|
Abstract:
|
Tourism offers an arena through which a place identity is imagined, negotiated and contained.
This paper compares the Czech Republic and Slovakia, and show how these countries
construct and assert their identities through tourism. They both share a common history as
Czechoslovakia, however, they are perceived differently by the outside world. These former
Eastern Bloc countries are promoting themselves in several ways and they are also
marginalising their socialist past and invoking their Central European identity. The Czech and
Slovak search for destination identity takes into account tourists’ demands and perceptions.
This paper introduces the concept of the orientalist tourist gaze, and demonstrates how
orientalism may manifest in tourism. Data on how these two countries are imagined were
collected in Denmark.
Keywords: destination identity, host society-guest interaction, impact of tourism, orientalism |
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
