Tourism and neoliberalism

While tourism has been a core feature of the global economy for more than a century, over the past several decades, it has been a central component of a worldwide process of neoliberalization in particular. Neoliberalization describes a political-economic programme of ‘free trade’ embodying interrelated principles of deregulation, decentralization, marketization, privatization and commodification. Grounded in a critique of the post-war welfare state, it was first introduced into public administration in the US and Western Europe in the 1980s, then spread worldwide in the next decade via structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) incorporated into international development planning. As one of the world’s largest industries, tourism development has been a key component of this process. In this way, tourism policy in many places has been progressively neoliberalized, while in turn tourism development has thus served as a key component of neoliberalization more generally, helping to progressively bind the world within a single integrated economy. Hence, tourism can be understood not only as a key site of neoliberalization, but a central means by which neoliberalization spreads as well. In the process, tourism development has played a key role in helping to stabilize a neoliberal capitalist economy riddled with fundamental contradictions that subject it to periodic crises. This article explores how this dynamic developed, where it stands at present, and how it is likely to evolve in the future as the contradictions underlying neoliberal capitalism continue to unfold.