cover image Tourists: How Our Fastest Growing Industry is Changing the World

Tourists: How Our Fastest Growing Industry is Changing the World

Larry Krotz. Faber & Faber, $23.95 (264pp) ISBN 978-0-571-19893-1

In the developed world, reports Krotz, travel for pleasure is the third-largest household expense, and this earnest set of dispatches offers a good introductory look at the tourism industry. A tourist himself, Krotz acknowledges some ambivalence; a trip to Germany to explore his roots leads him to wonder: ""What is our obligation to our forebears?"" He offers a quick history of mass tourism, from the savvy packager Thomas Cook to the all-inclusive Club Med. In Belize, recently a hot tourist spot, Krotz finds that tourism has made the country more homogenous and more menacing. In Kenya, he concludes that the postcard wildlife image bears no reality to the crowded streets and pollution he sees, and he recognizes that the tourist economy mirrors the old colonial economy. Because tourism often drives a wedge between visitor and visited, Krotz proposes, somewhat predictably, that we seek ""the human and the experimental."" So he reports on a few fledgling projects to support responsible tourism that will protect ""the interests of the visited."" Fine, but Krotz, who teaches creative writing at the University of Manitoba, has left out the generations of backpackers who have already changed tourism. And his tone might have been leavened by some irony. (Dec.)