I should have just picked up Swamplandia but settled on this for my recent vacation. Boy this ruined that in a hurry.

The pseudo-openness of tourism enables repressive government. Tourist attractions re-enforce our worst human values. There are no natural dichotomies, only constructions, everywhere, for everything. Nothing is real. Everything is symbolic. Escaping our own consciousness is next to impossible. Existential dread everywhere. Capitalist exploitation for the win.

Even if you don't buy into all the critical theory, and I am not sure I do, you're left with this niggling feeling that it very well could all be spot on. And that's a very unsettling feeling, even lying on the beach.

The author notes in the preface that his editors suggested moving the last chapter to the front and I agree with their assessment. Read that first. I also skipped all the petty scholarly in-fighting. Nobody got time for that.