All rights reserved. Complete or partial reproduction is prohibited without the permission of Marinus Gisolf and without mentioning the source

The present article was developed in collaboration with P. Dercksen, MSc.; M. Th. Baayen, MSc. and F.van Sluijs, Ir., whose observations and help contributed enormously to the content and quality of this article.

1. Introduction

 The present article on the subject of global warming and climate change in general arose from an observed confusion of contradictory publications, ambivalent environmental policies, questionable international agreements and popular climate theories with its supporters and opponents, creating serious doubts on what really is happening to our world. Temperatures in the atmosphere are on the rise and it seems that scientists, experts, politicians and the public in general have been able to notice this phenomenon for the last fifty years or so. The planet’s climate changes continuously, which is another of the few statements we can be sure about, although the reasons behind it and its functionality with regards to global warming is still under investigation and discussion. This holds true even more for the question to what extent the human being can influence this rise in temperature and manage it through regulating its CO2 (carbon dioxide) emissions, which has led to extensive and even vehement debates.

As part of a series of conversations among friends with different backgrounds and interests, we arrived at the basic questions: How important is the role of the human being in climate change? In search for answers we started to researching the Internet on these issues, which resulted in an intriguing journey full of surprises, contradictions, manipulations to the point that it became clear, that there are no simple explications or solutions. What did become clear is that our climate system is non-linear, chaotic with feedbacks, which makes it about impossible to forecast even tomorrow’s weather.

2. The most important themes

The most relevant themes on climate change can be divided into four approaches, which will be presented below and further on a summary and some tentative conclusions will be presented (only the most relevant websites are mentioned):

2.1 Climate and global warming

The first theme we approached concerns the Earth’s global warming as a phenomenon, its grade, behaviour and the mechanisms that regulate it.

During the holocene when the last glacial period finished (some 12.000 years ago) the planet entered an interglacial era, whereby temperatures gradually increased without following a straight upwards line, but showing ups and downs (Paul A. Mayewski et al., 2004) For example in Europe, there occurred a much warmer period during the Roman empire, there was a short cold period between 1300 – 1400 and some warmer peaks around the 1650s, 1770 and 1850 (D.J. Easterbrook). The set of factors that contributes to the changes of global average temperatures are not only related to the planet itself, but also to the universe. Among others we can mention solar spots, changes in the the Earth’s axis towards the sun, thermal oceanic currents, the reflection of radiation on the Earth’s surface or the greenhouse gases (Fundación Española para la Ciencia y la Tecnología, 2004). Additionnally, the climate represents a non-linear chaotic system with feedbacks that, because of its complexity, makes any forecast extremely difficult; in other words there are still many pieces in the puzzle that we do not know about.

What has become clear is, that the changes in temperature of the Earth and its atmosphere are due to many different causes and do not just depend on CO2 concentrations, but in fact are regulated by a series of factors that serve as either positive or negative feedback factors that are difficult to calculate. For example, the function of water vapor and the clouds is still under investigation, and the same holds true for the factors related to snow and ice. Another example is the role that ocean currents have in transporting heat between the two poles (the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation AMOC and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation PDO), whose influence in relation to the climate and the changes of climate zones seems to have been underestimated, even regarding the poles. In spite of the fact that at the poles higher air temperatures have been measured, that does not seem to be the real problem, but rather the temperatures of the marine currents, which can be appreciated in Judith Curry’s(2017) summary. Related to the ocean issue there other phenomena that influence the climate, such as it is the case with El Niño and La Niña that have caused draughts or excessive rainfalls in some parts. (Piskozub, J. and Gutowska, D. 2014). The current reasons for changes in temperature and in general the climate’s behaviour are not at all clear so far. For example, the Swiss glacier expert Christian Schlüchter (2011) showed that during the holocene important temperature changes occurred. In the case of the glaciers he discovered that their length changed considerably over larger periods and that there were even changes in the timberline (see Schlüchter). What can be established therefore is, that the climate is changing, that there is currently a tendency towards global warming and that these data in fact do not show anything new, since in the far past the planet experienced even more drastic changes.

