Tourists versus Locals: perceptions of tourism in present-day Budapest

Absztrakt (kivonat)

Cities are places of a multitude of interactions between cultures. Urban tourism is outstanding in this matter, drawing and mixing the diverse group of tourists with the host community. Cities therefore represent a ‘laboratory of culture’, that deserves the attention of the researchers of anthropology, too. This paper therefore aims to examine tourism from the anthropological point of view, discussing its central paradigms of authenticity and the guest-local relation in cities. Mass tourism and alternative tourism influences greatly these aspects, while the emergence of anti-tourism shows that the social impacts should not be neglected either. This paper focuses on these tendencies through presenting a case study of Budapest, an emerging tourist destination of increasing popularity. The study uses the approach of tourism anthropology in order to draw conclusions on the perception of the city, its tourism, based on studying the interactions of tourists, locals and the city of Budapest.