The construction of global tourism spaces The

The construction of global tourism spaces

The spaces of flows Global travel spaces: Airports Airline cabins Transit lounges Hotels Non-places? 1

Daniel Boorstin: The lost art of travel “nothing to see but the weather. . . ” “I had flown not through space but time” Placeless mobility. “Passage through space unnoticeable. . . robbed of landscape” “Each Hilton hotel is indistinguishable. . . ‘a little America’. . . you have the comforting feeling of not being there” “don’t know where you are unless you look out window

American tourism frontier modernity • Modernization theory • Spatialization of modernity • Mobility = agent of modernity • American tourist=> modernization • Travel spaces connecting “places” 3

globalizing modernity local tradition 4

US: Building the postwar global tourism economy • Eliminating boundaries • The Marshall Plan and tourism to Europe • International airlines and tourist fares • The jet plane revolution 5

Time-space compression “crossing global distances and connecting places” 6

global travel spaces: the spectacle of mobility 7

Eero Saarinen’s TWA terminal at JFK airport, New York (1961) 8

“a place of movement and transition” 9

“as if inside a flying machine” 10

Dulles Airport, Washington DC 11

mobile lounges -The airport as a machine of movement -Designed to efficiently move travelers from entrance to planes 12

LAX “Themed Building” 13

Making (American) tourism global • Cold War: modernization efforts in the ‘Third World’ • Tourism: agent of econ. development • US hotel and airline companies expand globally 14

At the “frontier of modernity” • Modern international hotel in Istanbul: “a little American” • A product of the Cold War (1955) 15

Modernist architectural design: • Aesthetized technological efficiency • Stands out from landscape at the territorial frontier of modernity, but • A dematerialized (not an enclave) – plate glass, transparent form. . . – Open form, no private spaces – a “machine for viewing” at the frontier of modernity – a model of modernity, a map of the future Drawn from Annabel Jane Wharton’s Building the Cold war: Hilton International Hotels and Modern Architec 16

At the frontier: American/global modernity frames the traditional/ local 17

Global transformations: 1960 s-1970 s • Economic expansion of Europe and Japan • The end of the “dollar standard” Vietnam War/Third Worldism/1968 • Failures of modernization theory • The crisis of Fordism/flex. prod. , oil shocks • => retrenchment and the relative decline of US hegemony 18

End of the global tourism frontier • • Most of the globe accessible to mass tourism 1968: US seeks to limit travel abroad “The ugly American” Ecological/cultural impact of mass tourism End of tourism promotion as development Airline hijackings, Airline deregulation Intl. Tourism=> staged, commoditified, enclave 19

Globalization: 1980 s-1990 s • A new vehicle for expansion of US power: neoliberalism, market reform, privatization. . • The end of the cold war • Free markets, not modernization • Developing world integrated into global markets • Promoting the deterritorialization of capitalism 20

The transformation of tourism • More reflexive tourists • New frontiers=> new market segments: ecotourism, adventure tourism, . . . • “Places” as products: cities, theme parks • Tourism as consumerism • Americanization no longer = modernization and shifting frontier 21

Collapsing global travel spaces • “the end of territorial distance” • No territorial frontier of tourism • Places as products • Consumerism rather than mobility defines tourism • Ex. consuming “places” 22

“Americanization” deterritorialized => A Mc. Donald’s in Saudi Arabia. . . while international tourism becomes a theme for tourism in the US Paris Hotel, Las Vegas Luxor Hotel, Las Vegas 23

Travel spaces become places • Because of increased mobility, the experience of traveling is no longer about crossing territory • Global tourism spaces no longer defined by territorial mobility • Travel “democratized” and routine • => Hotels and airports remake themselves as destinations 24

Hotels as destinations • “post-modern” architecture: The Bonaventure Hotel => • New styles of luxury hotels 25

The new culture of airports Shopping at Schiphol airport, Amsterdam • “epicenters of postnationalism” • Shopping malls-withplanes • Themed airports • Airport cities • Growth poles Working at an airport café Denver Airport: a “locational” theme 26

The encounter lounge Retro-themeing LAX 27

Post-9/11 travel spaces New American discourse: • Airplanes as weapons • American tourists as targets • Foreign tourists as terrorists • 30% drop tourism=>US • Global mobility = threat • Towards spaces of security 28

American spaces abroad “The new $83 million U. S. consulate outside Istanbul satisfies important security concerns but also seems a remote crusader castle. ” --US report on Public Diplomacy “. . . looks like a maximum security prison” --Tom Friedman 29

Possibilities for a cosmopolitan tourism? • “the ambiguous effects of speed” --William E. Connolly • Places matter, but not as measures of modernity, closed political identities, or objects of consumption • Pluralization within territories more critical than mobility or localization • Global travel as means towards hybridization between “places” • Mobility only one means to connect pluralized locations, but not a means to impose transformation/modernization 30