Abstract
This paper argues for the usefulness of the discipline of history in studying stakeholders’ perspectives on tourism. It highlights the multiplicity of anti-tourism ideas within a single destination community and injects historians’ attention to change over time into interdisciplinary conversations on this subject. Understanding the historical evolution and diversity of sociocultural and economic arguments against tourism can help industry professionals and governing bodies respond appropriately to stakeholders’ concerns. It can also help stakeholders adjust their strategies for managing overtourism or pursuing economic diversification based on prior successes and failures. Although this study operates within the disciplinary framework of history, it breaches this discipline’s insularity by offering its interpretive strategies to tourism studies at large. As a case study, this presentation consists principally of a textual analysis of mentions of tourism in one newspaper, El Grito del Norte, between 1968 and 1973. It also draws on secondary literature and archival documents to make the case for a longue durée approach to anti-tourism sentiment. By qualitatively analyzing multiple strains of this sentiment through a close reading of newspaper editorials and write-ins, this study demonstrates that stakeholders’ points of contention with tourism emerge from multi-sided intracommunity dialogue, vary depending on their positionalities within the community, and shift over time as the industry itself evolves. This research suggests that historically grounded understandings of perceptions of tourism, rather than ones which react strictly to the immediate concerns of the present, represent a productive path forward for both the industry and the communities that sustain it.
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
Critical Issues in Tourism and Leisure Studies
KEYWORDS
Anti-tourism sentiment, Stakeholders, Municipal economic development, Local governance, Sociocultural tensions
