Grassroots Englishes in tourism interactions

The world is shrinking - globalization has been one of the main forces transforming today's life patterns. One of its manifestations, one that has proliferated substantially to what was customary just a few decades ago, is global travel, in various forms and for various purposes - and one of the most important ones of these purposes is tourism. The opportunity and the infrastructure to travel to interesting places pretty much anywhere fairly easily and at affordable prices has been bringing people to all corners of the world. Admittedly, the word 'affordable' in this sentence refers predominantly to people from developed, industrialized, wealthy countries, so socially this is a skewed and selective process. But the fact as such remains, and it has important ramifications for and adds new facets to the forms and functions of global English.