Globalization, Tourism, and Terrorism:
By Jeff Nesmith
Throughout the past thirty years traveling tourists have had the opportunity to travel all over the world and discover a variety of different cultures. This incredible opportunity has been facilitated by the developments of tourist friendly locales all over the world in remote areas of the globe such, Madagascar, Easter Island (off the coast of Chile), Bali, and more recently the Mentawai Islands off the coast of Sumatra in Indonesia. Travelers are finding more reasons to break off the beaten path, primarily because they want to escape from the crowds that can come with more popular vacation destinations. Many of these travelers who are choosing new and remote destinations for their travels are the young backpackers hailing from just about every country in the world. Accompanying them are families who want to have a more remote and more isolating experience. Still many are honeymooners fresh from the altar. And the last group which, consists of the surfers who travel to the ends of the globe to find that perfect combination of weather, water, and waves. These surfers are connoisseurs of some of the finest beaches in the world and thirst after lush white tropical sands and blue water like a camel fresh off of a trek through the Sahara. One of the major catalysts that has allowed for the growth of these remote tourist locations has been the development of the internet, which has allowed everyone in the world to visit almost any place with the click of a button, make a reservation at a hotel, and see a menu from a local restaurant. This ability to research and carefully plan trips to remote locations around the world is a modern phenomenon, which we cannot begin to assess the impact of with regards to tourist spending.
Tourists planning to visit these remote places better have one thing besides their passport, and that is money. The annual output of tourism is easily in the billions of dollars and many countries and cities depend on tourism to support their local economies, and raise the standard of living for the local inhabitants. These locals have better developed their infrastructures to accommodate more tourists annually, and to keep up with the flow of tourists. These locals are often checking you in at your hotel, taking your order in the restaurant, and changing your linens on your bed. However, this trend seems to be changing as large corporations are entering the global tourist market, and buying out local owners for large sums of money, and taking over the tourist industry in these areas. This creates a major problem for the local economies that have no way of fighting back against large-scale corporate takeover. As a large corporation comes in and buys up the local hotels and restaurants the money that would have originally gone to a local provider now leaves the local economy and thus begins an ongoing problem in the tourist industry. The people in the countries and cities where people are visiting do not see the money that is pumped into their country and instead they become casualties of “Corporate Tourism.” Two major groups of travelers have fallen outside this fateful category of corporate tourism, the first being young backpackers, and the other being intrepid surf traveler. These two groups do not travel by the same guidelines which many families would follow and do not stay in expensive hotels or eat the most expensive food. However, what they do spend is a lot of time exploring all different regions of countries they visit spending a little in each place, which helps to disseminate the flow of cash to more remote areas.
These backpackers come in many forms but students and young people have been leading the charge in the realm of the backpackers. Most of these students have taken a year off of school or have just completed their education and are looking to take some time to explore the world for themselves before embarking on a specific career path. The rise of backpacker culture has been carefully monitored by the Australian Tourist Board, and they have noted that backpackers have been traveling in huge numbers over the recent years and not even September 11th could dampen the constant flow of backpackers coming in and out of Australia.[1] This supply of backpackers looking to get out and explore has a couple of implications for the countries that these travelers choose to visit. First and foremost, these young people bring large amounts of money to wherever they visit and although they may not be staying at the Marriott in Kuta, that is just fine with the locals who cater to the young travelers. Some of the most notorious of this backpacker group is the subset of surf travelers who have taken on the world with the same bravado as their fellow backpackers, but the surfers have an additional interest in the pulsation of the ocean, and the desire to ride them.
A recent Time magazine article stated, “Backpackers are not only more likely to respect local cultures than those tourists served by the mass market, they are also, in their own way, invaluable to host economies.”[2] This relationship to host economies is true of surfers as well as backpackers and in all of my surf travels in Brazil, Australia, and Mexico I have always chosen to stay at locally run spots, where I get a feel for the culture, and not a feel for the Hilton Hotel in every place I visit. Surfers are by nature thrill seekers and risk-takers and are willing to sleep on a small cot and use an outdoor restroom if it means they will save a couple of dollars. The Time Magazine article also asserts that, “although backpackers may spend less on vacation than their parents, what they do spend stays local.”[3]
This role of backpackers to support the local economies only makes sense considering that backpackers usually start off with a set amount of money, and the more they save the longer their trip will be. This is very true of the surfing community as well who normally purchase open-ended tickets, free of restrictive travel itineraries, and allow the utmost freedom to explore.[4] This characteristic of surfers makes them akin to many of the backpackers from around the world who make these youthful pilgrimages around the globe. However, the destinations of surfers are a little bit more site specific than their equally adventuresome counterparts in that surfers are traveling to oceanic destinations around the globe.
