BLT model for law purposes

The difficulties involved in defining marine tourism (see Orams Marine Tourism. Developments, Impacts and Management (1999) 8-11) are matched by those encountered when identifying the wide-range of legal relationships involved. A useful tool to tackle those obstacles is the BLT model, a sociology tool which, on the one hand, identifies tourism brokers, locals and tourists as the main actors in tourism and, on the other hand, facilitates the identification of their relationships (Miller and Auyong “Coastal Zone Tourism. A Potent Force Affecting Environment and Society” (1991) 15 Marine Policy 76-77). In that model, the tourists are the individuals who consume the tourism services and the locals are the individuals who live at the place where the tourism services are consumed. As far as they are concerned, the brokers either supply the tourism services (private brokers) or regulate the supply of those services in the public interest (public brokers).  To the extent that law is understood as the normative system which can be adjudicated upon by the judicial organs of the State, the model’s distinction between public brokers and private brokers needs to be highlighted in view of the central role played by the former when marine tourism is approached from a legal perspective. To that end, the following adaptation of the model is proposed: