Currently Reading

 

The Last Resort is a look at the history, present, and future of the beach vacation industry. The author gives insights to a wide range of aspects of tourism -- financial, social, cultural, political, and environmental impacts. All the impacts are considerable.

I was most taken with the story of Fiji. Pre-resorts and it's discovery by the tourist industry there were clans, some fishing based and some farming based. Totems for the clans included the flora and fauna of the shore and forest. Turtles nested on the beach. The clans were interdependent and cooperative, a self sustaining society living under the Fijian concept of solesolevaki, translated as "the direct opposite of individualism." Not quite paradise because the area was prone to seasonal cyclones, but the community preserved and stored food and supplies sufficient to get all the people through the storms,

Then the developers came. The clans living near the beaches were promised a regular income for allowing hotels to be built near the ocean and those who farmed the land found work in construction and then in the hotels and restaurants. The people eventually were more and more independent --looking out for self and immediate family. Cooperation and community were no longer valued as before. The loss of flora and fauna was sad. Even the sand was lost because the seawalls changed the sea's natural beach renewal processes. The turtles lost their nesting areas. Sand washing out covered and killed the coral reefs.

Why didn't I think of writing a book about vacation beach resorts?  The research could have been fun. But now, having read this book,  I no longer want to go on a beach vacation. In fact, I have been in Venice since November and have only been to the dog beach once.