Tourism in Postcolonial Age

The scope of this work is to show the influence of postcolonial theories in Western countries and how their cultural stereotypes are used by the tourism industry in order to create the exotic idea of paradise of some tourist destinations, that are frequently former colonies of the ancient imperial powers. For instance, the simple and innocent idea of a Western tourist, who is arranging a travel to one of the paradisiacal islands of the Caribbean, may be seen as a consequence of the colonial idea of the exotic and paradise. The multifaceted phenomenon of postcolonialism offers disparate starting points for multidisciplinary discourses and for this reason this work aims at the analysis of: postcolonial theories and their importance in Western culture and attitude towards the former colonies; the relevance of postcolonial theories in tourism in order to explain that there are points in common between this two ‘worlds’ completely different; and in conclusion, there is a case study regarding the Caribbean in order to show to what extent the European colonization has been important and the cultural results that it has produced.