The Development of Tourism

This book has provided a longitudinal study of emergent cultural tourism. In order to understand the interaction between culture and tourism the study has examined tourism development internally. It has, following King’s suggestion, examined their ‘cultural values and ideologies and the ways these are constructed, used, debated, sustained and transformed’ (1999: 77). By providing a detailed study at the micro-level it has revealed weaknesses in some of the broad macro-level tourism theories. Before drawing together the concluding thoughts about tourism, cultural change and development I will review how tourism itself has changed in Ngadha.

Tourists started to visit Ngadha villages in the 1980s. Only the most intrepid of travellers attempted to make the journey, they had to have time and be prepared to adapt significantly. There were no services aimed at tourists and no telephones in town. By 1989 arrivals per month could still be counted on one hand. A few local high school students would take tourists to the villages as a way to hone their English language skills. Villagers, while slightly fearful of the new visitors, would welcome them as guests of the ‘guides’ and extend hospitality to them. The children would initially run away but the braver ones, while always maintaining a safe distance, would gradually creep closer.

Statistics are very unreliable but by the mid-1990s approximately 7000 foreign tourists visited Bena a year while less than 2000 visited Wogo, despite easier access to the latter. The majority were Europeans with increasing numbers of Australasians. The number of guesthouses in Bajawa increased and restaurants opened to cater for the tourists serving dishes such as fried potatoes, guacamole, and egg on toast. It was possible to make international telephone calls, although with difficulty via an operator. As roads improved the intrepid travellers were joined by longterm shoestring tourists and then by Bali-Lombok strays and incipient mass tourists.