Tourism,mood and affect: Narratives of loss and hope

Beyond looking to emotion and affect for the purpose of understanding better the tourist experience in itself, this article considers what affect produced through tourism might do vis-à-vis our relationship with the world around us. With a particular focus on the production of ‘hopeful mood’, the article discusses the links between affect and tourism narratives of loss and of hope performed in two New Zealand tourism destinations. That both loss and hope narratives are produced in both destinations illustrates not only how tourism narratives are ‘affective’, but also that the affect produced is potentially selective. The implications of these narratives for tourism’s hopeful ‘worldmaking’ capacities are considered, along with suggested further avenues for research on tourism narratives, mood and affect.     

‘My dark heaven’: Hidden voices in orphanage tourism

Literature on orphanage tourism considers the motives of Western volunteers and the problematic nature of their compulsion to ‘help’ vulnerable children in the Global South. Orphanage tourism is also increasingly adopted into ‘rescue ideologies’ (Howard, 2016) and anti-trafficking/‘modern slavery’ campaigns. The perspectives of children involved, however, are missing from these discourses. This article draws on original empirical data to explore the narratives of young Nepali adults who lived in Kathmandu orphanages as children. Through these narratives, the article explores the diverse complexities of the residents' experiences of volunteer tourism and NGO ‘rescue’, and the shortcomings of recent ‘neoabolitionist’ frameworks. The article argues that such framings are routinely oversimplified and that a more nuanced and contextualised empirical exploration is urgently needed.     

Lifestyling entrepreneurs’ sociological expressionism

This study explores the tourism host-home relationship investigated through documentary analysis of photographs choreographed through mutual negotiation between hosts and researcher (collaborative auto-driving) and participants’ spoken narratives (photo-elicitation interviews); we identify the significance for tourism product construction. Major findings concern the sociological expressionism of the tourism lifestyle entrepreneur who creates a certain personal brand identity or ‘lifestyling’ through their commercial home presentation; ‘private’, ‘inclusive’ and ‘temporal’ classification categories of hosts’ favourite spaces in the home are identified, based upon the individual spatial management strategies employed. Depictions of favourite spaces emphasised emotional and sensorial dimensions rather than material things present, and were described as spaces of contentment and tranquillity essential for energising hosts in the ongoing production of the commercial home.     

Sexual behavior in women's tourist experiences: Motivations,behaviors, and meanings

The research literature has traditionally focused on commercial sex tourism between tourists and locals but virtually ignored sexual behavior among tourists themselves. This exploratory study aspires to fill this gap by creating a taxonomy of non-commercial sex for women who engage in various forms of tourism. The analysis of in-depth interviews with Israeli self-defined heterosexual women reveals that different forms of tourism involve various types of sexual behavior as follows: (1) ‘Practicing Sex’ referring to sex on rest and relaxation vacations; (2) ‘Must Have Sex’ relating to sex on city break vacations; (3) ‘Sexual Adventure’ describing casual sex on backpacking trips; (4) ‘Controlled Sexual Desire’ referring to work related trips and vacations with children. The study findings are discussed in terms of their contribution to the research area of sex in tourism.     

A happy experience of a dark place: Consuming and performing the Jallianwala Bagh

This article adopts a phenomenological, ethnographic approach to examine place consumption and place experience through visitors' practices in situ. It focuses particularly on an examination of the embodied practices and performances of both tourists and the local community. Viewing memorial places as ‘performative fields’, we argue that a set of processes are simultaneously at play: while consuming the place and its representations (place consumption), visitors are also producing the meaning of the place through their embodied practices (place production) and, simultaneously, form and project a construct of their own selves (self-identity construction), within wider social narratives (social/national-identity construction). The simultaneity of these processes is empirically illustrated and supported by the findings from the qualitative research in the Jallianwala Bagh Memorial in Amritsar, India, where British colonial forces massacred more than one thousand peaceful protesters in 1919.     

Ecological restoration in Aotearoa New Zealand: Contrasting tourist conservation narratives

Aotearoa/New Zealand is a hotspot of threatened biodiversity. In recent years, a system of local/regional eco-sanctuaries has been developed, which now play a critical role in the intensive management of endangered endemic species as part of the wider restoration of New Zealand's indigenous biodiversity. Many of these projects have harnessed tourism as an important revenue stream to fund ecological restoration. Theoretically informed by the field of environmental philosophy and drawing upon the concept of ‘conservation narratives’, this paper aims to explore international visitors' perceptions of ecological restoration and experiences in New Zealand eco-sanctuaries using flash interviews informed by photo-elicitation. The findings reveal disparate interpretations of biodiversity and contrasting conservation narratives that underpin diverse visitor experiences at New Zealand eco-sanctuaries.     

