The Ideal Tourist: Power, Identity, and Environmental Privilege in Tourism Marketing

Abstract

Many states in the U.S. are competing to attract wealthy travelers through magazines, commercials, and elaborate branding campaigns. To keep pace, governments increasingly employ corporate advertising methods that target ideal consumers. Using Colorado as a case study, “Ideal Tourist: Power, Identity, and Environmental Privilege in Tourism Marketing,” uncovers the content and circulation of tourism media and the public-private partnerships that drive taxpayer-supported tourism promotion and research. Although tourism offices view their work as apolitical, this project reveals that tourism media reinforce other systems of inclusion and exclusion and thus exercise political power in assigning worthiness to identity groups in relation to who can travel where and under what circumstances.