Ninth International Conference on Tourism & Leisure Studies

Abstract

Until the 1980s, Kavos was a quiet fishing village in the South of Corfu. A lot has changed since the first tourists arrived in the 1970s. Eventually, Kavos has developed a reputation of a notorious ‘sand, sea and sex- 3s’ destination for British 18-30, working-class tourists. This reputation was cemented in Greece due to a group sex activity organised by holiday reps in 2003 that was reported on the news nationally and in the UK by TV programmes, including Channel 4 television programme ‘What happens in Kavos…’, which aired 2013-14. This paper presents preliminary results; results of the two first phases of this study from 2006 and 2016 and preliminary results and a conceptual approach of tourism as invasion. The lives of the local community changed dramatically in a very short time, with the changes impacting interpersonal relationships with economic interactions replacing family bonds in driving these relationships. This paper argues that the community suffered acute trauma which is still evident today, akin to an invasion. This study also looks at the motivations of guests under the prism of liminality and rites of passage, and examines stakeholders and power issues that inhibit change and local peoples’ attitudes towards tourism, under Krippendorf’s prism of the ‘rebellious local’.