EXCERPTS
The tourist is an actual person, or real people are actually
tourists. (p. 1)
When I returned to analyze my field notes, I was surprised to
discover that my interpretations kept integrating themselves with
a line of inquiry begun by Emile Durkheim in his study of primitive
religion ... The more I examined my data, the more inescapable
became my conclusion that tourist attractions are an unplanned
typology of structure that provides direct access to the modern
consciousness or 'worldview' that tourist attractions are precisely
analogous to the religious symbolism of primitive peoples. (p.
2)
Sightseers do not, in any empirical sense, see San
Francisco. They see Fisherman's Wharf, a cable car, the Golden
Gate Bridge, Union Square, Coif Tower, the Presidio, City Lights
Bookstore, Chinatown, and, perhaps, Haight Ashbury ... As elements
in a set called "San Francisco," each of these items is a symbolic
marker. Individually, each item is a sight requiring a marker
of its own. (pp. 111-112)
The pro-tourist position is sometimes so ill-conceived as to
substantiate the anti-tourist position. The main mistake made
by pro-tourist planners is they see tourism only in traditional
economic terms as a new kind of industry. (pp. 162-163)
Hippies seem to function worldwide as the shocktroops of mass
tourism. They opened up Mexico
in the 1960s and are now concentrating almost all their energies
on the overland route from Western Europe to India, fidning the
communities, cafes and hostelries that can handle the traffic.
They teach the service personnel the language of tourism, which
is Partial English. (pp. 171-172)
The rhetoric of moral superiority that comfortably inhabits this
talk about tourists was once found in unconsciously prejudicial
statements about other "outsiders." (p. 9)
The modern consciousness appears to be dividing along different
lines against itself. Tourists dislike tourists. God is dead,
but man's need to appear holier than his fellows lives. (p. 9-10)
It is only in recent years that London has permitted the construction
of high-rise buildings. The first was the Hilton Hotel, built
in the early 60s in the face of bitter public opposition. Permission
was only granted after a cabinet decision rules that it was in
the interest of the British economy to encourage American tourists,
and it was felt that the Hilton would serve this end ... 'The
irony is that they are destroying the very character and scale
of the city their customers are coming to see.' (p. 126)
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