The `Consumption' of Tourism

This paper provides an analysis of a relatively unusual topic, namely, the social divisions surrounding the consumption of tourist-related services. In the first section a number of points are made which suggest that the topic is both important and difficult to analyse. Some attention is paid to the features of the tourist gaze. In the second main section the problems brought up by various economists of congestion and positionality are analysed. It is suggested that there is an important distinction to be drawn between the romantic and the collective tourist gaze which makes the issue of congestion/positionality more complex than economists have suggested. Some sociological implications of this distinction are developed in the final concluding section. `Tourists are vulgar, vulgar, vulgar' (Henry James, quoted Pearce and Moscardo 1986:21)