Sex, tourism and sex tourism: Fulfilling similar needs?

This paper explores tourism and tourists visiting prostitutes as both being examples of liminal behaviours, that is behaviours undertaken by those operating at social thresholds, Prostitution exists as a 'fuzzy legal' activity, in that while largely proscribed in many countries, it nonetheless continues within a legal and social framework of constraint and limited tolerance, Tourism can also be observed as a liminal behaviour, in that it is a temperorally constrained, socially tolerated period of wish fulfilment, a form of fantasy enactment that is normally denied to people, Generally, the tourism literature has tended to perceive sex tourism as a form of deviance, but this paper argues that it is not an added component to tourism, but a form of behaviour quite consistent with the motivations that underlie much of tourism, Both activities of tourism and going to a prostitute involve satisfaction of needs of social companionship, fantasy fulfilment, family bonding, the search for something new and opportunities for relaxation, Sex tourism is thus not a deviance, but fully consistent with the norms of tourism; yet both, as liminal activities outside the main norms of behaviour, imply much about the consensus of what constitutes socially acceptable behaviour. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd