In a previous posting by Daniel Hinton on February 21st, the discussion was on the tourist industry as revolving around “artificial places”. An argument was raised that culture was becoming very banal. I think this is an excellent point and I wanted to extend it and argue that a tourist’s Caribbean experience is also becoming more and more banal and the only thing experienced is one’s hotel.
I was away in the Dominican Republic during reading week and when I got back a classmate and I were discussing the various places we’ve travelled to and what stuck in my mind is that he commented that no matter what island you go to the experience is more or less the same because most people don’t go out and experience the country, rather their experience is through the hotel and its constructed tours or activities which are made specifically for tourists anyways. So a country’s culture, food and activities are created to be mass consumed by tourists, leaving most tourists with an impression of an artificial and constructed culture.
In addition I think that tourism plays a huge role in the creation of otherness, or even orientalism. I think often people from the south are not only racialized, but they’re depicted as having less worth, or of being uncivilized and rely so heavily on the American dollar for survival. One last comment I’d like to make is that looking at a tourist resort or a tourist area in the Caribbean for example, we can see the various ways in which people experience the space differently. To the tourist it’s a place of relaxation, to the worker it’s a place to earn a living, for the local perhaps it’s a sense of nostalgia for a place that was once theirs but has been stolen by the tourist industry (that can be debatable, it’s just a suggestion).
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I do agree that the tourist attractions and destinations have lost their sense of place. This year I visited Trinidad in the caribbean, Miami,Orlando, and New York. The three states that I visited were more or less the same as the malls, airport, food facilites were identical. I did notice however that when I enter Miami Internationatal airport, the Song "Welocme to Miami" by Will Smith was played repeately. This showed their loss of place as they use popular culture, being Will Smith's song to identify their place.
Trinidad was the country that created the most sense of place to a visitor. The airport contained a brief history as pictures of all Presidents and Prime Ministers were on hung on the walls of the airports main enterance. There were also statues were costumes, displaying the colours and significance of Trinidad's historical Carnival Parade.
FRom evaluating each countries airport I beleive that airports do have the capability of establishing place. I belive that airports should contain history and give an overview of a country as it is the first impression and experience a vistor gets when entering a foreign country.
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