Tourist Studies current issue

Many homes for tourism: Re-considering spatializations of home and away in tourism mobilities

Hui, A. — 2009-03-24

Tourism mobilities have long been spatialized as circular structures emanating from a primary home that is opposed to a space of `away'. Increasingly complex personal mobilities and experiences with multiple homes, however, challenge the assumptions on which this spatialization of tourism rests. This article utilizes an analysis of travel memoir narratives of return home and second home mobilities to deconstruct the oppositions within traditional spatializations of tourism, revealing in the process the way in which the everyday and tourism are entangled and interactive. Memoir authors construct complex relationships between spaces and places, wherein second homes can inspire new tourism practices at both unfamiliar locations and primary homes, and returning to previous homes can involve tourism of and at home. A consideration of these relationships reveals the difficulty of labeling mobilities as essentially touristic and suggests possibilities for new spatializations, ontology and methodologies that leave room for many homes for tourism.

`Dwelling' with ecotourism in the Peruvian Amazon: Cultural relationships in local--global spaces

Jamal, T., Stronza, A. — 2009-03-24

This article argues for a perspective to ecotourism development that is not determined solely by academics, capitalistic markets, conservationists or NGOs, but also by locally defined and culturally embedded relations and meanings. We start with a theoretical critique of ecotourism development and conservation at the intersection of the macro-global and micro-local levels. Insights from the existential philosopher, Martin Heidegger (1889—1976) help identify spaces and relationships in natural area destinations that illustrate the paradox of ecological modernization. A longitudinal case study of a community-based ecotourism initiative in the Peruvian Amazon is used to illustrate our argument. Local residents work in partnership with a private tour company to market and operate the lodge, but negotiations go beyond splitting profits or commodifying resources. Members engage in and resist tourism-related changes in multiple ways. Heidegger's notions of dwelling and care (concern: Sorghe) introduces a way of understanding such performative ecotourism spaces.

Beyond the visual gaze?: The pursuit of an embodied experience through food tourism

Everett, S. — 2009-03-24

Food tourism provides a conceptual vehicle for pursuing a more culturally aware tourism agenda. Findings from participant observation and in-depth tourist interviews visiting sites affiliated to two Scottish food tourism initiatives illustrate how analysis of such places can contribute to work on postmodern touristic consumptive activity and embodied experience. Food tourism research writes the body into tourism, thereby moving discourses away from dominant concepts of visualism towards non-representable forms of knowledge. However, the research also found that in order to meet an increasing demand for experiences that bring producer and consumer together, viewing windows are being installed at sites that sanitize the experience. Therefore, the concept of `new' postmodern forms of tourism activity is problematized by addressing the implications surrounding this paradoxical situation of `post/modernity'; where a (post) tourist is encouraged to internalise a place through its food, yet is simultaneously subject to a form of regulated `tourist gaze' reminiscent of more `Fordist' and modernist modes of tourism experience.

The value of authenticity in residential tourism: The decision-maker's point of view

Mantecon, A., Huete, R. — 2009-03-24

This article argues that the main social agents involved in the residential tourism sector do not perceive the `search for authenticity' as a tourist need that demands their attention and promotion. Authenticity has not been identified as a key factor in attracting tourists. Authenticity could have an important influence on the behaviour of people who choose the Costa Blanca in the Province of Alicante, Spain, as the area in which to buy a second/holidays home. Results obtained from qualitative research, including 37 in-depth interviews, are presented here in order to examine how the local stakeholders perceive the role played by authenticity in attracting visitors to Alicante. In the light of the findings discussed, we try to understand the meaning and the possibilities given to the `authentic' tourist experiences on offer within the context of the residential tourism system of the Spanish Mediterranean coast.