The political uses of tourism: a Philippine case study.

Abstract

The New launched by President Marcos with his declaration of martial law in September 1972, pledged a reformed and cleansed social order for the Philippines. Now seven years later, some of these goals have been or are being implemented. Others have become sidetracked or diluted, as some feel has been the case with his avowed cornerstone of the New Society, land reform.2 But one priority in the Marcos New Society not even mentioned as such in 1972 is a particularly impressive component of the new order: tourism. Perhaps because tourism development had been so lackluster before martial law, lagging substantially behind both projections and other southeast Asian tourist destinations,3 it has taken some time to recognize that its usefulness to Philip-