Definition of Tourism

Definition of Tourism
Tourism comprises the activities of persons traveling to and staying in places outside their usual
environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other purposes not
related to the exercise of an activity remunerated from within the place visited. (WTO definition)
Quotes from “Travels in Paradox – Remapping Tourism” (Minca, Oakes 2006)
The following quotations bring into question our definition of real tourism.
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“Our everyday life is someone else’s adventure.”
“A particular physical environment does not in itself produce a tourist place.”
“Avoiding the tourist language.”
“At which point do strangers turn into friends, tourists into neighbors, locals into visitors,
and places into tourist destinations.”
“Tourism requires places to express the traveler’s apparent desire for displacement.”
“Tourism is a highly regulated and routinized activity.”
“The typical tourism experience is visual.”
“Many tourist ventures resemble both the mundane rituals of domestic life.”
“We find ways to orient ourselves and feel at home.”
“In heritage sites and theme parks, on guided tours and bus journeys, the tourist gaze is
directed toward particular selected items and features by means of commentary,
information boards and markers, signposts, and signs that recommend photographs be
taken.”
“In particular, cultural and ethnic tourism reveal very clearly where the deep contradiction
lies. It is enough to notice the way everyday life is converted into an object of observation,
or how through heritage preservation, we map, freeze, and frame the past, while
simultaneously desiring a “living history” that provides a spectacular background for the
present.”
“The home-from-home characteristics of many tourist destinations are highly familiar.”
“Novel sensual experiences previously confined to an elite band of travelers are being
opened up through the evolution of niche-marketing and alternate forms of tourism.”
“ One standard critical discourse is to opine that tourism obscures or, more strongly,
erodes authentic places – making everything into a staged performance or an otherdirected culture.”
“ Tourism is a series of discrete, enumerated occurrences of travel, arrival, activity,
purchase, departure.”
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“If destinations were no different than home people would not travel.”
“In order to change intangible experiences into “tangible” products in managerial terms,
a certain organizing form must be imposed on a journey.”
“In a literal sense, we cannot sell experiences or pleasures per se, but we can sell the
itineraries that are the “containers”, carriers or confines of experiences and pleasures.”
“The commoditization of travel experiences reduces risk and uncertainty arising out of
journeys.”
“Therefore, while a favorable image increases a destination’s attractiveness, it may at the
same time pave a way to the demise of that attractiveness.”
“Artificial skies are now a common feature in the Las Vegas entertainmentscape, as they
are sophisticated tools for the manipulation of time and space.”
“Weenie- a Disney term for a crowd magnet that lures attention and draws customers in to
the property.”
“In Las Vegas,” their residential city, life experiences, and personal narratives are
rendered both invisible and irrelevant on the Strip’s fantasy planet.”
“Traveling is often seen to represent a masculine subjectivity.”
“Adventure travel to the Third World offers the modern would-be traveler this experience
through the ethnic encounter – one of its main selling points.”
“For example, the relative absence of roads and traffic in the Sinai was both
enthusiastically received as a sign of being close to nature and being away from normal
city life and disapproved of because the lack of roads and their general condition were not
up to European standards and could impede their travel plans.”
“…that female sex tourism consists of racial and sexual fantasies about natives and is an
activity that takes place within the inequality of contemporary First World – Third World
relations.”
A European photographer living in the Sinai…. “her work is now threatened by the
Bedouin’s adaptation to modernity exemplified by their preference for denim jeans and
Nike baseball caps, while her profit margins are being eroded through their increasing
requests to be paid for being photographed. Her ability to sell a representation of
authenticity in the from of a traditionally dressed Bedouin reflecting their purity and
closeness to nature was being eroded by the effect of the Bedouin’s supposedly fake
encounter with modernity.”
Marrakech in Morocco is symbolic of national identity. The Jamaa el Fna (a square and
performers in Marrakech) is a central part of the national historical and cultural heritage
of Morocco. It is a UNESCO World heritage site (universal oral heritage).
However, in Jamaa el Fna… “additional floors were added to several of the cafes,
exceeding the established height limits; traditional wooden doors were substituted with
metal ones; many stores now sport neon signs, and automobile traffic as made pedestrian
movements in the square difficult.”
In Mexico with the Zapatista uprising… “the Zapatista dolls, the most prominent artifact.
These small human figurines are assembled from the remnant textile scraps. However the
dolls are dressed in black homespun ski masks and ponchos with woven bandoleers.”
“The most extreme example, however, is another doll. Roughly the same size as the Mayan
dolls, this one was factory produced in the People’s Republic of China. It takes the form of
a Chihuahua clad in Che’s signature black beret. The beret is adorned with a red flag,
which upon closer inspection, is the logo of Yum! Brands’ Taco Bell restaurant.”
“Urban jungles are developing a new allure for a certain breed of Euro-American
adventurers.”
“Sun, sand, sea, and sex are the four S’s often perceived as the essence of a developing
nation’s touristic appeal.”
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“Danger-zone tourists are travelers who are drawn to areas of political turmoil. It is
simply an extreme form of modern tourism.” Note: Fielding’s BlackFlag Café
“Fear gives value to travel.”
“These include the promise of having authentic encounters with grassroots actors, the
potential for enhancing one’s personal identity as an activist or humanitarian, and the
allure of a unique, exciting travel experience that will distinguish the traveler from the
growing hoards of ethnic and cultural tourists that now voyage to most corners of the
globe.”
“The Indonesian government appear (sic) to be promoting tourism in the country, but in
reality they don’t want foreigners there. More chance of their crimes being exposed.”
Miao ethnic village in China. Americans come for authenticity. “As a search for
authenticity, tourism represents, among other things, an attempt to negotiate the paradox’s
of modernity, to repair modernity’s polarizing and paralyzing dualisms, to absolve the
anxiety and ambivalence of its modern experience, and to recover a sense of one’s self in
the modern world.’
“For the villagers, the reception’s commercialism was simply the logical extension of the
whole cultural experience they offered, not the opposite. It is simply what they had learned
to do with this new tourist object called culture: sell it.”
“Travel seems to provide both some critical distance from which to better understand the
world combined with the stimulating intimacies of a new experience.”