A sanitised city? Social exclusion at Bristol's 1996 international festival of the sea

Using the example of Bristol's 1996 International Festival of the Sea, we argue that in addition to the economic and cultural impacts of such 'Hallmark' tourist spectacles, these events may also have marked social consequences for urban areas. This essay deals with two groups of travellers who were resident in Bristol, but who were forced to leave their camps as the festival-period approached. Latent hostility towards the travellers was catalysed by the belief that their unsightliness would offend tourists and festival-participants, and that their presence would detract from the new maritime-heritage identity which Bristol was attempting to perform. We trace the development of this debate in the Bristol Evening Post and the invocation by local groups, journalists and politicians of the tourist gaze as a rationale for excluding the travellers from Bristol's maritime-heritage docklands.