Tourism is more than just visiting places

Pointing out the ways it is academic and how it relates to communities: Fourth edition

Greetings! I have a name, I think. I have the option to change my mind. However, the time to think about that since February 15th has been nonexistent. March sneaked up on me. Most of you know that in real life I have a job in tourism and I am also planning and hosting my first-ever yoga retreat at the end of the month in Chile (which still has a spot!). So both of those have kept me busy in addition to regular life.

Having fewer days between the 15th and the end of the month affected the time I had to devote to this newsletter this month too! Silly, short February! I have one big topic to write about, linked to another open-access article and a few fewer links than usual.

Sustainable travel and protecting nature

Ways to be a more sustainable traveller in 2023. I don’t always click on these articles when I see them because they say a lot of the same things. However, this article had new info or things I’d never thought about! I’d never thought about going niche with activities on vacation and how it can contribute more to locals than to an international corporation or a global chain.

On a similar note, another topic that I’ve seen trending for 2023 is nature-positive travel. The article explains it better than I can but this type of travel encourages leaving a positive footprint rather than the old “leave no trace” concept.

We can’t forget the animals! Intrepid, the giant global tour operator, audited its tour offerings and has changed any “that did not meet the standards of the Animal Welfare Policy that the brand created in collaboration with World Animal Protection, an organization that fights animal cruelty, in 2020.” You can read more about that here. Intrepid made their standards public for other tour operators to use, which is good news. When one big company takes a stand like this, other operators will usually fall in line. It is good to recognize and update practices of the past that might not have been in the best interest of animals.

Social identities and ambivalence in selecting a tourism destination

I was immediately drawn to this article when I read the title “To go or not to go: multiple identities and the effects of ambivalence”. Linked in full and open access for you to read if you wish. You might wonder how social identity relates to tourism but in one of the most basic explanations, it can inform marketing campaigns and ideal clients. Both of those are critical in developing and refining tourism products. These authors also mention ambivalence and how it can contribute to the selection of tourist destinations and how residents who live at the destination react to tourists. I am going to touch on the first of those topics though.

What these authors (Yu, Huang, Li, and Ren) examine further is how multiple social identities contribute to the selection of tourist destinations. They developed seven hypotheses regarding ambivalence, social identity, economic development in destination countries, material consumption, perceived social audience admiration and intention to visit a destination.

The researchers surveyed Chinese residents about four different destinations: Australia, South Korea, Vietnam, and Thailand. You can read about their methods within the study, but it’s their findings that I thought were interesting. Tourists who are also materialists like to express their social status through travel to what they deem as prestige or exotic destinations or by doing expensive activities in their travels.

This finding made me wonder how much this has behavior increased since the creation of social media. Once upon a time, people would take photos on vacation and make albums or slide shows and show them to all of their family or friends. But, with social media, it is a lot easier and faster to curate an exotic-looking trip to instill interest and inspire your friends back home to visit places and partake in similar experiences or activities.

The authors also wrote that this behavior informs the products that tourism providers create at destinations. They referenced exotic, big-ticket items like underwater hotel rooms or dining experiences in seaside destinations, glass ceiling corridors or rooms for exposure to the night sky, cultural experiences like a Santa Claus village in Finland or a Hogwarts express train. It would be interesting if the authors expanded their study of tourists beyond their Chinese sample because this could inform destinations for marketing and product creation purposes. The researchers do acknowledge their sample is one of their study limitations but it is a good start and a look at a collective culture.

There are several conclusions brought up in the discussion section. But I’d like to focus on one thing. How people choose to show themselves doing interesting things and some tourist destinations are eager to capitalize on that. Is there anything wrong with that? I don’t think so, as long as people, communities, nature, etc, are not harmed. We all travel for different reasons, to see things and experience things. Ten years ago, I might have been snobbier about this, the “why” behind people’s travel. But now I think, live and let live. As long as it is not harmful, who cares? We’ve all been, or will be, a tacky tourist enjoying something quirky and relevant to our particular social identity or interests at some point. Embrace it and just don’t harm anything.

Currently consuming - not much!

Same book as last time because I try to read a little every night but I am so tired lately that I manage a page or two and I’m out like a light.

I watched the movie We Have A Ghost the other night. It was charming enough and kept me interested long enough to finish most of it in one sitting. Family friendly-ish if you have kids that are maybe 10 or older. I thought the main character had a nice friendship with the ghost. Jennifer Coolidge plays a low-budget tv medium in it so you can imagine that she is appropriately ridiculous and entertaining.

That’s it for this 4th edition. Thank you for being here, it means a lot!

-Sonya