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Where the number of tourists is high compared with the resident population, the former may be perceived as a threat that is 'swamping' the destination. Again, the importance of synergy among the variables should be emphasised, as the perceived number of tourists may be inflated bv their cultural or' racial visibility, or bv their concentration within some confined
boundaries of space or time. An excellent example of this phenomenon is the cruise ship industry, which involves the discharge of large passenger numbers into a port of call. These excursionists tend to concentrate within restricted shopping areas in the central business district for a short period of time, and are usually completely unaware of and unprepared for the actual sociocultural conditions prevailing in the destination.
Such hyperconcentrations are only the extreme expression of the spatial and temporal concentrations that evolve in most tourist destinations under free market conditions (see sections 4.5 and 8.3.3). The situation is especially acute on small islands and in remote villages, where even a small number of tourists can be overwhelming for such destinations. For this reason, managers should be extremely careful about placing too much reliance on ratios that measure the number of locals per tourist over the entire destination. For example, for Australia as a whole, there were 4.4 residents for every inbound tourist in 1996. However, this statistic is rendered almost meaningless because the number would be much lower for an area such as the Gold Coast (and would vary considerably between the coastal and inland suburbs), and much higher in inland farming areas.
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