ABSTRACT
The planning literature is rife with research on the impacts that globalization is having on national, regional, and local economies and environments (Afshar and Pezzoli 2001; Dicken 2003; Klak 1998; Johnston et al. 1995). International tourism in developing countries, once considered a vice of underdevelopment, reflects the ways that globalization is moving through the world. Tourism has recently gained a new role in economic development because it affords relatively quick transfers of capital and draws on comparative advantages such as sun, surf, and interesting landscapes (Barberia 2000). Within the latter niche arises heritage tourism; the promotion of selling cultural and natural resources that offer alternatives to the steel-and-glass tropical landscapes of places like Cancun, Miami, and Acapulco (Scarpaci 1998; Jones and Bromley 1999; Jones and Varley 1999). These new heritage tourists, or ‘a new class of tourist: trendies on the trail’, as Mowforth and Munt (2003: ch. 4) call them, are scrambling for unique Third World destinations. In Latin America and the Caribbean, historic quarters of older cities have proven a powerful allure (Ward 1993; Coyula 2002; Portes et al. 1997), especially after UNESCO and national commissions bestow heritage status upon them (Rojas 1999; Scarpaci 2005).
