The Morality Of Tourism

When the uprising in Tunisia occurred, it struck me that here was an opportunity for Mallorca to spend its tourism promotion budget wisely. Rather than the odd TV campaign or cosying up to tour operators, what about spending the budget on fomenting a touch of good old dissent in rival destinations instead? Little, other than the occasional natural disaster, works better in undermining tourism than a spot of political instability, riots, civil disorder and death on the streets.

I hadn't counted on the Egyptians taking matters into their own hands. The sniggers of schadenfreude within the ranks of Mallorca's tourism industry will be suppressed, behind closed doors and never leaked in a Keys-Gray manner, but the hope of misfortune surely resides somewhere along the corridors of the industry - the hope that the gift will keep on giving, and thus giving Mallorca tourists who might otherwise have headed off to an Arab Mediterranean competitor. Tunisia, Egypt, where next? Morocco? Yes please.

You might question the morality of such a hope, but morality is not a concept that travels easily alongside tourism. Tourists themselves are not exactly beings with high moral instincts. How can taking a holiday in a country run by an unpleasant dictatorship, e.g. Egypt, be described as moral? The mere act of landing on Egyptian soil gives succour to a regime that, for most tourists, would be abhorrent in their own lands. The morality of the decision to visit such a country hardly enters the equation, if at all. What does is cost, quality of hotel, sun and plenty of it and some pleasant snorkelling, so long, that is, that there aren't too many sharks lurking in the shallows.

Tourism is the Olympic Games and the sporting prowess and achievement through which nasty countries and nasty political elites can show the world a more benign and happy face. Just as the Beijing Olympics or the Stasi-monitored steroidisation of a generation of East German athletes were morally dubious, so tourism is used to present an image that seeks to shield the realities of abuse.

An argument in favour of turning a blind eye to morality in a tourism context runs along similar lines to that which challenged sporting sanctions against apartheid South Africa. By not touring, sports teams deprived local sportspeople of the opportunity to excel or to come to international prominence. The argument was always spurious and was ultimately exposed as being totally wrong. Sanctions played a significant role in ending apartheid; they were morally correct.

Tourism, so goes the argument, brings wealth and an opening-up of societies. The argument is not without foundation, and I will come to one very good example of where it did play a major role, but if the wealth is unevenly distributed or hardly at all and if the societies remain closed or authoritarian, then how can it be said to be morally right? In Egypt, half its population lives in poverty. Wealth, not just from tourism, has been the privilege of a minority.

For developing countries, tourism plays a vital role. But even where a country operates under principles of democracy, there is an issue of morality. Take the All-Inclusive Republic, otherwise known as the Dominican Republic. This is a country that has enjoyed growth, partly the consequence of tourism. But how much of the wealth generated circulates within the population as a whole, this wealth being captured behind the security gates of the ghettoes of fine all-inclusives? How moral is it for those who might bemoan the ethics of all-inclusives elsewhere, Mallorca for instance, whilst enjoying a Dominican hotel and having their spending power end up in hands other than those of the average local?

Sometimes you want to see for yourself and sometimes you have your eyes opened by what you do see but hadn't expected. In 1973 I did the European tour. I went to Yugoslavia, then under Tito's Communist regime, and crossed the border by train into Greece, then ruled by its extreme-right military junta. I watched as a Yugoslavian student, who had been sharing my cabin and the food that I and others had packed into our rucksacks, was dragged from the train and beaten up on the platform by Greek police. I had spoken to people in Yugoslavia and then spoke also to Greeks. Always it was in hushed tones, out of earshot of other locals. I don't know that I thought much about the morality of being in either country, but what I saw and heard made me realise much about how immoral regimes work.

So it can be beneficial, this visiting of countries with unpleasant systems; beneficial in creating a greater awareness of what is going on. And there is one place, one country that benefited greatly from tourism that might otherwise have been thought immoral. Mallorca. Spain. The tourists who first came en masse were lured by cheapness and sun. They were the pawns in Franco's plan for foreign currency, economic development and legitimacy. The initial tourism in Mallorca was predicated on questionable morals, but one of the unforeseen consequences - unforeseen by the Franco regime - was that tourists brought with them not just the first trappings of wealth but also different ways of thinking.

Francoism was disintegrating in the years before the dictator's death, and tourism helped to propel this disintegration and to then, in 1975, mean that there was no future for a similar model of government. Tourism can, therefore, and despite tourists being unwitting or unknowing participants in acts of immorality, be a power for moral good.

In Egypt, it is doubtful that many, if any tourists have considered the morality of their going there. They shouldn't be blamed for not having done so, because tourism and morality are pretty much mutually exclusive. But their presence may have contributed to the dismantling of a regime, and Mallorca can sit back and reap the benefits. And you never know, Mallorca may reap further benefits, because, unlike Mallorca post-Franco, what comes next could be worse. And tourists will then not want to know.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.