One major hotspot of the past decade for surfers has been the beautiful island of Bali in Indonesia, which offers some of the best waves in the world, coupled with pristine landscape, a colorful local culture, and tourist friendly atmosphere. This island paradise was discovered in the early seventies by surfers from Hawaii who got fed up with the crowds in Hawaii and decided to look elsewhere to satisfy their surfing needs. They came to the island of Bali and found it to be a surfing paradise. Miles of uncrowded beaches with the most perfect waves crashing on their shores created a Mecca type mystique for Bali. It soon became the hotspot on everyone’s list of places to surf around the globe and Bali quickly felt the onslaught of surf tourism. Little hotels run by locals that offered little more than a mosquito net and bed, began to pop up all over the island along with numerous restaurants, nightclubs, and taxi services. Bali’s rapid growth into a major tourist destination can be attributed to several things but most significantly its proximity to Australia, and the large influx of Australians who visit the country annually. Many of these visiting Australians are not surfers, and are simply looking to enjoy the many activities the country has to offer. But many are surfers looking for that perfect wave and scratching their adventuresome itch.
The author of Indo
Surf and Lingo, Peter Neely says this about the allure of Bali’s pristine
shores, “In
these modern times, surfers are one of the few groups in the world still able
to experience the thrill and excitement of exploring and discovering. As the
beaches of Australia, Hawaii, Europe and America become crowded and polluted,
Indonesia beckons with endless stretches of pristine, palm-fringed beaches.
Escaping the urban jungles of their home cities, foreign surfers are exploring
Indonesia hoping to discover new perfect waves.”[5] Neely’s book was one of the first guides to
Bali and expanded the scope of surf travelers to include the islands
surrounding Bali as potential destinations that offered even more isolation.
However, one day may have changed all of this for the small
country of Indonesia and its most attractive island of Bali. That day was October 12, 2002, where at
approximately eleven o’clock in the evening a white pulled up outside the club,
stopped at the curb and a woman walked to the entrance of the club as the van
pulled away. Seconds later, a powerful
explosion occurred, followed by another even more powerful explosion, which
ripped through a crowded and popular club in Kuta Beach. The Saari club was decimated by the two
blasts and huge fireballs erupted into the air, and amid the flames people
tried to escape the inferno, many of them not making it out of the club
alive. Accounts of the attack are
horrifying and gruesome, with body parts strewn all over the streets outside
the club while badly burned victims attempted to escape from the blaze. Over one hundred-ninety people perished,
with the largest number of them hailing from Australia, but also included
citizens of the United States, Indonesia, Ecuador, Singapore,
England, Brazil, Sweden, Germany, France, Korea and Holland. This attack was especially unsettling
because the target of the attack was the large amounts of backpackers and other
tourists who were known to frequent the Saari club. Indonesia has long been a hotbed of extremist activity and
numerous Islamic radicals were known to be taking refuge in Indonesia. This event may seem small in comparison to
the September 11th attacks but its effects are still being felt
throughout the Southeast Asian tourist market. A recent article in a surfing magazine had this take on the
attacks.
“While it may seem a stretch to liken
this act of terrorism to September 11, when you strip away the red, white and
blue blinders, the repercussions are just as horrifying. Not only did Australia
lose more citizens per capita in the Sari club than America did in the World
Trade Center, but strictly from a surfer's perspective; Bali's three-decade
position as a peaceful surfing paradise is now demolished. In its place rings a
reverberating sorrow among those who've visited the idyllic island, and a fear
that it could have been themselves in that club.[6]
This
comparison creates an interesting dilemma for travels who have often sought
refuge in the freedom that vacations have offered. Now you may be taking your life into your own hands by visiting
any of these volatile countries. The
question of what this will do to the global community of backpackers, surfers,
and mainstream tourists, is uncertain but the effects have already been felt in
Kuta Beach where the attacks occurred.
Hotel and restaurant patronage has dropped sharply and the once crowded
streets of Kuta are eerily devoid of tourists.
The effects of terrorism on the global community may prove to be costly
in maintaining the numbers of backpackers who choose to embark on these types
of adventures.
“These
days getting away is easier said then done. Ask the Israelis who arrived at the
Paradise Hotel in Mombasa just as bombs exploded there, killing three of them,
or the passengers on the charter flight from Mombasa to Tel Aviv who barely
escaped death by surface-to-air missile.
