Customer Reviews

A Trip Too Far: Ecotourism, Politics and Exploitation

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

While it attempts to be a damning account of ecotourism's flaws, this book is itself so philosophically flawed that it is not worth reading. The author tries to bring out every point to say that ecotourism has negative side affects, even if they are philosophically contradicting, for example she criticizes the industry for both giving women jobs that cement domestic roles, and giving them jobs that free them from traditional roles, adn therefore cause strife in their communities.
Or she goes on about how ecotourism is not a challenge to the capitalist system, so therefore it is somehow fundamentally flawed. Or worse, at one point Duffy even says that because ecotourism is at times credible, it therefore lends credibility to capitalist goals of environmental preservation, and since that is bad, ecoutourism is bad for lending a bad thing credibility.
The part I like best though is when she talks about how ecotourist guides who have implemented no swimming with manatees policies in order to protect the manatees, are tempted financially by tourists to begin offering tours that allow them to do so. So ecotourism is bad because ecotourist guides are tempted to move towards regular tourism? Its almost as good as when she says that guides face compelx problems, because "tourists are not a captive audience, which means that the guides have to make the trips interesting and entertaining?" So ecotourism puts pressure on tour guides to run good interesting?
Certainly ecotourism is not all its cracked up to be, but this book should have focused on the simpler points of where it falls short. It also should have provided better anecdotal evidence of how it has the similar negative effects to regular tourism.