(Note: the first two parts of this entry can be found here and here)

Natives tend to develop protection forms against the invasion of tourists. As Quintin states in his note (you can read it here, spanish only), on of the strategies of stigmatization. That is, to consider that someone, for the only fact of being a tourist, cannot be a part of our group. While, usually, proper forms are kept under the presence of travellers, many times condemnatory phrases appear once they’re all gone. The way they dress, they speak, try to be nice, etc, are mercilessly scrutinized. At some destinations, natives literally hate tourists and they barely tolerate them. That they make money from them doesn’t mean they won’t impose limits. Excursus: in some case, they try to discourage the arrival of a certain kind of tourist -for instance, backpackers- to encourage the appearing of others with higher spending power.

Why this interest in establishing distances? wether the traveller likes or not, limits with the native are usually toughest than expected. As if the whole time the interest was to remark who are “us” and who are “them”. Certain areas of the cities can be acommodated for the presence of tourists. But we only have to walk a little further to get easily lost. We’ve entered the land of the native, where most of the knowledge to move around their territory -bus, trains, way of buying tickets, etc- are kept in a trunk of tacit know-hows. And most of the times, these urban spaces are not even shown in guides.

Facing this, it’s not surprising that tourists usually stay limited to certain precise enclaves, in the big cities, where there are many services available for them, and their presence don’t draw attention. Venturing to go further can be complicated and, in the case of many cities, dangerous. Such danger can be real or, in many cases, stimulated by agents of the tourism field, interested in tourists not to spend money outside from the area.

And the last issue, and with this we return to the first part of this post: the perception of the tourist as a business opportunity. For instance, of selling him something or overcharge him, taking advantage of his disknowledge. Things like that happen everywhere, although some of them have it worse -and if you’re in doubt, take a look at this interesting compendium of advice on how to travel around India (spanish only). This perception of the other as “business” is not something only the native perceives; it’s something that tourists and local inhabitants share, and many times increases distrust among them. An interesting case is that of bargaining; whil at many places of the world it’s rather a part of social relations derived from commerce -a traditional form of interacting with the other- many western travellers tend to see it as a permanent attempt to swindle. And instead of playing the game of interaction, they frown and argue the way they’d to it with a swindler.

As you can see, to analyze and describe the forms of interaction between local inhabitants and tourists is definitely complex and varied. Which doesn’t mean it’s not possible to isolate certain types of most usual behavior and practices, particularly when the tourism market is increasingly more globalized.