[kaashif]

I suppose the idea is that even if tourism brings in billions of euros, makes up 15% of the economy, and provides 150k jobs in a country where youth unemployment is rampant and jobs are hard to come by...

No, actually, I find it impossible to make sense of that.

[lurk2]

In my experience the majority of xenophobia is driven by a fear that one is not being afforded proper respect. Sometimes this fear is well-founded; half of the countries with citizens wealthy enough to engage in mass market travel (e.g. Germany, Israel, Russia, China, UK, etc.) have their own reputations for being Ugly Americans. Not every tourist is respectful, and even those who are polite may be disrespectful inadvertently.

Casual xenophobia is endemic to most societies; it’s quite normal to distrust the unfamiliar, and it strikes me as being a natural topic of conversation, and one that does quite well when sensationalized by journalists. I think most cosmopolitan westerners have this idea that xenophobia is the exclusive purview of a racism that originated in Europe and is now resurging in the Anglosphere, but from what I have observed, most of the world is like this and probably always has been.