Conceptual Analysis of Tourism: The Case of Marmaris Town

This work is concerned with the conceptual analysis of tourism and its evaluation from various perspectives. Tourism in this study is addressed as a space-based phenomenon compromising the activities supplying the cultural sphere to the international market. In this respect, tourism is evaluated as the integrity of social, cultural and material interventions germane to the construction, production and consumption of difference on the basis of the relationships of global and local processes. Nature, history, cultural and way of life become the subject to the production and consumption of tourism system through the interventions including representational, material and even the performance of actors. Because of its multidimensional characteristics, this work also evaluates tourism as a contested and controversial process stemming from the differences among various sections of local community. The findings of this study show that the metaphors of ’nature’, ‘tradition’, ‘cosmopolitism’ and ‘bridge’ are remarkable in constructing Marmaris and environ. The spatial regulation of Marmaris brings about the consequence that local community particapetes tourism system via their performance.