ABSTRACT
While the impact of terrorism on tourism may have been to remove from the experience of being a tourist some elements of pleasure more usually associated with escaping everyday existence, the connection between sex and tourism appears to be a more obvious match. Indeed, much has been made of the use of sexual imagery in tourism advertising,1 and the extent to which tourism leads directly to a concern with sex. That is to say, does the phenomenon of so-called ‘sex tourism’ qualify a particular form of tourism, or is it an aspect of what tourism is. As a consequence, much of the literature on sex tourism spends a great
deal of time on its definition. Martin Oppermann, for example, begins his analysis of the phenomenon by noting that it is ‘everywhere’.2 However, he also notes that it conjures up different images in different parts of the world, from ‘the image of men, often older and in less than perfect shape, traveling to developing countries (in Asia, Africa, Latin America, or the Caribbean), for sexual pleasures generally not available, at least not for the same price, in their home country’,3 to certain African countries where female sex tourists are more prominent.4 He notes that the literature until that point produced a very narrow definition of sex tourism – travelling to engage in sexual relations.5 He regards this as too narrow and introduces other variables into an understanding of sex tourism – purpose of travel, length of time, relationship, sexual encounter and who falls into this category of travel.6 What this produces is a far broader approach that suggests sex tourism may not
necessarily be a practice with that aim alone, as he notes many tourists who have sex while travelling are not travelling primarily for that purpose, such as the business tourist.7
