ABSTRACT
Tourism constitutes a way of realising economic gains from gentrification processes, for example when tourists purchase hospitality services, thus enabling owners of real estate to generate increased revenue via higher rents. One reading of tourist gentrification thus sees tourism as a way of generating surplus value, whereby the city and its attractions become commodities. But what is the role of labour in these processes? Arguably, the work expended to produce tourist commodities is rarely organised primarily for this purpose. Outside of direct tourist services, such as hospitality and tour guiding, for example, the attraction of a city or neighbourhood depends to a large extent on the work of a number of actors and involves many activities that are not pursued to produce commodities for tourists. Moreover, tourists themselves ‘work’ to make attractions. In seeking out neighbourhoods otherwise neglected or ignored, in searching for attractions ‘off the beaten path’, which might include neighbourhoods known for danger or poverty, tourists play an active role in reconfiguring the values or worth associated with a neighbourhood. In this chapter I discuss the relationship between tourist valorisations and the capitalist valorisation of neighbourhoods that become tourist attractions. The point of the chapter is to establish a) the mutual dependencies and interplays between the two forms of valorisation and b) ways in which tourist value practices can be considered autonomous from capitalist valorisation.
