Ethical Tourism: The Theory Vs. The Hedonistic Reality in Popular Greek Tourism Resorts

Tourism has many uses and benefits for local societies, but in many cases a number of negative impacts too. The most important is the environmental impact that mass tourism may create. The tourists sometimes do not respect the cultural and the environmental profile of the country, creating a lot of problems. This is more frequent amongst young people that have not received sufficient education to recognise the importance of culture and traditions outside their own countries. Another serious problem that may arise is that only few people may benefit from tourism and money leaks outside the local community. Besides this, there is also a dark side of the lucrative business of mass tourism: violence by, and between, tourists and sex crimes such as rape. This is mainly attributed to large numbers of young tourists aiming at the consumption of large amounts of cheap alcohol. Drunken male tourists may end up fighting with each other or even harassing female tourists, or even raping them. The aim of this paper is to fill in this gap in the literature regarding this type of tourist behaviour in the Greek resorts: Faliraki and Kavos, by emphasizing actions taken as to prevent these kind of incidents and by focusing on the ethical issues surrounding them. This is a literature review which aims on initiating a discussion, which will lead the way for future research in the area.