What the tourism industry can learn from travel and historical writing

Abstract

The success of commercial activities often depends on the capacity to understand and accommodate unknown others coming from different social and cultural backgrounds. This is particularly true in the tourism industry. However, though this may appear a simple exercise, as Casey Blanton and Brigitt Flohr demonstrate in Travel Writing: The Self and the World (1997) and “Representations of the Self and the Other in Eighteenth-Century Travel Literature” (1999) this is not always easy, requiring preparation on the part of all involved as one is rarely neutral when encountering hitherto unknown others. Nonetheless, as Martin Page demonstrates in The First Global Village (2002), natural bias can be overcome and this is beneficial to all parties. In this essay, we will look closely at Page’s construction and representation of the Portuguese other found through the author’s contact with the Portuguese and his research into their history. We will also question if the controversy associated with The First Global Village is not due to the fact that the book breaks the rules of literary genre thus disconcerting readers; implying that innate bias is associated with all hitherto unknown others, whether these be individuals or literary object.