After these general points on the climate, we shall now introduce the human actor on the globlal stage.

2.2 Climate and Man

The second important issue is about the extent in which the human being through his actions can wield influence on the Earth‘s climate and on which levels. Deforestation or elevated CO2 emissions are two examples, whereby man seems to influence parts of climate development. The question of the role CO2 emissions has been studied for more than a hundred years and especially from the 1980s onwards this specific interest has increased considerably, not only in scientific circles, but even more so on political levels (see section 2.4).

Reviewing the extensive number of publications on global warming, what stands out is, that the discussions on CO2′s effects on the climate dominate the debates, opinions and the controversies. The influence of this greenhouse gas has been heavily contested, first of all for its level of influence, then for its sources and the role of each and finally for the way the issue has been introduced on political and economic levels (see section 2.4).

When the sun light penetrates the atmosphere, the earth absorbs this solar light (short wave radiation), warms up and then emits energy in the form of long wave infra-red radiation. The greenhouse effect occurs, when the latter enters the atmosphere and is absorbed by greenhouse gases, which in turn are heated up and consequently emit this radiation in all directions and therefore some parts return to the earth. However this effect contributes mostly to the heating of the atmosphere, while the energy that accumulates on the earth’s surface is subject to the process of convection of the surface air and makes it rise to higher layers in the atmosphere. The warmer air permits the increase of water vapor in the air, which in turn functions as a positive feedback and permits an additionaal increase in temperature. On the other hand, when humid air rises to the level that it reaches the point of saturation, it starts raining, which means a loss of energy and a reduction of the temperature. That is why there are doubts if this process leads to a positive feedback or not. In the first place it is important to measure and monitor the changes in temperature in the atmosphere. The Earth‘s different surfaces (humid or dry) have there own characteristics. The water of the oceans warms up very slowly, while the earth’s dry surfaces heat up much faster, but lose that energy just as fast once the heating source – sunlight or hot air – disappears.

Apart from the CO2, there are more factors influencing in one way or another the development of the climate, such as it is the case with water vapor, that constitutes the major part of greenhouse gases and its levels depend, among others, on the Earth’s forests. Urban heating is another factor that plays a role, although sufficient data as well as research on these specific details are still lacking.

As one can see, there are a number of factors, that influence the climate system on many different levels, as it it is the case with the forementioned ocean currents. What we want to know how decisive human influence is on the climate and more specifically, if man through his actions can have a direct influence on it.

2.3 Human Beings and Climate

The third theme that came up in our conversations aswell as in our Internet searches is the form in which human intervention influences climate (anthropogenic influence) and to what extent mankind can change its negative or positive influences on climate and more specifically on global warming, although it may not always be clear what effects and consequences they cause.

What one has to keep in mind is, that this theme opens the way for another discussion dealing with the influence people can have on their environment. It seems that the media in general tend to link the notion of climate to that of the environment and even worse, sometimes it is suggested that there might exist a direct relationship between the two, while it has to be clear that any influence the climate wields on the environment and vice versa are indirect ones, since it is about two non-linear systems which both are continuously subject to feedback processes.

Let us take the case of CO2, that produces both desirable and harmful effects. CO2 is of vital importance for vegetation in general and an increase with regards to its content in the atmosphere helps plants grow and partially explains why the worlds green areas have increased during the last decades. The CO2 produced by industrial activities forms part of the so-called greenhouse gases, of which water vapor is the most important. The effects of these gases on the atmosphere form also part of the complex climate system. During the past 400.000 years or so (a time span that includes four glacial periods) the CO2 content maintained itself around 280-300 particles per million (ppm), which is low, when we consider that the minimum to secure life on earth is 150 ppm.(see geology.utah.gov.). During earlier periods this figure was much higher.

