In the configuration of the tourist image of most island destinations, their mythical condition is fundamental. The fanciful echoes of their names or nicknames for islands cross the boundary between reality and fiction, from Ulysses’ Ithaca to the Fortunate Islands that some have wanted to locate in Macaronesia. In literature, islands refer to a place of refuge or a remote, natural, uninhabited space, even when – as in The Tempest or Robinson Crusoe – it is actually inhabited. The fantasy of the insular creates a fascination linked to the idea of otherness, distance or separation (Sharpley 2012). The insular myth has resulted in a falsification or simplification of the meaning of the word ‘island’ itself, which would refer, according to Charles C. Lim and Chris Cooper (2008), to an idea of fantasy, escape from routine and normality. This is the topic that portrays the island as a small, tropical territory (Baldacchino 2008), ignoring the diversity of island territories that do not fit into the category. According to David Harrison (2001) this ambivalence still prevails in contemporary representations, in which the island is presented as an escape from the everyday frenzy and a distant and inhospitable place. It is also used in advertising as a claim for products as varied as shampoos, colognes or soft drinks. John Gillis (2007: 274) places islands among the “mythical geographies” of Western culture, where they are associated with remoteness, difference and exoticism. The metaphorical idea of the insular – explains Pete Hay (2006: 30) – can even make it difficult for us to remember the reality of islands, and their diversity. The mythical impulse of the insular seems to irreversibly guide the tourist conceptualization of island enclaves, and conditions the tourist’s gaze which, according to John Urry, conditions not only the tourist’s expectations, but can even modify the landscape, that is, adapt it to what the myth sells, exaggerating, for example, what in the Canaries can resemble the Tropical or creating a green locus amoenus (pleasant place) ofgrass planted on the golf courses of Mediterranean islands threatened by the lack of rain for much of the summer.
References:
Baldacchino, Godfrey (2008). “Studying Islands: On Whose Terms? Some Epistemological and Methodological Challenges to the Pursuit of Island Studies”. Island Studies Journal, 3: 1. 37-56.
Gillis, John (2004). Islands of the Mind: How the Human Imagination created the Atlantic World. Nova York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Hall, M. C. (2012). “Island, islandness, vulnerability and resilience”. Tourism Recreation Research, 37(2), 177-181.
Harrison, David, “Islands, Image and Tourism”, Tourism Recreation Research, 26(3), 9-14.
Lim, Charles C. (2008). “Beyond sustainability: optimising island tourism development”. International Journal of Tourism Research, 11: 1, 89-103.