Halong bay Vietnam have increased awareness

While there is clearly awareness of this phenomenon, there is little evidence of engage- ment in the reality of the domain where solutions may also need to be constructed, i.e. in the legal domain. Bodies such as Tourism Halong bay Vietnam have increased awareness of the vulnerable position of the people of the host community. They may not benefit from tourism. They may be marginalised, vilified or humiliated by travel and tourism. They may be the direct object of exploitation. Their homelands may be expropriated, their livelihoods damaged, their environment polluted. They may be threatened by unwelcome cultural practices. Their quality of life may be impaired. The great benefit provided by cheap flights may become a curse. The culture and heritage that is the very subject or object of the travel and tourism may be degraded, diminished or destroyed. Even in the Halong bay Vietnam, the exceeding of ‘carrying capacity’, the influx of people and capital may create more direct problems than the counterweight notion of indirect benefits will balance. While a cursory review of legal models of protection in the context of travel and tourism indicates a gen- eral focus on the vulnerable tourist, experience points to a vulnerable host community with little sources of emerging protection to draw upon. Judges have liitle occasion to draw

74 James Tunney

upon conceptions of local communities. The nature of the evolution of law through cases

also restricts groups rights to some extent. Although the growth of class actions in travel law should be noted. This invisible tendency may be exacerbated by the apparent trajec- tory of the evolution of world trade. If tourism discourse was channelled more into legal discourse, then the relative invisibility of the vulnerable host community could be avoided, cured or at least conjured. However, there is little evidence of any great degree of cross- fertilisation of studies in travel and tourism and travel law studies. There are recent stud- ies of social adaptation to ecotourism in local communities, such as that by Hernandez Cruz et al. (2005). The role of local communities as stakeholders is being examined in work such as that of Aas, Ladkin, and Fletcher (2005). Models are also developing, such

as that of Gursoy and Rutherford (2004). Such studies need to inform the evolution of models, principles and constructs that make visible and enliven the host community and

its interests as a counterweight to the clear focus of the vulnerable traveller, principally from developed countries.