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Synthesis of the chapter 7 (Cultures and communities: the sociocultural relationships between hosts and visitors; pages 150-171)
from the book Tourism Geography written by Stephen Williams. The

book was taken from www.scribd.com
Cultures and communities:

The socio-cultural relationships between hosts and
visitors
The chapter analyzes the links created between tourism, society and culture:
Today globalization has a huge impact on tourism, developed countries impose a
global standardization and so it comes to remove the entire culture that a country
has with their distinctive traditions, language, clothing, music, food and
architecture. It is said that two different cultures into contact with each other for a
longer period of time tend to balance, to adopt the principles of a single culture, the
culture of the country which is more powerful. A good example is multicultural
U.S., a uniform country.
Society nowadays, shows that although some resorts were built for curative
purposes, were later upgraded for modern resorts combined with leisure tourism.
This fact, shows certainly that the tourism have a new perspective.
Our understanding of the relationship between tourism, society and culture is
uncertain. The main factor of influence is the mass-media and in a few cases the
society realizes the benefits that tourism brings in their lives.
The literature tends to emphasize the negative socio-cultural impacts it has on
tourism. Tourism is not a monolithic force but is not far from being a huge factor
for development and change. But it is a consequence of socio-cultural and since
that includes a diversity of participants (agencies and institutions with different
purposes) the effects are diverse and often unpredictable.
Tourism is often the cause migration of young, well-educated people to other
countries where they will improve the lifestyle and livelihood. But it brings a
negative effect on the country of departure, the fact that the country is losing young
people.
One theory suggests that the simple presence of tourist in a comunity brings
changes in attitude and behavior for the host.
It has been suggested that visitors and hosts encounter one another in three basic
situations:
when tourists make purchases of goods and services from local people in shops,
bars, hotels or restaurants;
when tourists and hosts share the same facilities, such as local beaches and
entertainment;
when they meet purposely to converse and to exchange ideas, experi-ences or
information.
The extent and the nature of socio-cultural impacts will clearly be influenced by
whichever of these forms of contact prevails.
Tourism development has a marked tendency to spatial concentration at favoured
locations, so patterns of development are uneven.
When hosts and visitors have similar levels of socio-economic and technological
development, socio-cultural differences will tend to be less pronounced and
tourism impacts upon society and cultures are reduced in consequence. Although
international tourism does bring differing groups together, in many locations
tourism also brings together culturally similar people.
In North America, for example, interchange between Canadian and American
tourists, whose lifestyles have much in common, produces comparatively few
socio-cultural repercussions. Thus, although there are important differences
between the major ethnic groups in this area, there remains a sufficient breadth of
shared socio-cultural experiences to produce fewer impacts than might have been
anticipated. So, where cultural distances between hosts and visitors are slight,
socio-cultural effects of tourism are minimal.
A controversal hosts-visitors problem is the contact between visitors and hosts
to alter value systems and the moral basis to local societies, generally producing a
drift towards adoption of more permissive or relaxed moral standards. To the local
observer, the casual lifestyle of many tourists, their conspicuous consumption, their
rejection(albeit temporarily) of normal strictures of dress and some elements of
etiquette can create very diverse reactions amongst local people, although the
strength of that reaction will depend upon the cultural distance between the host
and the visitor .
Trade souvenirs / handicrafts is very beneficial tourism, contributing to local
economies and also keep these traditions alive. This is especially true in
developing countries, but even in developed countries, and so tourism demand can
be a vital element in supporting local cultures.
But trading with souvenir made by corporations without a license on those
concepts are a big problem. Those are just cheap copies, poor quality and can even
distort their original form that only a true artist can give.

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Synthesis of the chapter 7 (Cultures and communities: the sociocultural relationships between hosts and visitors; pages 150-171)

from the book Tourism Geography written by Stephen Williams. The

Cultures and communities:

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