Tourism versus Identity Globalization and Tradition

This article discusses the question of identity through the globalized emergence of tourism. Tourism is a result of an unavoidable cultural contact with positive and negative effects. A contact of two different identities, that of tourist and the host, can bring numerous changes to the local community, but can also affect the tourists’ interpretation of the destination. Here we can frequently encounter stereotypes, questioning of authenticity and invented traditions. Dangers hidden in these phenomena, if not recognized and eliminated, can have extremely negative influence on various aspects of tourist business (economic, social, cultural, and psychological). The research which was conducted in 1999 in Croatia, on the topic of tourism as a factor of change, proved some of the theoretical hypotheses and pointed to the possible guidelines, i.e. the important role of ethnography in creation of the tourist image of a local destination.