All in good fun: governing camp experiences through discourses of ‘good’ and ‘fun’

Summer camps have been conventionally associated with the positive development of individual character through the promotion of recreational ‘fun.’ However, popular narratives obscure more critical questions concerning the power-knowledge relations that have shaped the provision of summer camp fun as a significant site of child development in Canadian culture. In this article we examine how camp counsellors mobilise particular discourses about the benefits, or ‘good’, and ‘fun’ of camp to govern themselves and the campers that are in their care. We draw on Foucauldian notions of governmentality to problematise that which is often assumed as the ‘truth’ of camp experiences. We discuss how the ‘good’ of camp often draws on psy-discourses and those of entrepreneurial selves to improve or add value to campers’ lives. Additionally, ‘fun’ discourses and practices can work to produce manageable and docile campers. We conclude the article by identifying the implications of the research for developing a critical approach to the management of young staff who work to provide a broad range of recreational experiences where benefits and fun are promised.     

Triathlon,suffering and exciting significance

In this article, I examine how triathletes learn to physically manage, socially perform and individually reflect upon the endurance sport of triathlon as a microcosm of the ‘civilising process’. Elias’s particular conceptualisation of habitus is centrally utilised to explain why, at this particular point in civilising processes, more men and women in factions of the Canadian middle class quest for ‘exciting significance’ through gruelling endurance sports like triathlon (swim‐bike‐run competitions). Pain and suffering narratives gathered from 62 participants in Canadian triathlon are analysed alongside ethnographic data collected over a three‐year period in Ontario, Canada. Specifically addressed is how triathletes come together as a mutually recognised ‘pain community’ of like‐minded actors, and how they learn to relish physical and mental suffering in the sport.     

Lifelong learning as serious leisure: policy,practice and potential

This paper seeks to examine the extent to which post-compulsory education can be viewed as a serious leisure activity. Such links between the fields of leisure studies and adult education have yet to be fully explored, especially from a UK perspective. Although Stebbins (1998) has explored the concept of learning serious leisure through adult education, the concept of adult education as serious leisure has yet to be examined. Since 1995 successive UK Governments have engaged in high profile policy initiatives to encourage ‘lifelong learning’, a somewhat controversial concept which has attracted criticism as well as a significant bandwagon. The principal impetus behind the policy is the perceived need to skill the workforce so that industry can operate in an increasingly competitive global market. Emphasized to a much lesser extent, however, is the wish to create a ‘learning society’ in which continual learning, (including that for non-vocational purposes) becomes integral within society, with a subsequent enhancement of social capital. It is argued that it is through learning as ‘serious leisure’, rather than as vocationally oriented that will be most appropriate for such a policy. In this paper the authors have sought to concentrate on this non-vocational dimension of lifelong learning and to explore the links between the concept of serious leisure and lifelong learning. The paper then draws upon literature from the fields of leisure studies and education policy to examine the implications of ‘lifelong learning as leisure’ for the individual, the community and society as a whole.     

Tourism and nostalgia for the pastoral on the island of Fyn,Denmark

Constructions of home are powerful from both heritage and tourism perspectives, as ‘home’ suggests a certain type of heritage precedence while also providing a competitive tourism advantage over rival locations. Sport tourism sites also disseminate notions of home as part of their narrative, both to create and solidify particular heritage claims as well as to enhance the tourism potential of a location. Home narratives are used, in particular, during stadium tours, where tourists go ‘behind the scenes’ at a famous sports venue. Tour narratives at Twickenham Stadium were examined in this study. At Twickenham, it was found that the stadium was represented as ‘home’ during tours in three different ways: as the literal home of the English National Rugby team; as the spiritual home of the sport of rugby; and as the home of particular notions of English identity. These representations were created as a means of claiming cultural propriety, particularly with regard to the sport and its heritage, as well as in recognition of the venue's role as an international tourism destination. However, the employment of home narratives, which espouse notions of stability and continuity, also mask wider heritage and tourism anxieties, in particular competition from rival sites.     

Settler colonialism,Indigenous cultures,and the promotional landscape of tourism in Ontario,Canada's ‘near North’

ABSTRACT

Settler colonialism relies upon a logic of elimination that strives to dissolve Indigenous culture and title to ancestral lands. In Canada, settler colonialism has steered not only oppressive state policy directions, but also settler narratives that essentialize and displace Indigenous Peoples and cultural connections to land. Tourism is an especially potent social force through which such settler stories can be perpetuated and resisted. The purpose of this paper is to analyze how Indigenous culture is portrayed in the tourism promotional landscape of Ontario's ‘near north’, a rural leisure landscape for nature enthusiasts and second-home owners. While Anishinaabeg and Haudenosaunee First Nations have inhabited this area for generations, their cultural presence is often marginalized in development discourses, both historical and contemporary. Our study draws upon critical discourse analysis of websites produced by stakeholders associated with three case study sites – a Provincial Park, an annual cranberry Festival, and a major casino operation – to understand both the limits and opportunities of tourism in relation to maintaining and revitalizing Indigenous culture. In so doing, our paper contributes to critiques of settler colonial power relations and how these infiltrate tourism, and identifies pathways for disrupting the erasure of Indigenous cultures in tourism.     

