This article analyses a genre of novels – popular romance – whose potential for research on tourism remains underexplored. In the 1970s, concern over the damaging effects of mass tourism on the environment and way of life of local communities grew significantly. Popular romance fiction was not immune to the debate. As I try to show, these novels can be a vehicle for analysing popular perceptions of tourism. Authors address issues and themes such as overcrowding, over-commercialisation, the spectacularisation and commodification of culture, and the quest for authenticity. I read tourism in romance fiction through a class lens using Bourdieu's notion of taste and Urry's concept of the romantic gaze. Criticism of tourism serves the strategic idealisation of the heroine, a working- or middle-class girl, and distances her from her social peers. The negative portrayal of tourists seeks to differentiate her and the hero from the vulgar, superficial tastes of the masses. The novels offer alternatives to the (mass) tourism model that build nostalgically on notions of authenticity and individuality. However, the contradictions inherent in the model proposed show it to be an escapist fantasy when considered from the perspective of readership and class.
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To consider the social context of production and consumption, the analysis is restricted to: (a) romances by British authors, and (b) novels published in the second half of the twentieth century. Many (10) are set in Spain, which is explained by the fact that, from the 1960s onwards, this country became the favourite foreign destination for millions of British tourists. The rest of novels are set in Italy (5), Greece (4), Portugal, France, Morocco, Turkey, Mexico, Peru, Thailand, and the imaginary islands of St. Lerie in the Caribbean and Mahila in the Pacific. A variety of settings were chosen to show how the global expansion of tourism was affecting traditional as well as new destinations.
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