Crisis times are moments where new business opportunities appear, some executives say. Of course, crisis also empowers the search for that “idea” that will save us economically while others sink.

The decadence of traditional economic activities, linked to agriculture and industry, has forced many people to look at the services sector to survive or to make business. And tourism appears as one of those interesting areas, and apparently it won’t stop growing during the next years at very promising rates. It doesn’t matter if data support this perception; the truth is that in the mind of many people, the reconvertion towards tourism seems a reasonable economic proposal in a context of growing social empoverishment.

Thus, industrial areas recycle their buildings into shopping centers and malls; country estates are dedicate to rural tourism; and the most diverse proposals arise, destined to take advantage of the existent infrastructure -architectonic, historic, even atomic tourism, as we said in a previous entry.

The problem is the idea that any cultural or social capital can be reconverted into tourism withour major problems. This attempt to touristify everything that surrounds us, many times is nothing but a desperate way to find an opportunity window in a moment of crisis. The most serious point is how this common sense of “everything can be touristic as long as we plan it” turns into economic demands towards the government, who presumibly has to support these initiatives, and invest in infrastructure and tax reductions to favor the tourism sector. Of course, afterwards, the profits will end up in private hands, as usual. Anyways, it is clear that this “economic support” is given in countries more developed than latin american countries.

Some examples of how the state assumes certain expenditure to help the tourism sector can be found here, here and in a PDF document by the Tourism World Organisation, which recommend to subsidy commercial practices related to ecotourism.

For instance, the touristic overexploitation of Machu Picchu can be damaging for Peru in the next years, if the ruins end up by falling apart. Despite many have benefited from this touristic attraction direct or indirectly, it’s obvious that the state will have to spend millions to fix the problem. Which is nothing trivial for a country like Peru, that has urgent social needs as any other country in the region.