Resisting the Tourist Gaze. Art Activism Against Cruise Ship Extractivism in the Venice Lagoon

The essay situates Venice’s struggles against the cruise ship industry within a larger framework of resistance against planetary extractive capitalism, emphasising the role of local art-activist initiatives in denouncing the social and the ecological degradation caused by the cruise ship presence in Venice. In the first part, the concept of extractive tourism is introduced and analysed in relation to the case of Venice and the cruise companies’ economic model. The operations and infrastructure of cruise tourism produce extractive relations that entangle and exploit tourists, local communities and the natural environment. The Author examines how mass tourism has aggravated the environmental and social issues of the city of Venice and its lagoon. In the second part, the essay presents a number of artistic projects, specifically by visual artists Eleonora Sovrani, Gli Impresari, Banksy, and Elena Mazzi. These artworks can help us visualise the failures of the current urban development model of the tourist economy, while also exposing the nefarious effects of extractive capitalism on the well-being of the lagoon ecosystem and the human and non-human subjects cohabiting in it.

Image of the destination in knowledge management for the reactivation of the tourism economy in the face of Covid-19

The image of the destination is a central process in the tourism agenda. The establishment of a model or explanatory includes predictive variables the satisfactory experience in terms of transfer, stay and return. In this way, the objective of this work is to demonstrate the axes, trajectories and relationships between the determining variables of the destination image in order to anticipate knowledge management scenarios aimed at reactivating the tourist economy. A correlation work was carried out to with a selection of sources indexed to international repositories, considering the search for keywords in the period of the pandemic. The results show homogeneous random effects that suggest risk thresholds for the decision - making of the tourist experience based on its predictors, although these findings correspond to a data tracking and processing system that can be developed according to the prevalence of the literature.

Tourism Economy and Local Development in San-Pedro

Coastal city of the Ivory Coast, San-Pedro is rich in natural, economic and tourist resources. This study analyses the contribution of the tourism economy to local development. Documentary research and a field survey were used to collect data. It should be remembered that San-Pedro has floristic, climatic and hydrographic assets. Moreover, human capital is one of the pillars of this activity with a diversity of actors, a socio-cultural wealth including remarkable historic sites (10) and twenty-eight (28) tourist establishments of varied standing. Despite these assets, the tourist economy suffers from an organizational dysfunction and a weakness in investments. With 64% of the Ivorian workforce working mainly in informal or ephemeral sectors linked to the tourism economy, only 10% of the households surveyed said they were feeling the effects of it. The spatial, social and economic impact of the tourist sector remains below the real potential of this locality and below expectations.

Building the Beloved Community in Provincetown

The ‘beloved community’ formed in Provincetown, Massachusetts in tandem with the high period of Greenwich Village’s bohemian ‘little renaissance.’ Once a prosperous whaling port, the village of Provincetown had been undergoing economic decline and a marked ethnic shift in the decades preceding its development as an art colony. By the turn of the century, its Catholic, Portuguese population overtook its ‘native’ Yankee one; at this time, the village amplified its reputation as home to two successful summer art schools and boosted its image within a booming regional tourist economy as a quaint, Cape Cod fishing village. A coterie of moderns from Greenwich Village discovered Provincetown’s relatively underdeveloped beaches and wharves and by the teens had made it their home base, at least during the summer season. This chapter core of this coterie lived out their bohemian identities by drinking copiously, dressing wildly, bathing naked, and forming the performing group that would come to be known as the Provincetown Players. This endeavour brought together individuals with a wide range of talents (as well as those with very little talent but a desire to participate in the fun) for theatrical events that served to consolidate—physically, in the space of the theatre, as well as ideologically, through the content of their plays—a distinctly modern and modernist ‘beloved community’ of friends, lovers, and associates at a distance from the metropolis.

Robinson Jeffers, the Art Worker and the ‘Carmel Idea’

Poet Robinson Jeffers’ conflicted relationship with Carmel’s tourist economy and his own role, as its widely-recognized poet laureate, within it provides the focus of the second chapter in this section. Concentrating on the early, notorious narrative, Tamar (1924), this chapter extends a discussion of modernist primitivism in Carmel to show how Jeffers reformulates what might otherwise be understood as an exotic and entertaining spectacle of local colour as a scathing political commentary that is aimed both locally and globally. Tamar, a terrifying poem that centres on a dissolute young man who fantasizes about going off to war as a pilot in order to escape problems at home, indicates how the experience of international war profoundly affects the lives of a pastoral farming community on the West Coast. As Jeffers shows, being far from the national capitols of government and culture neither isolates nor insulates the family from modern violence. Further, the poem presents the tragedy of the World War as divine retribution for the long and violent history of Western colonialism and imperialism, material and spiritual traces of which have collected on Carmel’s gorgeous beachfront property.

