Abstract

The coastal hotel is one of the most basic institutions of mass tourism in the Mediterranean. While it has played an important geopolitical role over the years, its political and cultural significance has been played out first and foremost at the level of the body and the sentient, in particular through the formation of postmodern consumer sensibilities. The paper reflects on social relations in highly commodified and fleeting environments of the coastal hotel, drawing attention to the everyday relations and practices through which this space is inhabited by tourists. The paper considers the coastal hotel in terms of hospitality and affect, opening up mass tourism to ways of thinking the social that are less hostile to this tourist phenomenon. An ethnographic account of two hotel pools in the island of Menorca explores the various elements that make up the social fabric of the pool including conviviality, domesticity, hostility and the gaze. The discussion brings to the fore the complexity and liveliness of the social life of the pool. By the pool light touch forms of sociality coexist with more enduring social forms that combine an ideological and affectual dimension.