The Tourism Industry in the Carribean

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Recommended: Tourism as the backbone for Caribbean economies

In her essay, “Last Resorts: The Cost of Tourism in the Caribbean”, journalist Polly Pattullo presents an inside view of the resort industry in the Caribbean Islands, and how it truly operates. Tourism is the main industry of the Caribbean, formerly referred to as the West Indies, and it is the major part of the economy there. Pattullo’s essay mirrors the ideas of Trevor M.A. Farrell’s perspective “Decolonization in the English-Speaking Caribbean” in which he writes about the implicit meaning of the colonial condition. Pattollo’s essay illustrates that colonialism is present in the Caribbean tourism industry by comparing the meaning of it presented in Farrell’s perspective. In this essay I will explain how these two essays explain how decolonization hardly exists in the Caribbean.

Pattullo report gives a first-hand account as to who controls each segment of the tourism industry; the tour operations, the large hotel chains, and the airline companies. The Caribbean’s economy depends on an industry that is mostly foreign-owned and controlled and the people who live there do not have an opportunity of owning or investing in it. In Pattullo’s report, it reveals that the large travel industry corporations are the ones who have most of the control. But those corporations are not located there. Her report exposes that the true benefiters of tourism in the Caribbean are foreign-owned investors and corporations.

According to Trevor M. A. Farrell, author of perspective, “Decolonization in the English-Speaking Caribbean”, colonialism is when organization of resources of a country being exploited is done for the financial benefit of the oppressor. All the power lies in the hands of the colonizing country (589). The tourism indust...

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Unfortunately for the tourism industry of the Caribbean, most of it is controlled by companies located in other countries. With most of the profits going to foreign-owned investments, it leaves the country without control over its very own economy. It is unfair to the Caribbean economy because it leaves the country in the same state it was in during its formal colonization. Even though colonization in the Caribbean is formally over, I believe, in essence it still exists there.

Works Cited

Kiniry, Malcolm, and M. Rose, eds. Critical Strategies for Academic Thinking

and Writing, 3rd Ed. Boston, MA: St. Martin’s, 1998. Print.

Farrell, Trevor M. A., “Decolonization in the English-Speaking Caribbean”. Kiniry and Rose 589-590. Print.

Pattullo, Polly, Last Resorts: “The Cost of Tourism in the Caribbean”. Kiniry and Rose 590-598. Print.

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