Tag Archives: tourism

It’s crowded in Wellfleet. But is it too crowded?

This town of Wellfleet always feels crowded in summer to locals. After all, most of the year most of our houses are unoccupied. The population, we’re told, swells by a factor of seven or more in summer. But the word on the street is that it is more crowded than usual this summer. Unprecedentedly crowded. […]

Local life marinating in tourism contradictions

A dramatic feature of life in a tourist destination is the shifting of gears on Memorial Day. Secondhome owners and other visitors sweep into town for a hit of their favorite vacation spot, light us up for a few days, and then retreat until the real season (by which time it is hoped we will […]

Tourist development: Cape Cod and Mexico

Notes on tourist development from down where they really know how to do it. In the late 1980s, a friend wrote me a letter from Mexico. “Hey, you would love this place.” He and his wife were staying in rustic palapas (rudimentary straw-roofed open air structures) on the Mexican Caribbean beach in a place called […]

Contradictions of “tourist destination”

I recently found out something about this small Mexican city, where we’ve spent a chunk of winter the past five years, that changed my whole way of looking at the place. San Miguel de Allende is famous for the colors of its buildings—a rich palette of blood red, oranges, earthy ochres. The way the town […]

Nukes and tourism

Have nuclear power plants have begun to have an effect on tourism? I’m not just talking about Chernobyl, Three Mile Island, or Fukushima; I’m not aware that any of them were big tourist destinations even before their disasters. My wife and I have spent time in France for many years. I’ve always loved the French […]