Following the horror of the Bali bombings in October, the attacks in
Kenya confirm that tourists are now in the terrorists’ cross hairs. Soft targets, that euphemism of the month,
seems to be softest when they’re wearing shorts or drinking a few beers.”[7]
Tourists have been chosen as the new
target for terrorists and this is an extremely disturbing thought for me
personally. As an avid traveler myself,
this seems to one of the most disturbing developments of the past year. The fact that these terrorists are targeting
tourists and resorts in the developing world hurts the local economies and are
usually the ones who can least afford it.
A decline in tourism on Bali will have a direct effect on employment,
and some project that employment on the island will drop more than twenty
percent.[8]
This fact is not only alarming for tourist based economies, but also
alarming for the adventuresome peoples around the world. The freedom to safely travel has been one of
the great advantages of our time and incredibly expands the human
experience. If this world we live in
ever enjoys mutual respect and understanding of other cultures, tourism deserves
much of the credit. The role of backpackers,
surfers and all travelers is one of establishing what we think of as a global
community and these terrorists have threatened the existence of such a
marketplace.
One
alternative to the backpacking option that many surfers have opted to take has been
privately chartered boat tours in and around Indonesia. These
boat tours offer fully loaded yachts that bounce from island to island
but rarely go ashore and instead float just a hundred yards from the
shore. These boats trips are a great
option for surfers because they have the allure of uncrowded waves, three meals
a day, and cold beers in the evening.
It is pretty hard to imagine that there could be a downside to a trip
like that but these boat trips have a similar effect to that of “corporate tourism”
which was described above. These boat
tours are not run by locals, rather, they are run by travel companies who
charter these boats for extended periods of time, and book groups of surfers
for any length of trip. In the back
pages of any Surfer Magazine you can
find advertisements for these types of trips, which include airfare,
transportation and all the waves you can surf was a major selling point. Although these trips offer a virtual
paradise for those who can afford them, the money often does not end up in the
pockets of the local community. Trips
cost anywhere from one to three thousand dollars depending on duration and the
specific boat, which is a lot of money to be spending on these trips. Those amounts of money would be great for
the local economies, if they actually got to see any of the money. The nature of these trips is an
all-inclusive package and surfers bring little spending money of their own to
purchase local goods once they have arrived.
Instead, all of the money that is spent on the trip goes through the
tourist company and very little, if any, goes to the local economies.
One
of the most popular boat trip destinations over the last couple of years has
been the Mentawai Islands off the coast of Sumatra, Indonesia. These islands offer the best waves on the
planet and have been featured in numerous surf videos and magazine articles
highlighting their perfect waves. The Mentawais are a small
archipelago of four large islands that existed in virtual isolation up until
the 20th century, and first inhabited by a race of nomadic Indochinese around
500 BC.[9]
The Mentawais. The modern-day Mentawai islanders are a group of races made up
primarily of indigenous Mentawai tribesmen and transplanted Malay villagers
culled from overcrowded Indonesian islands like Sumatra. Small tribes of living
in a stone-age existence still have manage to avoid the encroachment of
Westernized culture. The Mentawai people, however, are some of the most
impoverished on the planet and the head of a family of four makes less than $15
a month harvesting the local crop of copra. Clean water and sanitation are a
luxury not afforded too many and the health conditions are terrible.
These difficult living conditions are contrasted to those of the surfers
onboard the luxury yachts which anchor just a few hundred feet away. Surfer activities on these boats focuses
almost singularly on the water, rarely reflecting on the life occurring behind
the jungle’s thick curtain. Passing
fisherman and locals who come out to watch the surfers is about all the contact
that occurs between the locals and the surfers.
These
dichotomized existences create a problem which needs to addressed and should
include a program which would directly benefit the tribal islanders. Establishing a program of some type would be
a great way for the local islanders to benefit as opposed to the just the
country of Indonesia, which receives the taxes on the already high prices of
these boat trips. The formation of this
type of program would need a liaison to the local people who could establish a
relationship with the boat tour operators and the Indonesian government forming
a cooperative which could provide aid to the local population. This group could serve to stand up for the
rights of the islanders to receive at the very least these three things; clean
running water, a sanitation system, and medical care. The first two necessities might even assist in preventing many
diseases which could help with the medical problems found on the island. Malaria shots and other vaccinations from
diseases which are carried by the mosquitoes are desperately needed as
well. In addition, islanders need aid
in the form of foods which do not occur naturally on the islands, and have to
imported.
