Chapters 5, 6 and 7 examined the different actors’ – tourists, villagers and mediators – perspectives on tourism, and how they relate to their cultural norms, values and positions. This chapter highlights how the differences in values, perceptions, attitudes and priorities, on a number of different levels, between the villagers and the other actors, reveal the ‘conflicts of tourism’. The villagers not only experience value clashes and conflicts with other stakeholders but also as a result of the processes of tourism development, as the demands of modernisation conflict with the demands to maintain tradition. These ‘conflicts of acculturation’ are also discussed. Before an examination of the ‘conflicts of tourism’ between actors, the differences between Bena and Wogo, established in earlier chapters, are brought together and summarised, as a background to why their conflicts differ. At the end of the chapter I summarise how these conflicts have changed both as a consequence of evolutionary processes and as reactions to particular initiatives.

Bena and Wogo Compared

The villages differ in topography and resultant agricultural production. Wogo has largely flat, fertile fields sustaining at least two harvests a year. Coffee is the most important cash crop, followed by vanilla, which has recently been introduced. By comparison, Bena has steep to very steep fields, which are highly denuded in places: most only give rise to one crop and much land is left fallow. Candlenuts, coffee, cocoa, cloves, pepper and vanilla are increasingly grown for cash. Bena’s poorer agricultural endowment has lead to a greater dependence on tourism.

Wogo supports a much denser population than Bena, and has a higher rate of population growth. The villagers in Wogo are aware that agriculture alone will not support the next generation and view tourism as an important economic development option.

The two nua are very similar in size. Bena is an ‘original village’ while Wogo has been on the present site only since 1932.