Europe makes Caribbean colonies depend on Tourism

A bumper tourism season in many Balkan countries is providing hard-hit economies with a welcome cash injection. Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama often posts images on social networks of tourists coming to Albania to spend their vacations in this year’s heat.

Almost every morning he greets his followers with a video from a beach promoting their cleanness and the improved tourism conditions Albania’s authorities claim they have created.

Tourism can be good for economic reasons, but most of the time it destroys culture and heritage of the locations visited by the commercial mass tourism industry. The ones that make big money on this human trafficking scam are travel agents, hotels and restaurants.

Many experts are worried that too much tourism can lower the quality of heritage locations and finally even lead to destruction and livelihood of the local people, as they are obligated to reorganize their lifestyles for tourism to flourish.

The development of tourism and urban planning with many hotels with disordered architecture, undermine heritage space including mangrove forests and the environment.

To promote heritage through tourism, authorities should understand the essence of what was being offered. This at least means improving the knowledge and awareness of the low paid people employed to look after and serve tourists.

Tourism provides monetary incentives for the development of many hotels, beaches and restaurants, but most of the time poverty rates rise because of this experience.

Tourism is one of the most important components of the global economy. It generates billions of dollars in revenues and millions of (low paid) jobs worldwide.

Loss of the cultural identity of the place and community happens if they dress up as tourists, talk and behave like them, which results in the loss of native customs and traditions.

To satisfy the needs of the tourists often the locals need to change their traditional style of life. Tourism can often cause environmental damage with risks like erosion, extreme pollution, the loss of natural habitats, and forest fires.

The commercialization of culture can undermine the soul of a tourist destination, which results in culture clashes. Service based economy leads to imbalanced funding. Many tourist destinations have had to face the positive and negative effects of tourism.

The challenges generated by the massive displacement of people requires in the first instance to know the different impacts that could arise, in order to have a possible action plan that helps to lead to a profitable development for both tourists and communities.

The excessive amount of tourists and the demand of products in the receiving localities, can cause that traditional craftsmen elaborate products by quantity and not by quality, what degrades the artistic and symbolic values.

The art produced in local communities can be transformed into a marketing product with the sole intention of selling superficial items to the tourist, exploiting the culture and losing its roots in the cultural heritage.

If the local community does not participate directly in the establishment of tourism development, they may become hostile to tourists.

This happens because it is known that tourism could destroy traditional ways of life and economies, creating dependency and poorly paid (migrant) jobs.

It happens that the industrialized countries have greater impact on the cultural changes of the underdeveloped countries. Tourists are seen as the secret agents of cultural change. On top of that, the human trafficking industry does not pay taxes to cover up profits made.

In tourism, it refers to the process in which tourists and host communities adapt elements of their cultures to each other.

For example gastronomy, ways of dressing, alternative replaced traditions, languages, art, architecture, religion, and alcohol and drugs related leisure activities.

In the case of tourism, since the displacements of people occur in certain periods of time, in the same way cultural displacements can be temporary. The greater the contrast between tourist and host, the more significant the fascist changes are.

The technological development has generated massive displacements of people who travel to different territories to know other cultures, however, there is no clear theory on whether this generates peace and understanding among peoples or conflicts due to their differences.

Although many researchers claim that cultural differences cause greater conflicts than political or economic differences, commercial tourism was in fact historically created by Nazi Germany in Paris, France as a propaganda tool during WW II.

Lore Central / ABC Flash Point Mass Tourism Blog News 2022.