Last month, British tourists were in the news – again – for their binge drinking on Greek islands. And the attempts by the convicted sex offender Gary Glitter to stay in Asia after his release from jail in Vietnam cast a spotlight once again on sex tourism in south-east Asia. The environmental damage as tourist resorts are built indiscriminately from Siem Reap to Goa to Mexico is a perennial matter for concern. Paradises are being lost, again and again.

If the headlines are anything to go by, it is a truth almost universally conceded that mass tourism does more harm than good. Even as we fly around the globe, we bemoan the phenomenon. The tourist, as Evelyn Waugh observed, is always the “other fellow” – rather a lot of other people, actually. An article in The Washington Post, critical of the impact of tourism worldwide, quoted estimates that 900m people travelled overseas on holiday last year compared with just 25m in 1960.