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url: http://www.challengingculture.com/cultural-heritage/rethinking-our-holidays/
description: I look around me. The streets are filled with people. I see a street seller coming up to me so I start practicing the Swahili words that I learned: Hapana Asante. No, thank you. I love the paintings that he is trying to sell me, but they all look the same as the ones from the previous street seller. And so I say Hapana Asante and continue walking. Humans have this inner drive to explore. To travel. To see more of the world than just your own neighborhood and city in your own country. We all want to see what the world has to offer, and we're especially intrigued when we find out about local customs or buildings that are so different than the ones we're familiar with. We are so eager to learn about these places that we decide that everyone should see it, and so at these very popular places we are not surprised anymore when we are not alone but surrounded by other tourists. And even though we pretend that we don't like that street sellers keep on coming to you to sell you artworks that look surprisingly familiar to the ones you saw just a few minutes ago, secretly we like to be approached like that when we're on a holiday because it's so different from our regular daily lives. [caption id=attachment_203 align=alignleft width=1024] Eliot Elisofon, 1965, Smithsonian Institution Archives[/caption] Tourist destinations know this desire. In fact, tourism has long been used by places and native communities to boost local development through tourism. Tourism not only has a positive economic impact (among others; providing job opportunities, strengthen infrastructure, and creating educational opportunities) but it also has a very social impact (among others; strengthen local identity, creating cultural awareness and a general increase of the quality of life). The prerequisite for this development to happen, though, is that there exist an inclusive environment where the rights, security, needs, and cultural habits of local communities are secured. When there are no such (or not enough) cultural policies or regulations, the inequality gap will only grow. Places, and especially their infrastructure, develop but they will not do so for the benefits of the local communities, the opposite is true; places without regulated cultural policies will only develop based on tourists' needs. And I guess that brings me to the whole point of this blog post. People like homogeneity, they are looking for sameness, which is why you (especially if you are from North Amerika - yes, that's a stereotype from my side, I am aware of that) are probably happy to see a McDonalds or Subway if you're visiting another country. But think about this effect for a moment: You're on a holiday at an exotic location. You choose this location because of it's beautiful beach and local culture that is so different from your own. However, when you arrive there you notice that there's no hot water in the hotel. In fact, your hotel room doesn't really look like a cozy room, but it looks more like a hut with a wooden bed in it. If you want to go to the bathroom, you have to go outside and walk down the hallway to go to the shared facilities. You feel like you're in a cheap youth hostel instead of a real hotel. Luckily, you were still able to buy some locally crafted masks today as a souvenir to take home, because otherwise you would feel like your holiday would have been a disaster. So what you do is you write a negative review for the hotel, and you ask other tourists to do the same. After you are back home for several months, the tourist association with which you booked your last holiday writes you an email; they thank you for your feedback and they offer you a discount for your next holiday. You decide to accept it. When you arrive a few weeks later at the same location the hotel looks different, you have your own bathroom in your hotel room (incl. hot streaming water!), a nice bed with enough pillows, and somehow you can now buy those masks at every street corner - you love it. [caption id=attachment_202 align=alignleft width=1140] Eliot Elisofon, 1972, Smithsonian Institution Archives[/caption] Now, this was a very extreme example, but let me explain why it's such an important example. Our human need for sameness, for homogeneity, often causes tourist destinations to change the local practices. In order for them to stay attractive for tourists, they will have to adapt to the tourists' needs. Tourists are looking for recognizable facilities in an unfamiliar environment”. This also means that our need for homogeneity will eventually lead to standardization of a tourist location. And not only will that lead to a loss of authenticity for local cultures (remember the masks of the example? they eventually looked all similar, though it's not authentic anymore because it becomes a product of mass production), but it also widens the inequality gap. Because if a tourist location doesn't have the capacity to handle the increased numbers of tourists (which often happens in developing countries), what follows is that tourists have the priority. So, the water supply, for example, will primarly go to the hotels for the tourists, leaving less water for local inhabitants. Concrete roads will be built so that tourists don't have to drive over bumpy roads to get to their hotel; irreversibly changing the natural landscape of a destination. So, finally, what I wanted to make clear is that perhaps we should start to rethink our holidays. When we claim we want to explore, to travel, and to discover we should mean it. When we say we want to experience different cultures, we should not be looking for familiarity. It's not only the tourist destinations that are responsible for respecting local cultural habits and to enforce cultural policies, but it's just as much the tourist who is responsible for it. Sustainable cultural tourism is not just the responsibility of local communities, governments or NGO's, because if we are looking for authenticity we should stop demanding homogenity. Were you intrigued about this topic? This was just the tip of the iceberg. Contact me here to learn more about the impact of tourism on the preservation of cultural heritage.
title: Rethinking Our Holidays

• <H1> Challenging Culture
• <H2> Exploring the world's cultural heritage
• <H2> Rethinking Our Holidays
• <H2> That Part Of Culture That Unites Us
• <H2> Kwanzaa: Back to the roots
• <H2> Merry Christmas, Christmas Island!
• <H2> What is cultural heritage?
• <H3> Challenging Culture
• <H3> Are you liking Challenging Culture?

• cultural15
• heritage13
• read8
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• water6
• jennifer5
• sticky5
• huygen5
• challenging4
• get4
• involved4
• christmas3
• december3
• island3
• intangible3
• wall2
• world2
• fame2
• natural2
• before2
• ship2
• love2
• back2
• people2
• see2
• how2
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• land2
• share2
• tourism2

• cultural heritage8
• read more6
• jennifer huygen4
• get involved2
• heritage cultural2

• jennifer huygen intangible2
• read more what2
• jennifer huygen cultural2

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