Travel and Tourism Relationship

Small World

UNIT 3

Константин ГУРДИН

№36(70), 5 сентября 2007г., «Аргументы недели»

· Travelling and Tourism

· Ecotourism

· Other Trends in the Tourism Sector

1. Read the text about travelers and tourists and complete its structure: insert the removed sentences into the gaps, one sentence is spare. Be ready to comment on the text after reading

A lot of sociologists regard a special relationship among tourism and travel. As discussed in Wang’s literature review of Michael (1950), Boorstin (1964) and Rojek (1993) in Tourism and Modernity: A Sociological Analysis (2000), while the word ‘travel’ possesses a high culture sense, ‘tourism’ suggests vulgar derogation of the activity and people practicing it. High and low tastes, ‘real travel’ with ‘bogus travel’ are opposed (see the table below the text for detailed presentation of the comparison). In fact, Michael had created his own description of ‘ideal’ travelers, which can be summarized as follows:

1) they have a vague idea on the choice of particular travel destination and

subsequent goals there on place;

2) their travel is mostly not demarked by time limitations;

3) they are financially independent for the travel purposes;

4) they are open-minded, open for communications with locals and often possess

knowledge of the local language;

5) spirit of adventure and encouragement of one’s curiosity is definitely present; and

finally

6) these ‘ideal travelers’ have ‘the knack of how to see things’.

Interesting is Wang’s conclusion on related typology of Michael’s: although he sadly recognizes that such an ‘ideal’ type of traveler is an opposite of commonality due to various constraints such as time, finances, or one’s socio-cultural obligations, ‘‘the ideal traveler functions as an ideal representation of the highest taste of travel and against which various forms of bogus travel can be criticized’’.

1. _______________________________. Widely discussed by Ryan (1997), holidaying is expressed by planned and manipulated consumption of time.

Furthermore, Sharpley (2003) stated that for the post-tourist the traveler/tourist

dichotomy is irrelevant. ‘’The traveler has matured and evolved into an individual who experiences and enjoys all kinds of tourism, who takes each at face value and who is in control at all times”. In fact, this phenomenon renders tourist typologies meaningless.

Nevertheless, trying to segment the tourists into various socio-psychological groups according to behavioral and situational features, numerous researchers have come up with various typologies. 2. _______________________. Discovering the true nature of tourist, Cohen, initially, recognizes tourist and non-tourist segments, breaking down the tourist cluster to temporal, voluntary, forced, round trip, long journey or non-recurrent tourists. Business travelers and second-home owners’ segments are consequently excluded from being assigned tourist status. 3. _____________________.

Introduction of the term institutionalized tourism was made by Cohen (1974) subsequent to the typologies of tourists themselves. Briefly, organized mass tourism would be considered as institutional forms of tourism while the alternative pursuits of explorers and drifters as non-institutionalized. In Cohen’s terminology: ‘explorer’ is characterized by novelty, spontaneity, risk, independence, vs. ‘drifter’ – the same, but with a more limited budget and lack of a fixed itinerary, resembling the stereotypical hippie movement of the 1960s.

Another well respected researcher, Plog (1990), put tourists in a nexus of psychocentricity and allocentricity (preferring familiar activities versus seeking for risks). A study by Stewart (1993) revealed four other types of tourists positioned in a nexus: bubble travelers, idealized-experience seekers, wide-horizon travelers and total immersers. 4. __________________________.

Another interesting contemporary typology, labeled ‘a new typology of tourists’, anti-universal in context of previous terminologies, was found in Decrop (1999). The Gestalt, a daptable, homebody, unwilling, unplanned, surrogate and finally alternative tourist types were mentioned. The alternative tourists, again the most interesting as aversive to institutionalized tourism, are the ones willing to sink into the local socio-cultural arrangements and value system, thus actually live that life of a local. Creation of a temporary new self-identity to totally replace the one of familiar environment is of essence.

The quest for alternative tourism gained popularity in the 1990s and appeared as a serious rival to mass tourism. 5. ________________________. Alternative tourism appeared as a popular critique to mass tours by presumably offering answers and solutions to the issues of sustainability and inauthenticity created by the first (Ryan, 1997; Wang, 2000). In this context, Ryan has been found entitling alternative tourism an ‘ego-tourism’.

In relation to the authenticity question it has been argued that some visitors can be fairly satisfied and even almost delighted in the inauthenticity of the normal tourist experience. According to Feifer (1985) ‘post-tourist’ finds pleasure in the multiplicity of the normal tourist experience. 6. __________________________. Additionally, Swarbrooke and Horner (1999) defined post-tourist as a tourist who recognizes that there is no such thing as an authentic tourism product or experience and accepts tourism as a game where one feels free to move between different types of apparently totally contrasting holidays (from an eco-tourism trip to Belize one year to a sun, sand, and sea trip to Benidorm next year).

A. The cornerstone for distributing tourists into different subgroups has been set by Cohen in 1974.

B. Subsequently, logic that tourists do not present a homogenous group in the context of the tourism model can be arguably challenged.

C. In contrast, a concept of ‘holidaying’ (holiday-time, holiday-makers) is also found

mostly in association with tourism rather than travel (as possessing a negative, mass consumption shade).

D. In addition, Visiting Friends and Relatives (VFR) travelers are excluded from the mainstream tourist category due to a minimized utilization of normal tourist services, such as hotels and restaurants.

E. Above all, the post-tourist is aware of being outsider, ‘’not a time traveler when he goes somewhere historic; not an instant noble savage when he stays on a tropical beach; not an invisible observer when he visits a native compound”.

F. The idea of alternative tourism as one of the widely discussed characteristic of trendy travel has also been found granted a lot of researchers’ attention.

G. The latter were of most interest in present context, as their consumption patterns are characterized with reproduction of cultural experience rather than its idealization.

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