Oil Tourism: Disasters and Destinations in Ecuador and the Philippines*
This article examines the links between the petroleum and tourism industries by analyzing how an oil disaster, whether actual or perceived, may attract nature based tourism interests. To better understand the role of communities, local governments and/or the media in establishing links between the petroleum and tourism industries, this article explores how the construction of an oil pipeline in Ecuador and an oil spill in the Philippines created opportunities for tourism. Each case contributes to our understanding of how an oil disaster supports nature based tourism and how both industries supply a resource or an experience to nonlocal consumers, while converging to alter local communities, economies, and ecosystems. Indeed, tourism investments following a disaster may become a sideshow to the disaster that shifts attention from the disaster to participation in new economic opportunities. In addition, tourism may represent ecological alterations, which are more subtle, yet as damaging, as an oil disaster. The proposed model is then applied to two additional cases, the Exxon Valdez oil spill and Hurricane Katrina, to test its use in understanding other postdisaster developments.