Theron Nunez on how host communities bend to accommodate tourism

“Tourists are less likely to borrow from their hosts than their hosts are from them, this precipitating a chain of change in the host community. The notion that people in more or less continuous, first-hand, face-to-face contact become more like each other should not be ignored just because tourists come and go. A tourist clientele tends to replicate itself. As a host community adapts to tourism, its facilitation to tourists’ needs, attitude, and values, the host community must become more like the tourists’ culture. That is what tourists in search of the exotic and ‘natural’ vacation setting mean when they say a place has been ‘spoiled’ by tourism, i.e., those who got there before them and required the amenities of home. Anthropologists are often in the forefront of those who deplore the dilution and adulteration of traditional culture