CAUTHE 2008 Conference Where the Bloody Hell Are We? WHOSE BODY IS WELCOME IN PARADISE? Jennie Small School of Leisure, Sport and Tourism University of Technology, Sydney PO Box 222 Lindfield NSW 2070, Australia. E-mail: Jennie Small@uts.edu.au Candice Harris Faculty of Business Auckland University of Technology Private Bag 92006 Auckland 1142, New Zealand E-mail: candice.harris@aut.ac.nz Alison McIntosh Department of Tourism Management Waikato Management School The University of Waikato Private Bag 3105 Hamilton, New Zealand E-mail: mcintosh@mngt.waikato.ac.nz ABSTRACT Tourists experience not only their own body but also other tourists’ bodies in the tourist experience. This paper explores which bodies from Western developed countries are legitimate to be studied by tourism researchers and which bodies are welcomed by the tourism industry (and destination governments)? Exclusion can occur through non-participation or indirectly through forms of ‘othering’ of tourist participants. The tourism industry in its product/service and promotion has neglected certain groups of tourists, but so too have tourism scholars and researchers. We ask, whose narratives are absent in the discussion and provision of the tourist experience? Specifically, we call attention to some such ‘excluded’ groups: persons who are lesbian, who have non-mobility disabilities, are overweight/obese, are dressed ‘inappropriately’, are unemployed/minimum wage earners and are older senior people. These are the others who have not been researched as the ‘Other’. Such omissions raise important questions about ethics and how we conceptualise ‘Tourism’. Keywords: Tourists, exclusion, embodiment, rights, social tourism. 1