ABSTRACT
Tourism has become a highly promoted development strategy throughout the world because of its potential for rapid growth and for contributing foreign exchange to national economies. It also has the image of being a ‘soft’ form of development with lesser environmental and social impacts than other types of natural resource exploitation. The expansion of tourism in Thailand, however, is increasingly perceived as posing a serious threat to the cultural and environmental resources of host communities. In fact, the sustainable exploitation of cultural resources in the tourism industry is proving as problematic as the protection of natural values. This chapter contends that, while tourism is uncritically promoted at national and international levels for its economic potential as a foreign exchange earner, in the local sphere a more complex set of ‘values’ is at stake.
