Resumo: Based on ethnographic fieldwork carried out on a beach in northeastern Brazil visited by male European tourists who engage in intimate relationships with local women, this communication questions the empirical sustainability of the sex tourism concept and its use as a label for what seems to be a specific type of tourism. The main purposes are: (i) to clarify the semantic field of what is known as sex tourism, (ii) to understand the selective use of the concept, especially according to the actors gender and the hemispheric location of the touristic place, (iii) to assess their scientific legitimacy, evaluating to what extent it corresponds to distinctive tourist motivations and practices, as well as particular forms of organization of the leisure market.