The
Indonesian tourist board needs to establish a program of this nature in order
to assist the local people and it could serve to increase tourism in the
area. This however is a difficult
problem one arrives at when talking of trying to help an isolated tribal
group. Although the local group does
need to sustain a certain standard of living, this standard should not
compromise the indigenous nature of the people who do not want to change their
tribal lifestyle. One cannot assume that
this group wants tourists infiltrating their entire island in exchange for
financial aid. A case like this needs
to be addressed by a some sort of globalization group which could accurately asses the impact of increased
tourism on a area like this compared to the benefits they would receive. However, I believe that the islanders are in
need of assistance, and surf trips like this should be promoted under a charter
program to assist the local people.
This boat trips would create the perfect non-intrusive relationship
between the islanders and the visiting surfers. The surfers would stay primarily focused on the waves and would
have little effect on the locals. The
locals could then continue their indigenous lifestyles with the assistance from
the Indonesian government. However, I
do feel that some interaction between the surfers and the islanders would be
beneficial for both groups because the surfers need to know where they are and
what kind of people exist on the island.
This would be another step towards establishing a type of global community
which has been founded on the shoulders of traveling backpackers for decades
already.
The
establishment of a global community is especially critical in this time period
where we are standing at the footsteps of constant international conflict. Bridging the gaps between race, ethnicity,
and culture should be one of the goals we are constantly striving towards in
the evolution of this modern world.
This arguments I have constructed in this piece have shown the ways in
which travel to foreign countries provides not only economic support, but also
support in the establishment of the global community. Tourism does not necessitate colonialism and I believe it is
possible to provide a tourist friendly environment without compromising the
local community. However, in order to
do this a program like the one mentioned above should be implemented. And as mentioned as well one thing has now
come to stand in the way of this kind of development and that is
terrorism. Terrorism has not only
struck here in the United States, as is evident with the Kuta Beach blasts, but
has directly effected the entire world.
And this is one of the most frightening aspects of terrorism, that it
has struck fear into many, and Americans especially are hesitant to visit
countries associated with terrorist activity.
Indonesia seems to have fallen onto the list of terrorist friendly
countries, and the growth of terrorist factions existing within the country has
grown over the past two years. This is
an alarming fact for both mainstream tourists, surfers, and backpackers who
have shied away from countries like Indonesia and instead have shifted towards
more stable countries.
The
links between surfers, backpackers, and tourists at large provide a critcical
link to the interaction of a global community and we cannot let their influence
be underestimated. The different
peoples of the world need to find a way to exist in this finite living
environment we all attempt to enjoy. In
a world of exponential growth we must find a way to coexist with one another or
face unimaginable consequences. I say
this not as a warning but as a motivator towards using our knowledge of the
world, it’s resources, and the people who use them and create a world founded
on unity and understanding rather than a capitalist driven one. In order for this to happen awareness and
compassion for the less fortunate is key.
Without love and respect for each other we will perish.
Australian
Tourist Board, “Regional Breakdown of
Backpackers” Australian Tourist Comission
2003,<http://www.australia.com/home_US.aust?L=en&C=US>
Elliot,
Michael, “Why Must the Backpackers Stay Home,” Time Magazine. December 16, 2002
page 8.
George,
Sam. Surfer Magazine, May 2002, taken from the website, <http://www.surfermag.com/currentissue/jungle/>
Neely,
Peter. An excerpt from Indo Surf and Lingo. Taken from Bali Echo website, <http://www.baliwww.net/becho/38/surf3.htm>
March 10, 2003
Walker, Matt. “Bali Bombings: Days Later Surfers are Still Reeling.” Taken from Surfline.com website October 15, 2002. <http://content.surfline.com/sw/content/mag/pulse/2002/2/10_15_bali.jsp>
[1] Australian Tourist Board, “Regional Breakdown of Backpackers” Australian Tourist Comission 2003,
<http://www.australia.com/home_US.aust?L=en&C=US>
[2] Elliot, Michael, “Why Must the Backpackers Stay Home,” Time Magazine. December 16, 2002 page 8.
[3] Ibid
[4] George, Sam, “It’s a Big World – Go Surf It.” Surfer Magazine. October 2002 volume 43, number 11, page 95.
[5] Neely, Peter. An excerpt from Indo Surf and Lingo. Taken from Bali Echo website, <http://www.baliwww.net/becho/38/surf3.htm> March 10, 2003
[6] Walker, Matt. “Bali Bombings: Days Later Surfers are Still Reeling.” Taken from Surfline.com website October 15, 2002. <http://content.surfline.com/sw/content/mag/pulse/2002/2/10_15_bali.jsp>
[7] Elliot, Michael, “Why Must the Backpackers Stay Home,” Time Magazine. December 16, 2002 page 8.
[8] Ibid
[9] George, Sam. Surfer Magazine, May 2002, taken from the website, <http://www.surfermag.com/currentissue/jungle/>