ABSTRACT
Sex tourism is one of the most emotive and sensationalised issues in the study of tourism. Although it is in prevalent in Western capitalist nations, sex tourism has generally come to be associated with 'Western' (tncluding Japanese), usually male, visits to the Third World. Otherwise known as tourism prostitution, sex tourism can be defined as tourism for which the main purpose or motivation is to consummate commercial sexual relations (Graburn, 1983; Hall, 1991a). Sex tourism has become substantial fare for Western media over the past decade, a factor which has fed into often sensationalist reports of tourism prostitution in Thailand or the Philippines. However, much of the recent attention given by commercial media to sex tourism has not arisen because of any new-found concern for the disempowering nature of tourism prostitution, rather it has emerged because of the spread of AIDS. There fore, current concern with sex tourism does not reflect a discovery of relationship between gender issues and tourism development, but is instead often regarded as a health concern (Ford and Koetsawang, 1991).
