About this episode

The episode explores the implications of all-inclusive resorts on local economies and cultures.

Who decided that the thing stopping people travelling was not money, but choice? What happens to a country when the holiday is designed so that the visitor never has to leave the compound? And of every hundred dollars you spend at an all-inclusive, how much do you think actually stays there? Gerard Blitz opened his first holiday village on a Majorcan beach in 1950 on the theory that what people wanted was not adventure but the removal of every decision — Peter Frankopan and Afua Hirsch follow that idea all the way to the gated resorts of the present. The all-inclusive is now worth close to a hundred billion dollars a year. In the Dominican Republic it accounts for more than seventy per cent of hotel rooms and helps generate over forty per cent of GDP. And of every hundred dollars a guest spends, roughly five stays in the local economy. The rest is repatriated to foreign operators, international airlines and global supply chains, along with the food flown in so that nobody has to eat anything unfamiliar. In water-stressed places, guests can use ten times what a local resident uses in a day. In Jamaica there is now a movement against the privatisation of beaches that local people…

People in this episode

Guests: Peter Frankopan, Afua Hirsch

Topics covered

• modern travel
• all-inclusive resorts
• economic impact
• local culture
• tourism
• sustainability

Keywords

• travel
• all-inclusive
• tourism economy
• local impact
• sustainability
• cultural appropriation
• holiday resorts

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Dominican Republic

Places: Majorcan, Jamaica, Guyanese Amazon, Arawak village

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