On world trends in tourism and recreation

Abstract

tween wealthy, urban tourists, and their local hosts. These are often reflected in displays of arrogance and insensitivity on the part of hotel guests toward staff. Among locals, there is a popular perception of hotels as centers of wasteful extravagance or immoral activities, as places where people spend time and money frivolously (rather than upon work, family, and kin) or where married men take girlfriends or engage the services of prostitutes (Adu-Febiri 1988). Unless such attitudes and behaviors change, domestic tourism is unlikely to erode social barriers. Two, given the asymmetrical relationship between hosts and guests in Ghana, the acculturation process generated by domestic tourism may be quite one-sided, with the metropolitan culture coming to dominate tourist centers. This is acknowledged by Jafari in the case of metropolitan language spread and there seems no reason to suppose that other elements of metropolitan culture would not also gain strength in areas regularly visited by wealthy local tourists. Cultural homogenization, rather than familiarization and adaptation, could be the end result. 0 0