The Ethics of Tourism. Critical and Applied Perspectives

Lovelock, B. and Lovelock, K.M. (2013) Ethics of tourism. Critical and applied perspectives. Routledge, ISBN 978-0-415-57558-4, 368 pages.The book The Ethics of Tourism reflects the modern controversy about what is right and wrong when participating in tourism activities. It is a comprehensive compendium on moral issues related to various aspects of tourism. It is a successful attempt of linking philosophical and religious norms to everyday practice and critically debates over a number of practices and activities.The book is divided into fourteen chapters which deal with a different topic on tourism and ethics. first two chapters present a brief outline of the book and the framework of ethics which stems in the ancient philosophy and theological beliefs and has developed through the centuries. Ethical theories such as Intuitionism, Teleology, Utilitarianism, Hedonism, Egoism, Deontology, Golden Rule and Social Contract have been critically discussed. Interesting debates over the cultural relativism is presented. process of ethical decision making is duly outlined and logically structured.The third chapter deals with ethical issues related to mobility, border and security procedures. A number of issues have been raised as per example the inequality of people in terms of mobility, the passports and visas as mechanisms of control and restrictions that some travellers are subjected to due to their nationality and country of origin. Some speculations are made for the future of security control, the use of biometrics and the mobile body scan.Chapters Four to Eight deal with human rights in general and some specific cases in which the rights of the certain group of people are potentially jeopardized. This section gives a specific and detail account on issues related to medical and sex tourism, tourism and indigenous population and tourism for physically and mentally challenged travellers. fast development of medical tourism for example provokes a number of ethical concerns for both - hosting destinations and tourist-generating countries. choice that the contemporary citizen has to use foreign health services poses a potential threat for undermining the health care system in the home country. In the medical destinations on the other hand the inequality in access to quality medical services for tourists and locals could bring forward social tension and disputes.In many countries the development of twotiered system that facilitates the flow of wealth patients into private hospitals and local to the state hospitals has posed a number of problems and medical tourism exacerbates this issue. Other more serious and illegal practices such as organ trafficking are also stimulated by health tourism development.Sex tourism has long been a subject of many debates moreover it is a very difficult to draw a distinct line between sex tourism and any other form of tourism which main contains romantic affair and sexual consumption. It is generally acknowledge though that prostitution is closely linked to social inequality as the most wellknown sex destinations are poor countries and the providers of sex services are economically challenged individuals. In this regard sex tourism presents an exploitation of human dignity and reflects the world social injustice. And if to some extent it is questionable whether commodification of human body is right or wrong, there are no doubts that development of child sex tourism is a hideous practice that should be persecuted and punished as a crime activity. Other illegal activity attributed directly or indirectly to sex tourism is human trafficking, most notably, trafficking of women and children. Number of initiatives has been developed to mitigate the negative aspects of sex tourism. They are outlined and further discussed in the Chapter Six of the book.The interaction between tourists and the indigenous people is rather fragile and should be handled with care. …