Towards a New Political Economy of Global Tourism Revisited - Tourism and Development: Concepts and Issues - page 325

in and through tourism signals the fulfilment of a utopian neoliberal vision
of a borderless, albeit striated, global tourism economy unencumbered by
the intrusion of the state and cleansed of all uncertainties which enrich the
experience of travel.
The structural implications of a global market discipline are also poi-
gnantly illustrated by the degree to which (Western) standards of service
quality have increasingly permeated a variety of areas of tourism service
provision, from luxury hotels to small-scale ecotourism lodges. Indeed, the
power of transnational hotel corporations is derived from their capacity
to sell or rent out their firm-specific reputation for quality (Clancy, 1998:
132-133), which enforces a particular business model on local operators.
Where local infrastructure or accommodation standards are said to be below
international criteria, local hoteliers struggle to compete with better equipped
expatriate investors who are familiar with the desired standards of interna-
tional service, as is the case in Zanzibar where economic liberalisation since
the mid-1980s has lead to the proliferation of luxury 'ecotourism' construc-
tions built by foreign capital (Honey, 1999; see Chapter 9). Elsewhere, as part
of the broader structural changes in the global economy, Duffy (2006) points
to the integration of ecotourism into neoliberalising policies in LDCs which
are deemed to be particularly abundant in biodiversity. This has been accom-
panied by the increased intervention of consortia made up of international
financial institutions, donor agencies and foreign private capital, thus contra-
dicting the notion that ecotourism offers a more principled, sustainable and
usually locally-run alternative to a tourism industry subordinated to the
interests of TTCs.
Nowhere, perhaps, have the intersection and tensions between contrast-
ing national economies and the discipline of global markets become more
apparent than in the EU and, in particular, Eurozone countries since the
onset of the 2008 financial crisis. The major thrust of EU policy, evidenced
in its various treaties and policies, such as the White Paper on Growth,
Competitiveness and Employment (Commission of the European Communities,
1999), has been 'to promote a more business-friendly legislative and regula-
tory climate' as a means of promoting economic growth and development
through tourism (EESC, 2000: 3). As the EU has continued to expand, inte-
grating a raft of new East European and Mediterranean states in 2004, 17 it
has continued to pursue a path of market fundamentalism centred on a neo-
liberal recipe of competitiveness, low inflation, low taxation, deregulation
and flexible labour markets which now threatens to unravel the European
project itself as the contradictions of monetary union and the unresolved
dislocations between the structures of distinctive national capitalisms
become increasingly apparent.
In parts of the Mediterranean, which accounts for approximately 30% of
international tourist arrivals and 26% of receipts (Pierret, 2012), a combina-
tion of widening and deepening economic integration, product innovation