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Journal of Tourism & Hospitality

Journal of Tourism & Hospitality
Open Access

ISSN: 2167-0269

+44 1300 500008

Abstract

Tourism for Sex: Bystanders Reviews in Bangkok Red Lights Hotspots

Cavaglion G

This paper will discuss a few results of content analysis of travellers’ reviews (a total of 800 messages in English, Italian, Spanish, German and French) in three infamous red-lights hotspots in Bangkok (Patpong, Soi Cowboy and Nana Plaza), that have been reviewed on Tripadvisor.com. The reviews analyzed were posted since August 2008, before the tightening grip following the military coup, which among other things enforced a nighttime curfew. As part of this analysis, we will identify main themes related to sex tourism in Thailand as reported by travellers/reviewers/ visitors/bystanders. Despite the quantity and the formal variety of the messages, a qualitative text analysis and an interpretive approach showed that the explicit contents of the messages could consistently be divided in a few groups. These divisions emerged through coding procedures that clustered the data in analytically relevant ways. First we identified more positive vs. more negative reviews. Second, amongst positive accounts we identified themes of fun, lack of moral judgdement, voluntarism and consumerism. Third amongst negative we identified messages with themes of bad business, bad atmosphere, personal distress and danger, disgust and repulsion and rarely reviews of moral condemnation emerged.

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