Touristic Competition, Securitisation, and the Creation of (In)Securities in Guatemala

Tourism is the world's largest industry and a key tool of development. This is especially the case in the global South, which is thought to have a touristic competitive advantage and is increasingly tourism-dependent. While the ability of countries, organisations, and individuals to attract and satisfy tourists is of acute developmental concern, the link between tourism and development is not to be taken for granted. There are different models of tourism, with some deemed more economically developmental and beneficial to locals than others. In seeking to make tourism work for development, the United Nations World Tourism Organisation calls for 'sustainable' and 'ethical' tourism forms. However, as evermore countries turn to tourism as a development tool, competition to attract and satisfy tourists has exploded and intensified. In this highly competitive environment, truly sustainable and ethical tourism is made harder to achieve and maintain. A key global challenge, then, is how, in an increasingly competitive environment, can sustainable and ethical tourism be encouraged and supported?
In taking up this challenge, this project turns to the global tourism competition practice of touristic securitisation, or the practice of securing tourists in attempts to secure tourism economies and development. In many places in the global South, sustainable tourism is hampered by questions of personal security. Indeed, tourist flows are highly affected by perceived risks and concrete insecurity events. Likewise, the ability of any one place to attract tourists is deeply connected to the perceived and actual personal (in)securities of tourists. While many experts offer advice on how to create personal security for tourists and, thus, hopefully improve tourism destination competitiveness, the practices involved in the securitisation of tourists/tourism can also create new insecurities which defy the principles of sustainable and ethical tourism. In seeking to encourage and support sustainable and ethical tourism, this project raises awareness of the diverse ways touristic securitisation practices can contribute to and/or challenge the goals of sustainable and ethical tourism, as well as co-produces alternative touristic security practices for more sustainable and ethical touristic futures. It does so in the context of Guatemala.
Located in Central America, Guatemala is better known for poverty, violence, and insecurity than for tourism. Nevertheless, the Guatemalan government has firmly set its sights on becoming one of the world's most visited destinations. The project builds on ethnographic research on the everyday practices of global tourism competition in the small colonial city of La Antigua Guatemala (Antigua), Guatemala's main tourism destination. For people living and/or working in Antigua, questions of touristic (in)securities dominate everyday life. Indeed, Antigua-locals clearly highlight how tourists' perceptions or experiences of insecurity in Guatemala put their economic security at risk and, thus, they aim to protect tourists in an attempt to protect their own livelihoods. In focusing on touristic securitisation practices, the project highlights how they are informed by and informing of intersecting inequalities, are increasingly enrolling new technologies, and how non-profit development organisations are playing important and under-recognised roles in touristic securitisation. While many of the touristic security practices employed in Antigua do indeed create greater security for (often foreign) tourists, others create new insecurities for both tourists and locals, thus defying the principles of sustainable and ethical tourism, and ultimately the use of tourism as a tool of development that can increase local wellbeing. Following, the project argues for an approach to touristic securitisation that de-centres the tourist and instead focuses on providing security for all.