The Vulnerability of Peripheral Tourism; the rapid disenchantment of peripheral attraction.

This chapter explores the impact of foot and mouth disease on peripheral tourist destinations. It is argued that such destinations are extremely vulnerable to changes in visitor perception and that the effects of national disasters impact disproportionately. The twinned conceptions of the local and the global are employed to show how the time-space compression of globalisation is a double-edged sword. The paper first offers a theoretical explanation based on the symbolic otherness of peripheral places. In the first instance, this otherness attracts, but symbolic constructions are brittle things, and the advent of national disaster turns this otherness into a repelling force. We then offer some data on the uneven effects of foot and mouth disease. This demonstrates how the local of peripherality is vulnerable to the sensationalism of the global. We find that the lenses of perceptions of place magnify the good and the bad. But significantly, peripheral tourist places suffer most.