“Vandals in sandals” was how the Consul memorably referred to tourists in Under the Volcano.
Perhaps the definitive text on how this Vandal invasion tends to pan out each time, is R. W. Butler’s The Concept of a Tourist Area Cycle Evolution: Implications for Management of Resources (1980). One wonders whether Wetback at INGUAT has read it.Butler identified a set of stages, each one leading inexorably to the next...
1) The Exploration Phase > a small group of visitors show up. There are almost no facilities specifically catering for their needs. Transportation, and much else, is rudimentary. They depart or assimilate.
2) The Involvement Phase > word of mouth has increased the numbers and locals have spotted an opportunity to provide a range of new services.
3) The Development Phase > well-funded and well-organised groups, sometimes from outside the country, but almost always from outside the specific location, start to muscle in on the market, displacing the pioneers.
4) The Consolidation Phase > tourism becomes the dominant part of the local economy and people involved in the sector now outnumber everybody else. (A subset of locals and longer-term assimilated outlanders enters the increasingly ‘Pissed Off’ phase.)
5) The Stagnation Phase > a peak has been attained and there are all kinds of associated environmental and social issues emerging, along with unsettling economic distortions across the community.
Of this particular phase Butler noted, “The area will have a well-established image but it will no longer be in fashion.” Nostalgia has become chronic, seemingly endemic even amongst comparative newcomers.
Tulum might spring to mind here, but has lately hastened toiwards...
6) The Decline Phase > the writing is on the wall and some of the existing facilities attempt to swerve back to catering for locals or the more permanent kind of outsiders with apartment blocks, gated communities and retiree ghettos.
This is God’s Waiting Room on almost every level; terminal. Yet for a select few there is an available epilogue, a Rejuvination, more like the undead state than a whole new phase of life. (Some of Britain’s old seaside resorts achieved this transition by pitching to niches: Tech in Bournemouth, Gay in Brighton.)
I think most of us can quickly spot which phase any given destination in Central America is currently experiencing.
Though the world has changed a bit overall in other ways since 1980, and I might add some additional (or perhaps just intermediate) phases to the cycle.
Such as ‘Influencer Phase’.
Influencers are tourists who want to be taken for travellers, and they are unquestionably the very worst kind of vandals in sandals.
Their role is to arrive at a place that has already hit one of the later phases and act like the Explorer Phase is still chugging along nicely and to use their social media platforms to propagate this illusion.
I think I first became properly aware of this subculture back at the end of the last decade when I was on a minivan in Oaxaca state.
Many of my fellow 'travellers' were dressed like the pioneering explorers of old, but you could immediately tell that neither physically nor intellectually were they in any manner equipped for the journey.
With a grimace they were enduring its arduousness solely because of the selfie op they anticipated at its conclusion.
The shuttle had to stop several times so that they could be sick.
6) The Decline Phase > the writing is on the wall and some of the existing facilities attempt to swerve back to catering for locals or the more permanent kind of outsiders with apartment blocks, gated communities and retiree ghettos.
This is God’s Waiting Room on almost every level; terminal. Yet for a select few there is an available epilogue, a Rejuvination, more like the undead state than a whole new phase of life. (Some of Britain’s old seaside resorts achieved this transition by pitching to niches: Tech in Bournemouth, Gay in Brighton.)
I think most of us can quickly spot which phase any given destination in Central America is currently experiencing.
Though the world has changed a bit overall in other ways since 1980, and I might add some additional (or perhaps just intermediate) phases to the cycle.
Such as ‘Influencer Phase’.
Influencers are tourists who want to be taken for travellers, and they are unquestionably the very worst kind of vandals in sandals.
Their role is to arrive at a place that has already hit one of the later phases and act like the Explorer Phase is still chugging along nicely and to use their social media platforms to propagate this illusion.
I think I first became properly aware of this subculture back at the end of the last decade when I was on a minivan in Oaxaca state.
Many of my fellow 'travellers' were dressed like the pioneering explorers of old, but you could immediately tell that neither physically nor intellectually were they in any manner equipped for the journey.
With a grimace they were enduring its arduousness solely because of the selfie op they anticipated at its conclusion.
The shuttle had to stop several times so that they could be sick.
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