Engendered ideologies and leisure policy in the UK. Part 1: gender ideologies

I don't quite yawn when I see another project about the problems women face but I think to myself ‘This ground has been heavily walked over. We know it. It's been written about. It's been sung about. It's been acted about and it's been painted and performed about.’ It is very well worn territory and I'm now thinking ‘What next? How do you use that raised awareness and move on?’ (Keeper, arts and museums). This article draws upon PhD research to examine the restructuring of engendered leisure policy ideologies in the UK in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and to consider the implications for leisure provision for women. The article is in two parts. In Part 1, a typology of ideologies is developed in order to outline the kinds of gender ideologies circulating in leisure policy. Part 2 of the article examines the articulation of gender and professional ideologies, and the configurations of ideologies which were emerging as predominant at a time of political and economic restructuring.     

City Break Motivation

Abstract

This paper investigates why people take city break trips. The main objective of the study was to reveal the underlying push and pull motivational factors associated with taking a city break holiday to Dublin. In-depth interviews with 40 city break visitors uncovered six push factors and eight pull factors. The main push motives involved were ‘escape,’ ‘socialising,’ and ‘self esteem (gift giving).’ City breaks were generally viewed as active or ‘doing’ holidays, with the ‘relaxation’ motive hardly featuring at all as a reason to visit. Pull factors were found to be particularly important in terms of the travel decision. Factors such as ease of access and the availability of cheap flights were not only influential in determining the destination, but also acted, in some cases, as the main stimuli to take the trip.     

Heritage tourism and New Western history: a narrative analysis of six Colorado museums

Museums are important in heritage tourism, often presenting interconnected national, regional, and local histories. This article explores how six Colorado museums present state and regional identities. I ask how these museums have attempted to incorporate insights from ‘New Western’ History into their exhibits. New Western historians have called attention to the ‘legacies of conquest’ – the peoples displaced, the cultures destroyed, and the environments damaged by Anglo-American colonization of western lands – and offered critical and dissonant ‘counter-narratives’ of the region’s past. However, the region’s heritage tourism – a significant and growing industry – has emphasized more conventional narratives of settlement and economic progress. This study applies narrative theory to analyze how these critical histories are presented to tourists in Colorado museums and historic sites. Narrative theory examines how objects, texts, and media are shaped into stories, in this case stories linking popular readings of heritage to critical understandings of past events. Six case studies indicate that critical histories are presented in some sites, but are rarely the central focus of these attractions. However, the spatial juxtaposition of narratives and counter-narratives in these museums offers insight into how critical and dissonant history is beginning to be incorporated into heritage tourism in the American West.     

Changing policy priorities for sport in England: the emergence of elite sport development as a key policy concern

This paper reviews the emergence of ‘sport’ as a sector of public policy interest from the 1960s to 2002. Central to the paper is the manifestation of ‘elite sport development’ as a key policy concern from the mid‐1990s onwards. While the emergence of elite sport policy objectives is the focus, the increased activity around sport at regional and sub‐regional levels in England also requires attention. The paper's theoretical argument is that, in large part, the effect of policy is primarily discursive; it changes the possibilities we have for thinking ‘otherwise’. In this respect, the discursive construction of sport policy is problematized. Here, the literature addressing ‘policy as discourse’ and, more specifically, that which analyses the ‘discursive strategies’ shaping school sport and physical education policy is helpful in sensitizing us to the inherent power relations hidden within the contours of sport policy debates. This analysis leads to questions surrounding opportunities for ‘alternative voices’ within a context of discursive activity that privileges elite performance. In this regard, the study concludes by offering avenues of future research for the analysis of sport policy processes.     

