ABSTRACT
In recent years the image of the Third World in western minds has emerged in part from that of cataclysmic crisis – of famine and starvation, deprivation and war – to represent the opportunity for an exciting ‘new style’ holiday. Offering the attraction of environmental beauty and ecological and cultural diversity, travel to many Third World countries has been promoted, especially among the middle classes, as an opportunity for adventurous, ‘off-the-beaten-track’ holidays and as a means of preserving fragile, exotic and threatened landscapes and providing a culturally enhancing encounter. At the same time, some Third World governments have seized upon this new-found interest and have promoted tourism as an opportunity to earn much-needed foreign exchange – another attempt to break from the confines of ‘under-development’.
