The purpose of this study was to explore tourists’ perception of a
coastal landscape, Playacar, Mexico that has suffered severe beach erosion
and is undergoing a variety of beach restoration measures. The
findings indicate that although tourism officials imbued the coastal
landscape (spatial practices and representations of space) with power
and meaning, tourists were not passive consumers of the promoted
messages. In other words, although producers of this narrativized space
or gaze aimed to control a preferred decoding or spatial interpretation,
one that abided by pristine coastal frames, there was nonetheless
no guarantee that consumers would espouse similar narrative frames
(Meethan, 2006). In essence, the meanings inscribed to tourism spatialities
are dynamic precisely because spatial users do not simply carry
prescribed sets of meanings or merely inhabit space; rather they interact
with it to endow it with meaning.