The Tourism Industry: A Heavyweight Economic Force

On the tourist city, the tourist industry, and its critics.

Renowned Italian journalist Marco d'Eramo joins us to talk about his wide-ranging inquiry into the age of tourism, The World in a Selfie. We also discuss how migration is the obverse of tourism, and take a look at Marco's most recent book, Masters, on the neoliberal revolution from above.

• Why is hating tourists the main characteristic of being a tourist? Why is the tourist/traveller dichotomy a false one?

• What is the threshold for a city becoming a place that exists primarily for tourists?

• How should we understand tourism economically, and why is the tourist city a mono-industry?

• Is the "authentic" travel experience ever possible?

• Why do critiques of tourism so often slide into snobbery or outright class contempt?

• How is the city changing under the impact not just of "over-tourism" but rising rents, exclusions, and remote working?

Links:

• The World in a Selfie: An Inquiry into the Tourist Age, Marco d'Eramo, Verso

• Masters: The Invisible War of the Powerful Against Their Subjects, Marco d'Eramo, Wiley

• Barbed Wire, Marco D'Eramo, Sidecar

• The cost of Europe’s backlash against tourists, Barney Jopson, Financial Times