Coasts of Aspiration: Climbing the Tourism ‘Ladder’

Abstract

This chapter discusses the leisure industry in Europe, from mass tourism in the Mediterranean of the 1960s to the new cut-rate market in Eastern Europe in the 2000s. It charts the transformation of late-Franco beach culture in Spain (1960s) to the 1990s, when the Costa Blanca was transformed into a destination for modern architecture and molecular gastronomy, providing a tourism industry metaphor for effective Europeanization and the casting-off of peripherality. It then turns to the case study of Bulgaria, which sought to emulate this model but was bogged down by the remnants of the socialist era tourism industry and the involvement of the mafia in hotel ownership and construction. This chapter shows that coastal spaces of leisure, where mixing of foreigners and locals is prevalent, are highly important spaces by which to examine ideas about Europeanness.