Tourists use different strategies (for dealing with the fact that they're tourists)

Vagablogging :: Rolf Potts Vagabonding Blog

"Unlike anti-tourists, elite tourists don't have to worry about those other tourists. They have always been able to pay for privacy and exclusivity. The anti-tourists have a more difficult position, because they belong to the category of tourists who crave a chance to experience the unspoiled, the unexploited, and for them it is crucial to be off the beaten tourist track. Thus their irritation at finding their favorite haunts swamped by other visitors is understandable. Then there is a third and new category, called the "post-tourists," who may be defined as reformed anti-tourists, who have resigned their project and decided to join in with those other tourists, but always with an ironic distance. Let's have fun at Disneyland, anyway, even though we know it's a total fake! But what about all those other tourists? They sometimes become specimens of Turistus vulgaris. As their function is that of Othering, they are a symbolic mass, constantly changing color, form and content. As mass tourism develops, the middle-class stance of the anti-tourist becomes a more common strategy, and it continues to single out the symbol of the vulgar tourist… Turistus vulgaris is an animal that never sleeps alone: T. vulgaris appears in herds, flocks, droves, packs, or swarms. In lumps and clumps, they follow the guides from sight to sight, and they descend on villages or swamp the art museums."

–Orvar Lofgren, On Holiday: A History of Vacationing (1999)


Original article can be found here: Tourists use different strategies (for dealing with the fact that they're tourists)

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Published on April 02, 2012 04:00
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