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The "Good Tourist"
In “The American Roadside”, Agee discusses the tourist cabin camp. I was compelled to write about this piece because of the comparison he makes of the cabin camps and hotels. He describes the hotels to have much fanfare attached to the experience, while cabin camps are simply homes for the night. He argues the check in process is much easier at a cabin camp, and most importantly motion isn’t as greatly affected. As people were itching for ‘motion’ the American roadside sprung up in response. The ‘real’ American tourism wasn’t about fancy hotels, but more tied to Americans on the road. He describes, “They have money to spend but not on the marble foyers of their forefathers. Their money is dedicated to motion..” (Agee 47).
Having a background in the Hospitality industry, I found this idea intriguing. Especially in the current hospitality industry, some hotels are so amazing that people joke they don’t even leave the hotel. Hotel developers are constantly trying to find ways to make more money, and the best way to make money is to have tourists stay on their property. The longer they’re at the actual property, the more money they will spend. So, hotels will create million dollar partnerships to lure people into a hotel and trap them inside. The types of tourists that do get suckered into hanging out at grandiose hotels instead of experiencing their surroundings often get put at the bottom of the “good tourist” food chain.
Today, staying at beautiful hotels, going on guided tours, and eating hotel food has a stigma behind it. To be a “good tourist” means to sleep for cheap, stow away laptops and cell phones, eat what the locals eat, explore spontaneously, and experience “culture”. So, I guess in some way the tourists in the tourist cabin camps back in the day led the way to this accepted more “meaningful” type of tourism. In this hierarchy of tourism, hostels are like our modern day cabin camps where the “real” tourists stay, but only long enough to sleep as to not miss out on the surroundings.
Vegas?
I think your notion of the "good tourist" really only rings true for people in our generation. For most kids our age, traveling around the world is only an option if you stay in a $14 a night room with 18 other people, no hot water, and no place to lock up your stuff (yes, I've done that). I probably would never have been able to make it to that destination and do everything I wanted to do there if I'd spent big money on my hotel. However, let's use Las Vegas as example. Vegas hotels represent the key in what you're calling "bad tourism." Those mini-cities literally include anything and everything a person could ever need without leaving the hotel in order to, just as you point out, make as much money as possible. But these are two very different experiences, two very different vacations, and probably aimed at two very different types of people. I'm not sure it's particularly fair to make a value judgement placing one above the other, because quite honestly, I don't want to have to stay in hostels for the rest of my life.