Abstract

The challenging of traditional nation-state borders alongside the rapid development of tourism as an industry has resulted in the rise of cosmopolitan tourism strategies which target an intensified marketing of national identities. As contrasted to previous views that regard tourism as a divisive, exclusionary, and isolationist process, cosmopolitanism views it as a formed indispensible interconnection that makes people envisage the world as a whole. This cosmopolitan mindset makes it easier for the tourism industry to subvert conventional constraints like geographical distance. Following the multimodal discourse analytic method, I examine the official website of the Department of Tourism (DOT) and how the Philippine tourism industry has capitalised on the cosmopolitan framework. The paper argues that the strategies of the DOT are very much motivated by cosmopolitan factors like the internationalisation of tourist markets vis-à-vis the development of a pan-regional competition. With that nuance, I also argue that in order for these strategies to be fully situated in the realm of the global vs. local dichotomy, it is obligatory for the DOT to not only construct a national identity for the Philippines—it also has to ensure that this identity is responsive, from local to international economic forces. This paper looks at the process of “internal globalisation” (Beck 2000) as seen in the development and continuous promotion of Philippine tourism.