or of the highest quality. It is representative of the content I find interesting as reflections of the current zeitgeist. The list is intended to be perused with an open, critical, occasionally amused mind.
Many links are behind paywalls. Most paywalled sites allow a few free articles per month if you register. It's the New Normal.
Europeans Are Sharing 27 Tourist Traps And Red Flags To Avoid When Traveling To France, Spain, Italy, And More.
9 Charts That Show How Hawaii Tourism Is Changing -- dated but still useful...
Trader Joe's Has Been Releasing A Ton Of New Products Lately -- costly, unhealthy novelties....
Bernie Sanders' Report Reveals Over Half Of Older Adults Survive On Under $30,000 A Year: According to the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey, over half of Americans older than 65 live on incomes of $30,000 or less annually, with nearly a quarter surviving on between $10,000 and $19,999.
You can’t shop your way out of a monopoly--exploring Google's monopoly on search...
How I Got Here -- the ladder of social mobility has been pulled up....
Pat Martino guitarist: Martino Unstrung - A Brain Mystery (1:22 hrs)
Sixto Rodriguez-- Sugarman (22 min)
Imperialist appropriation in the world economy: Drain from the global South through unequal exchange, 1990–2015 (via Alain M.)
Financial Nihilism
‘We don’t know where the money is going’: the ‘carbon cowboys’ making millions from carbon credit schemes.
2022 World Inequality Report
"A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet." Orson Welles
Thanks for reading--
charles |
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