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Rating: 
Summary: A valuable tool for understanding the impact of tourism.
Review: El Planeta Platica (http://www.planeta.com) Deborah McLaren's Rethinking Tourism and Ecotravel takes on the most pressing issue in the tourism industry today - how too often "ecotravel" destroys both natural resources and local cultures. But there are alternatives - if we care to pause and reflect - and that is what the author does in this book. Rethinking Tourism could be a big hit in the airport bookstores and will open the eyes of many travelers. This book is written in a lively manner that will engage, entertain and infuriate its readers. McLaren contributes to our understanding of travel and its promise of improving the lives of local people and the environment. Beginning with a personal journey to Jamaica, McLaren recounts her frustration seeking a meaningful encounter with Jamaican culture in Montego Bay. "I tried to meet some local people without being accosted by entrepreneurs," she writes. "But I was taken to other all-inclusive resorts around the island... I noticed the creation of a fantasy tourism culture that by no means represented the real culture of Jamaica." The book will not please everyone - especially the desciples of tourism and public relations. McLaren points out that tourism is often in direct conflict and competion with local people and the development of areas anround wilderness areas threatens the wildlife. She lists "Examples of eco-oh-ohs" traces failures in Costa Rica, the Galapagos islands, Malaysia and the Himalayas. Yet it would be hard to characterize this book as a negative critique. This is a positive account of how to restructure (or at least rethink) tourism so that it does in fact benefit local people and their environments.
Rating:
Summary: Big hit - will engage, entertain and infuriate its readers.
Review: El Planeta Platica (http://www.planeta.com)
Deborah McLaren's Rethinking Tourism and Ecotravel takes on the most pressing issue in the tourism industry today - how too often "ecotravel" destroys both natural resources and local cultures. But there are alternatives - if we care to pause and reflect - and that is what the author does in this book. Rethinking Tourism could be a big hit in the airport bookstores and will open the eyes of many travelers. This book is written in a lively manner that will engage, entertain and infuriate its readers. McLaren contributes to our understanding of travel and its promise of improving the lives of local people and the environment. Beginning with a personal journey to Jamaica, McLaren recounts her frustration seeking a meaningful encounter with Jamaican culture in Montego Bay. "I tried to meet some local people without being accosted by entrepreneurs," she writes. "But I was taken to other all-inclusive resorts around the island... I noticed the creation of a fantasy tourism culture that by no means represented the real culture of Jamaica." The book will not please everyone - especially the desciples of tourism and public relations. McLaren points out that tourism is often in direct conflict and competion with local people and the development of areas anround wilderness areas threatens the wildlife. She lists "Examples of eco-oh-ohs" traces failures in Costa Rica, the Galapagos islands, Malaysia and the Himalayas. Yet it would be hard to characterize this book as a negative critique. This is a positive account of how to restructure (or at least rethink) tourism so that it does in fact benefit local people and their environments.
Rating:
Summary: Big hit - will engage, entertain and infuriate its readers.
Review: El Planeta Platica (http://www.planeta.com)
Deborah McLaren's Rethinking Tourism and Ecotravel takes on the most pressing issue in the tourism industry today - how too often "ecotravel" destroys both natural resources and local cultures. But there are alternatives - if we care to pause and reflect - and that is what the author does in this book. Rethinking Tourism could be a big hit in the airport bookstores and will open the eyes of many travelers. This book is written in a lively manner that will engage, entertain and infuriate its readers. McLaren contributes to our understanding of travel and its promise of improving the lives of local people and the environment. Beginning with a personal journey to Jamaica, McLaren recounts her frustration seeking a meaningful encounter with Jamaican culture in Montego Bay. "I tried to meet some local people without being accosted by entrepreneurs," she writes. "But I was taken to other all-inclusive resorts around the island... I noticed the creation of a fantasy tourism culture that by no means represented the real culture of Jamaica." The book will not please everyone - especially the desciples of tourism and public relations. McLaren points out that tourism is often in direct conflict and competion with local people and the development of areas anround wilderness areas threatens the wildlife. She lists "Examples of eco-oh-ohs" traces failures in Costa Rica, the Galapagos islands, Malaysia and the Himalayas. Yet it would be hard to characterize this book as a negative critique. This is a positive account of how to restructure (or at least rethink) tourism so that it does in fact benefit local people and their environments.
Rating: 
Summary: LONG ON ACCUSATION, SHORT ON SOLUTIONS
Review: McLaren paints a gloomy picture of the collective state of mind of the Tourist and the tourism industry. The sub-title of her book, "The Paving of Paradise and What You Can Do to Stop It" is misleading. The first 100 pages of this 132 page book contain a blanket condemnation of tourism, the tourist industry and the tourist as exploiters and dispoilers. McLaren spends little time looking at solutions to the myriad of international problems travel and tourism create, preferring instead to catalog their excesses. Like electricity and gasoline, tourism is not a fact of the world which can be "cured". It must be wisely developed and carefully managed in the context of local desires and the local economy. It is not enough to preserve the integrity of a local population of indiginous persons when they are staving and sick and watching the rest of the healthy prosperous world via television or speaking about it on their cell phones. RETHINKING TOURISM AND ECOTRAVEL offers little in the way of hope or solution. It is a value in that it presents a picture of an inadequate response to the abuses of the tourism industry and supporting governmental bodies, but it is useless as a guide to actually "rethinking" or restructuring the industry or the mindset of the traveler.
Rating:
Summary: LONG ON ACCUSATION, SHORT ON SOLUTIONS
Review: McLaren paints a gloomy picture of the collective state of mind of the Tourist and the tourism industry. The sub-title of her book, "The Paving of Paradise and What You Can Do to Stop It" is misleading. The first 100 pages of this 132 page book contain a blanket condemnation of tourism, the tourist industry and the tourist as exploiters and dispoilers. McLaren spends little time looking at solutions to the myriad of international problems travel and tourism create, preferring instead to catalog their excesses. Like electricity and gasoline, tourism is not a fact of the world which can be "cured". It must be wisely developed and carefully managed in the context of local desires and the local economy. It is not enough to preserve the integrity of a local population of indiginous persons when they are staving and sick and watching the rest of the healthy prosperous world via television or speaking about it on their cell phones. RETHINKING TOURISM AND ECOTRAVEL offers little in the way of hope or solution. It is a value in that it presents a picture of an inadequate response to the abuses of the tourism industry and supporting governmental bodies, but it is useless as a guide to actually "rethinking" or restructuring the industry or the mindset of the traveler.
Rating:
Summary: A valuable tool for understanding the impact of tourism.
Review: The Resource Center of The Americas has recently published a curriculum on tourism in Mexico, using Rethinking Tourism and Ecotravel as its major resource book. Tourism is one of the world's largest industries and Deborah McLaren has done indepth research into its impact on the host community and the environment. Her book helps readers/travelers to analyze the relationship between poverty, environmental exploitation and tourism. It is not all bad news, however. The book shows that there are ways to travel that are responsible. The excellent bibliography gives information on "rethinking tourism" organizations, tour operators and programs, including many web sites. The curriculum that the Resource Center of The Americas developed using Rethinking Tourism and Ecotravel is titled Buen Viaje: Mutually Beneficial Tourism (ISBN 1-893440-00-1). It is for grades 8-12 through adult. It includes descriptions of four tourist sites in Mexico, with narrative accounts from Mexicans who live or work in those areas.
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