Tourism

Staring through dozens of tourist brochures I began to feel nauseous. The more I looked the less I seemed to see. Like most TV news coverage of the Third World I was being offered images of the South that process 80 per cent of the world's population into a quick cliché. The transformation is the opposite of 'famine pornography' - this time it's fantasy-island escape. There are endless brown and black people smiling and saying, 'I want to be your friend'. Perhaps it's the flip-side of the same coin. It became harder to link my experiences of working and travelling in the South with what was in front of me.

Travel today is a commodity supporting a vast industry. Considering the scope and economic importance of tourism there's remarkably little analysis. Meanwhile the brochures breed.

I became convinced that we should explore the effects of the tourist trade in the format of a tourist brochure. By deploying some of the industry's marketing techniques, while hearing the voices of communities affected by tourism, we aim to strengthen our message.

NI designer Alan Hughes emphasized this when we were planning the magazine. 'Design is at the heart of tourist brochures,' he said. 'The words take second place to the look; imagery reigns supreme. You can see the dream that you're being sold.' By adopting this style we can see through it more clearly and allow the industry to deconstruct itself.

I started with the idea of a spoof brochure but we didn't need to invent a caricature. Many of the headlines you read are taken from mass-produced tourist brochures. They offered their ideologies more nakedly than if we'd tried to send them up ourselves.

The gap opening up between this fantasy land and tourism's real impact made me feel that brochures are in some sense obscene - 'if not vomitorial' as second editor David Ransom put it.

If we can discard these manufactured dreams we're more likely to be able to change the tourism industry from below. Travel is a strong human urge. For me it's about hope. It's the prospect of cross-cultural communication; an exploration of self and other.

'You're not going to spoil my holidays as well?' one NI subscriber said. Well, I hope not. The industry has already skewed much of the potential for worthwhile tourism. This magazine is about recovering the travel we want with journeys worth taking.

From tourist to target
Pratap Rughani takes you on a package trip to Egypt - a tourist Mecca. Before too long he's straying off the beaten track and discovering what's gone wrong with the tourist trade - as well as a few of the things we can do to put it right.

Aloha! 'Welcome to Paradise'
The visitor is promised a land of dreams. Kaleo Patterson explains how native Hawaiians have been displaced and their land desecrated.

The sex tourist's yen
There's a human price to be paid for the leisure business. Yayori Matsui reports on the Japanese sex tourism business.

TOURISM - THE FACTS

The natives are friendly
Alex Shankland digests an unappetizing menu of 'indigenous' culture being served up for unwary tourists in Latin America.

Return journey
What does the North look like to a tourist from the South? The mirror image changes in the hands of Firdaus Kanga.

Go on, be a man!
That's the message usually sent out to independent travellers. Julie Wheelwright investigates how women travelling can make a difference.

Trekkers' trove
Shailendra Thakali describes how villagers in the Annapurna region of Nepal have come together to repair the damage done to their home.

Simply - a guide to better tourism
And a last-gasp defence of the package tour by Nicholas Courtney.

ACTION

Letters
Letters from Lahore
Updates
Reviews: plus Nadine Gordimer classic
Curiosities
Endpiece: by Mary Durran
Country profile: Liberia

FRONT COVER DESIGN: ALAN HUGHES.PHOTOGRAPH OF TOURISTS ARRIVING IN HAWAII HUTCHISON LIBRARY
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