Paper short abstract:

This paper will investigate the social and spatial consequences of the continuing presence of Indian Bollywood tourists in Switzerland.

Paper long abstract:

Until recently, tourist routes typically led from "the West" to "the rest", and travel guides were the essential media for planning a journey. In the past years, however, the intensified circulation of place images through global communication media have connected more and more places with more and more imaginations, while the price reductions in and the expansion of travel offers have set even the remotest places within potential reach. This paper will ask from a postcolonial perspective what happens when "the West" no longer tours "the rest", as it has been practiced for centuries, but when "the rest" starts to knock on Western doors in order to consume both the vernacular Western culture and also its own heritage in place?

Specifically, this paper will investigate the social and spatial consequences of the continuing presence of Indian Bollywood tourists in Switzerland. Switzerland is quite a 'traditional' destination of Indian tourism as it had been discovered by the Indian Bollywood film industry as early as in the 1980s. At the time, the Kashmir conflict started to prevent film teams from shooting their Bollywood movies in the Kashmir Mountains, and the Swiss Alps promised a similar panorama. Today, Swiss small towns like Engelberg display a comprehensive tourist infrastructure that specifically cares for the needs of Indian tourists (e.g. hotels with special bathrooms, Indian restaurants on the peak of the Titlis, etc.). This paper will explore the paths of Indian tourists through Engelberg and explore the consequences of their presence for everyday city life.