Tourism culture: Nexus, characteristics, context and sustainability

•The occurrence of tourism culture is explored in three small islands.•Tourism culture emerges from the interactions between hosts and guests.•Processes of exchange, change and creativity occur.•Tourism context may enhance or undermine tourism culture.•Tourism culture may be an antecedent and precedent of sustainability.

This article makes the case for tourism culture; the new cultural expressions, practises and identities, influenced by hosts, guests and industry context, which may develop in destinations, as a useful perspective with which to draw together various conceptual narratives within the tourism studies literature. Research in three small islands finds evidence of a distinctive cultural landscape which emerges from the interaction of host and guest cultures, and the exchange, change and creativity that results. Tourism industry dynamics are found to facilitate or undermine this process, as in turn they may be influenced by. This tourism culture has implications for the continuation and evolution of indigenous culture, as it does for the absorption of elements of tourist cultures. The emergent fusion may be symptomatic of a richer cultural landscape and might be considered as an indicator of more sustainable communities and forms of tourism development.

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