New Zealand’s transformed adventure: from hero myth to accessible tourism experience

Sir Edmund Hillary’s first ascent of Mt Everest in 1953 provided New Zealand with a global adventure representation. His image aligned to a mythologised pioneering cultural identity. Although the privileged masculine, white, class and imperialist features of this cultural myth have been critiqued, adventure remains a positively valued social tenet in New Zealand. Since 1953 socially recognised ‘adventure-makers’ have sustained traditional adventure practices and narratives. In the 1990s, however, bungy jumping became the prominent representation of New Zealand adventure. This challenged traditional understandings, providing an avenue to explore the contested social space and features underpinning understandings of adventure. Guided by Bourdieu’s conceptualisation of social life, the paper examines the practices and stories of 12 New Zealand ‘adventure-makers’ with sustained distinction. The interpretation draws on discursive data from newspapers, magazines, websites, biographies, auto-biographies and research interviews. The rule-changing social distinction afforded bungy jumping is not a rupture of New Zealand’s adventure habitus. It does, however, highlight a collective self-deception in negotiation of the understandings of adventure in relation to the features of ‘misadventure’, ‘exclusivity’ and the ‘extraordinary’. The bungy jumping leap innovatively transforms the danger, myth and extraordinary into a recognisable, individually inclusive experience of adventure.     

Political connections,guanxi and adoption of CSR policies in the Chinese hotel industry: Is there a link?

This research note examines the existence of a potential relationship between the political connections possessed by senior Chinese hotel managers and their adoption of corporate socially responsible (CSR) policies in the Chinese hotel industry. Given (a) China’s Green Hotel policy and (b) a broader context where, it is argued political connections and guanxi are a means by which the State seeks to advance desired economic reforms and counter corruption practice, it is suggested that those hotels with better political connections may show evidence of higher levels of awareness and adoption of CSR policies. The data are derived from a usable sample of 404 senior hotel managers. The findings show a positive relationship between the variables of ‘political connectedness’ and ‘CSR adoption’ in areas relating to environmental and philanthropic action, but less of a relationship in other CSR areas such as human resource management and guest relationships. The implications for future research are discussed.     

Supplier selection and partnerships: Effects upon restaurant operational and strategic benefits and performance

This study focused on identifying strategic criteria involved in selecting suppliers of restaurant products/services specific to casual dining, full service independent restaurants to obtain operational and strategic benefits for those managers operating in this highly competitive marketplace. A total of 765 responses were obtained from managers at independently owned restaurants throughout the U.S. Results revealed that ‘product’ and ‘financial/technical’ criteria had significant and positive effects upon operational benefits, while ‘product’ and ‘service’ had positive effects upon strategic benefits. When the sample was segmented into low and high supplier partnership groups, the positive effects of ‘financial/technical’ and ‘cost/price’ were significantly greater for the ‘high’ partnership group pertaining to operational benefits. ‘Product’ and ‘service’ and their effects upon strategic benefits were greatest for the high partnership group. Based on our findings, implications, limitations, and recommendations for future studies have been provided.     

Warfare tourism experiences and national identity: The case of Airborne Museum ‘Hartenstein’ in Oosterbeek,the Netherlands

This paper examines through an analysis of Dutch warfare tourism whether there is a relationship between the subjective perceived salience of Dutch identity and heritage tourists' motives, emotions and overall satisfaction. Using a social identity theory framework, this study provides a view of motives for Dutch warfare heritage tourism and the ways in which this specific variant of heritage tourism evokes different emotions and satisfaction evaluations in visitors. Specifically, we found that visitors who identified strongly as ‘being Dutch’ (the ‘in-group’) have stronger self-enhancement motives compared to those who identify less strongly, and that edutainment features strongly in the museum experience. Visitors seeking initiative/recognition express feelings of disappointment suggesting that the museum's symbolic function as a place of national in-group identity could be more highlighted. We demonstrate that an affirmative and engaged experience can manifest at nationally symbolic sites through positive historical narratives and entertainment, and through ‘in-group’ self-enhancement activities.     

Learning to leisure: femininity and practices of the body

Within this paper, I conceptualise practices of the body that are learnt and deployed as part of feminised body work within the cultural context of girls’ leisure. These are practices of the body that are engaged by young women in ways that allow them to (re)construct their subjectivities as well as ‘negotiate a physical sense of themselves’. Therefore, this paper begins by mapping the theoretical foundations upon which the analysis of femininity is couched. Predicated upon debates that distinguish between the girl as a passive, duped recipient of culture’s pedagogical signs and the girl as an active, autonomous ‘freely choosing’, ‘freely consuming’ citizen, I draw out the ways in which young girls’ body practices can shed light on the complex relationship between ‘choice’, agency, consumption and subjectivity. Drawing on data collected from workshops and focus groups, I locate consumption, body management and beautification as constituents and simultaneously constitutors of leisure time. I thus offer insight into the ways in which a group of twenty 13-year-old girls who attended a private (fee paying) school in the West of England account for, maintain, develop, and in places resist, localised appearance cultures. Structured around certain leisure activities – reading magazines, shopping for clothes, eating, engaging in physical activity, applying beauty products, make-up and hair styling – this paper concludes by highlighting the ways in which wider cultural discourses are having embodied effects and are being consumed, not without consequence, as commonplace everyday preoccupations.