class tourism

Noun

class tourism (uncountable)

1. The practice by members of the middle class of visiting working class areas or slums out of curiosity or for entertainment.
   • From the beginning, professional photography typically meant the broader kind of class tourism, with most photographers combining surveys of social abjection with portraits of celebrities or commodities (high fashion, advertising) or studies of the nude.1977, Susan Sontag, “Melancholy Objects”, in On Photography, New York: Picador, published 2001, page 57
   • I despise those books. They’re nothing but the worst sort of class tourism. The idea that Atlantic Canadians are the colourful peasantry of the nation enrages me.2002, R. M. Vaughan, interview transcribed in Michelle Berry and Natalee Caple (editors), The Notebooks: Interviews and New Fiction from Contemporary Writers, Anchor Canada, p. 439

   Synonyms:

   slumming

2. Tourism catering to a wealthy elite (contrasted with mass tourism).
   • The matter of whether Hawaii is to be given over to “mass” or “class” tourism will obviously have been settled by then, and in favor of the former, for the early 1970s will see the 500-passenger “Jumbo” jets come winging in.1968, Richard Austin Smith, chapter 8, in The Frontier States: Alaska, Hawaii,, New York: Time-Life Books, page 151
   • I feared you might be one of those snobs who distinguish between class tourism and mass tourism.1971, Mary McCarthy, Birds of America, New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, “A Sibylline Interlude,” p. 284

   Synonyms:

   high-class tourism, luxury tourism