Tourists, bless ‘em. It would be hypocritical of me to rant too much about them, having just gotten back from a stint acting as one, but man, they’re a pain in the ass.
It’s always rankled me that New Zealand is so heavily dependent (in mindset at least) on tourism. While the thought of big fat wallets landing in Auckland just waiting to be fleeced is an appealling one to many, I find the thought sets off warning bells.
This isn’t just because of the number of tourists who conform to the stereotype of “socially fat”, obnoxious assholes, but because of the way in which you need to shape your society, and economy, to pander to them. More often than not once you have large numbers of tourists turning up in your town then services will appear to satisfy the visitors. And concomitent to service is the local being servile.
This wouldn’t be such a bad thing if service was an equal relationship, but service in tourism is frequently not. Instead, for some reason tourists all too often exhibit a belief that bringing their money to a place entitles them to some kind special or preferential treatment, an attitude that can only be described as a perversion of the customer-client agreement.
I’m inclined to thing that this is a product of the social background of the tourist themself. People who travel frequently are (in my experience) more likely to treat service workers with dignity, while those who do not, do not. Less frequent tourists seem to want to make their trip or experience ‘special’ in some way, and that makes them many times more demanding than their more wealthy colleagues.
What Rarotonga seems to be experiencing is something I witnessed in Mount Maunganui in the 1980s. Increasing numbers of people visiting your shores leads to most locals being employed to pander to tourist needs, more pressure on local resources (good luck finding shellfish or molluscs anywhere anymore…), and more people laying claim your home-town as “their special place” (even though they’ve only visited twice, for two weeks, over the course of a few years), and consequently demanding rights and space.
Then there’s the economic divide caused by pressures on accommodation and a two-tiered service industry (read: food), one for visitors, one for locals.
It looks a lot like Rarotonga is losing its soul in this particular battle. Second Chef and I got to listen to lots of visitors whinging about how services and ‘stuff’ wasn’t up to their expectation, and how the locals wouldn’t jump through hoops enough for them. And it was, quite frankly, appalling. Further, most of the money being spent by tourists seemed to be heading to the pockets of ex-pats of various descriptions.
Certainly makes me glad to be working in a city that doesn’t depend on these people. You sure as hell won’t get me living in Queenstown or Taupo any time soon.
15 September, 2008 at 7:32 pm
you’ll find that tourists fall into many categories
and the richer they are the more entitled they seem to become
i suspect by staying at a resort you got to see the worst of things. Personally i love nothing more than the concept of island time, and island food.
15 September, 2008 at 8:18 pm
?! What’s wrong with tourism??
15 September, 2008 at 9:00 pm
@sue, actually it was the “working class” tourists that were the worst. there were at least two separate lots in for weddings, and they were:
1. arrogant
2. loud
3. obnoxious to the staff
whereas the richer types were just dumb snobs, and mostly inoffensive.
15 September, 2008 at 9:32 pm
I’m guessing the petit bourgeoisie wedding groups would be feeling extra entitled to the works because many of them would had to shell out for the holiday not because they wanted a tropical holiday, but because their niece/sister/cousin/friend had asked them to come to the wedding. So like, if you’re forced to take a tropical holiday, it had better be a good one, right?
I recommend holidays in places where people don’t speak English as a first language. If you can’t understand the tourists whinging, it’s much more pleasant.
15 September, 2008 at 9:36 pm
“petit bourgeoisie”. that’s the fkcers. the logic tends to be, “i’m on holiday, therefore i can do whatever the hell i want”.
you’ll note that this isn’t actually logic.
16 September, 2008 at 10:54 am
Most obnoxious tourists hands down are the backpacker set (and I say this as a backpacker) they have all the horrible attributes as mentioned above but will not part with the money for services rendered.
18 September, 2008 at 9:37 am
I enjoy the relaxed atmosphere of Rarotonga and go there maybe once a year or so. I always stay in a small place in Avarua, owned by locals, not in a resort, and generally buy my food in the local Foodland or eat in smallish cafes. I have got to know a number of the local people over the years, I certainly don’t go there to mix with tourists.
Rarotonga is a small place and because it is English-speaking it attracts a lot of tourists who find it easy because of that. What is the place meant to do? Tourists provide real incomes for many local people.
When I first went there, in 1996, they were in a severe economic recession because of inept governance and a bloated public service. This was turned around with some good fiscal discipline and since then the Cook Islands economy has grown strongly to the extent there are severe labour shortages in Rarotonga in particular, so incongruously you see foreign workers doing some of the jobs, such as the Chinese construction teams who built the court house and the police station (both controversial projects for many reasons).
Like you Che I have noticed the large number of expats who seem to own and run many businesses such as the restaurants and the resorts and I feel nervous about this. However the Cooks do not obviously generate enough internal wealth yet for locals to own everything.
Just like us.
19 September, 2008 at 3:24 am
And here was me thinking it would be nice to visit New Zealand (we come from Bonnie Scotland), but I don’t know what you might think of my kilt, our meals of haggis, tossing the caber at any strange local, and swilling copious amounts of whisky, so perhaps I should just stay at home!
19 September, 2008 at 7:19 am
harry, i think we can agree that’s probably for the best.
there’s already a vibrant caber-tossing industry in Southland. you’d likely just get in the way.