Tourism, Digital Presence and Becoming Virtual: The Caribbean

Abstract

In the movie Shall We Dance John Clark,  the  character  played  by  Richard Gere, expresses the fantasy of going to the islands On the website of the extraregionally owned tourist liner Royal Caribbean International the white corporate leadership  of  the  company  declares:  “No one knows the Caribbean better than we do” Potential tourists are offered the dream of a lifetime in the Caribbean. Cyberculture and the hard world of reality are not disconnected experiences. But part of the intrigue of digital space is that its exis- tence both complements and challenges what we know about the real world. Given the fact that more and more people are experiencing foreign cultures as digital moments, digital presence threatens to supplant that which it simulates, the real.