ABSTRACT
Destination hosts try to balance their tourism performances with their private lives by spatially and temporally structuring their communities into a series of front stages where they perform and back stages where they escape from the visitors (Goffman, 1959). As the destination progresses through its tourism development lifecycle, this balancing act becomes increasingly difficult. Ultimately, a destination can be destroyed by its own success as more and more tourists arrive, resulting in a community dominated by a front stage with the cultural uniqueness of the destination being lost to visitors and hosts. At this point, Plog’s (1972, p. 4) warning that “destination areas carry with them the potential seeds of their own destruction” is apposite.