Perception of national and foreign tourists of the service in restaurants from Todos Santos Magical Town, Mexico

The magic town of Todos Santos is a strategic site for local development and is dependent on the tourist economy driven by national and foreign visitors. Restaurants in Todos Santos obtain raw materials locally to provide quality products for different food specialties. The quality of service (SQ) and customer satisfaction (CS) are two constructs that when evaluated are critical for any market. In this study, the perception and relationship between SQ and SC in the different restaurant specialties is evaluated, contrasting the perception between national and foreign tourists segments. Using 162 surveys, the constructs were evaluated using five dimensions: installations, accessibility, human capital, atmosphere, and food, where hypothetically food and human capital should be the main determinant. The results suggest that SQ and CS are perceived similarly between both segments, except in the Italian specialty in all its dimensions, and partially in Japanese. The food dimension was the highest value on average however, it was not significantly different from the rest of the dimensions. The SQ had a moderate positive impact on CS given the perception of diners by segment based on correlation analysis, the causal effect of which must be determined with detail.

Making the Nēnē Matter: Valuing Life in Postwar Conservation

In 1950, a group of scientists and public figures, based in Hawaii and England, launched a transnational “restoration project” to save the nēnē or Hawaiian goose from extinction. Scrutinizing this project highlights how endangered species were valued as part of a historically contingent process that reflected and linked the interests of different groups. People did not undertake the restoration project simply because they realized the nēnē were endangered, but, instead, they sought to rescue it at the “eleventh hour” in order to legitimize the new conservation organizations that they helped establish after the Second World War. They also engaged with broader political and socioeconomic concerns to justify the restoration project, publicly framing the nēnē as a valuable asset that benefited Hawaii’s tourist economy and push for statehood. Disputes over the reintroduction of geese bred in England highlight how the nēnē were valued in complex and sometimes contradictory ways, with unforeseen consequences for both the restoration project and its animal subjects. This case study ultimately draws our attention to the inherently biopolitical nature of modern conservation, by showing that there is no simple trajectory from endangered life to valued life.

Cape Town’s gay village: from “gaytrified” tourism Mecca to “heterosexualised” urban space

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to ascertain the factors that led to Cape Town’s gay village to transform from a “gaytrified” tourism mecca to a “heterosexualised” urban space, from a gay leisure space owner perspective. Design/methodology/approach Empirical observations of the six remaining gay leisure space owners in De Waterkant (population) are taken into account by using semi-structured interviews. All narratives are analysed in Altas.ti – qualitative data analysis software – to identify applicable factors, which participants believe are contributing to the “de-gaying” of Cape Town’s gay village. Findings From the conducted analyses, it becomes apparent that Western theorisation of the “de-gaying” of gay villages is not universally applicable as certain factors contributing to De Waterkant’s demise appear to be location-specific, suggesting that Western theory is insufficient to explain gay spatial realities in non-Western contexts such as South Africa. The identified factors responsible for the “de-gaying” of De Waterkant adversely affect Cape Town’s status as a gay capital and its ability to market this gay neighbourhood to attract the gay tourism market. This may result in lost socio-economic opportunities considering the financial contribution of gay travellers to the local tourist economy. Originality/value This study is the first of its kind to use first-hand narratives of the six remaining gay business owners in De Waterkant and marks the first attempt to investigate the factors, from a non-Western perspective, which led to the “de-gaying” of Africa’s only gay village. Taking into account the socio-economic value added by gay tourism, the findings provide the first non-Western perspective on the demise of Africa’s and South Africa’s only gay neighbourhood from a gay leisure space owner perspective, including the possible repercussions on Cape Town’s local tourist economy. Some tactical considerations and recommendations are suggested to ensure the continuation of gay tourism in the city.

Chasing Money: Tourist-Induced Labor Migration and Pentecostal Teachings of Success in Zanzibar

This article explores the role of Pentecostal-Charismatic teachings of growth and success in the context of Christian labor migrants’ efforts to “make it” in the predominantly Muslim society of Zanzibar. The study ethnographically assesses how dreams of making money and accumulating wealth in the islands’ growing tourist economy are addressed in teachings on how to mature spiritually through a combination of classic holiness living and ideas of how to reach and maximize people’s inner potential. Tracing the different theological ideas behind the promise of successfully attaining the good life suggests that the view of how prosperity is communicated within Pentecostal-Charismatic Christianity in Africa needs to be nuanced in light of its diversity as well as in relation to local contextual circumstances. Thus, the case underlines how neo-Pentecostal ideas of realizing potential mingle with classic Pentecostal teachings emphasizing striving and hard work which, in Zanzibar, stress time and endurance in order to become a successful migrant in both material and spiritual terms.