Tourism, capital, and the commodification of place

Abstract

The tourism industries remain inadequately and inconsistently theorised as a form of capitalist development despite their immense ability to transform spaces and economies. The fundamental proposition that tourism ‘commodifies’ place is widely declared yet rarely critically analysed. There exists confusion about the role of nature and culture, and the experiential nature of consumption, in the commodification of place. To clarify these processes, we extend previous geographic work on the commodification of nature to develop a typology of commodified tourist spaces firmly grounded in political economy. We deploy this analysis to illuminate the distinctive spatial politics of anti-tourism resistance.