When Tourism Causes Harm: Understanding Violence, Inequality, and Sustainable Travel

What is it about?

Tourism is often seen as a positive activity that brings enjoyment, economic opportunities, and cultural exchange. This article argues that tourism can also create or reinforce different forms of harm that are not always easy to see. Rather than focusing only on crimes against tourists or visits to places associated with tragedy, the paper examines how tourism itself can contribute to inequality, displacement, cultural exploitation, environmental damage, and the marginalization of local communities. Drawing on examples from around the world, including Honduras, Guatemala, Hawai'i, and Paris, the article reviews research showing how tourism development may benefit some groups while disadvantaging others. It highlights how tourism images and marketing can hide unequal power relations and make certain social and environmental costs invisible. At the same time, the paper recognizes that local communities are not passive victims and often create their own responses and alternatives. The article calls for tourism researchers and practitioners to engage more critically with questions of justice, sustainability, and responsibility, and to communicate their findings beyond academia.

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Photo by Joice Cardoso on Unsplash

Photo by Joice Cardoso on Unsplash

Why is it important?

This article is important because it challenges the common assumption that tourism is inherently beneficial or harmless. Instead, it shows that tourism can be connected to deeper social, political, cultural, and economic inequalities that often remain hidden behind appealing destination images and sustainability rhetoric. The paper is particularly timely because global tourism continues to expand while concerns about overtourism, displacement, environmental pressures, Indigenous rights, and social justice are becoming increasingly urgent. By bringing together critical perspectives on tourism and violence, the article encourages scholars, policymakers, tourism professionals, and travelers to think more carefully about who benefits from tourism, who bears its costs, and how more equitable and sustainable forms of tourism might be developed. What makes the article distinctive is its anthropological perspective. Rather than treating violence as something external to tourism, it asks whether certain tourism practices and structures can themselves generate forms of violence, including symbolic, cultural, and structural violence that are often overlooked.

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