Moreover, one has to take into account that for horticulture, for example, the ideal CO2 content level should be al least 1.000 ppm (as managed in the glasshouse industry). Right now the content level is about 400 ppm. One important point in the CO2 discussion is to what extent CO2 is responsible for the increase of global temperatures. As early as 1896 the scientist Arrhenius  had calculated that when the CO2 content is multiplied by 2 the global temperature might increase by 1 degree and see for example Nicholas Lewis, Judith A. Curry (2014).

There is still much to be investigated to get a better knowledge on how these systems really work, whereby we have to realize that anthropogenic CO2 emissions form about 4,5% of all CO2 circulating around the globe. Furthermore, the importance of water vapor is generally underestimated and specifically in relation with its influence on the Earth surface temperatures. This points, among others, at the tremenduous damage deforestation causes for the environmental hydric management (Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies,2018).

Obviously all countries have to react to the threats imposed by a slowly changing climate and to respond to the calls for preventive measures in the first place. The measures to be considered concern the increase of sea levels (although this phenomenon has also other causes, such as tectonic movements), large periods of droughts or excessive rainfall, or the strength of hurricanes, although the IPCC (see section 2.4) indicated, that there frequency diminished a little. The reasons why more extreme wheather types are occurring include a wide variety of possible explanations, e.g. see Christopher H. O’Reilly, Tim Woollings, and Laure Zanna

The increasing urbanization on world level also plays an important role and apart from increased CO2 levels wields also a series of other influences.

However, there still reigns uncertainty, if all efforts to diminish CO2 emissions in the end have a positive outcome or not – also depending on what we see as being positive.

2.4 The Earth’s climate and what we do with it

The fourth theme is of a different nature and relates to the society’s attitudes, decisions and policies with respect to climate change and environmental management. The case is, that large parts of the debate on climate change are not so much based on scientific facts and verifiable data, but rather touch upon political and economic issues, short and midterm planning and increasingly on financial levels and dealing with direct decision making. In other words for the information generated by scientists to reach the general public, it passes through a series of filters, such as political interpretations, financial interests or the press, which may cause distortions, changes or omissions in relation to the original information. For example, Maurice Strong warned already some time ago that life styles had to change to less damaging consumption patterns with regards to the environment. Strong became the first president of the UN Environmental Programme, whose main focal points were air pollution, the termination of fossil fuels and the role of CO2.

From this initiative the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was developed in 1988, whose mission was to provide an objective and science-based opinion on climate change, its impacts with their natural and economic risks, and possible reactions to them. So, from the very start IPCC’s task was to generate specific information as support for decision-making processes as far as climate change concerned and man’s influence on it. In 2007, the Nobel peace prize was granted in equal parts to the IPCC and the US former vice-president Al Gore.

The IPCC is first of all a political institution and its reporting is based on the research of many highly specialized scientists. However, over the years many of them realized, that their contributions were hardly used at all in IPCC’s publications. Criticism led to some corrections in IPCC’s reporting in 2010, and emphasis was put on the institution’s capacity to maintain a transparent and wide coverage of scientific viewpoints as well as improving general data gathering procedures.

During the past fifty years and after the publication of the Club of Rome Report (q189) that warned about the environmental problems confronting us, a series of forecasts were launched, which in the end turned out to be incorrect, such as the case that fossil fuels would run out by 2020 (q227). Another example are some figures published by the IPCC that were way higher than the ones published by universities around the globe. Under influence of the IPCC the term Global Warming was changed into Climate Change with emphasis on the role of mankind in this change. That is to say the climate issue was changed into a case that concerned not just heavy industry, wars or the excessive use of cars. In practice it meant that the basis was laid for establishing a direct connection between environment and climate suggesting that both are heavily influenced by the anthropogenic actions. The link that climate had to connect with the environment was specificly the CO2 emissions, that were presented as the main cause of global warming and at the same time could be controlled by human beings. Billions of dollars had to be invested to neutralize or at least diminish CO2 emissions. For many years now international organizations on political (e.g. UN, EU) and financial levels (e.g. WB, IMF) have given exclusive priority to any initiative related to climate change, to the extent, that they started to talk about a “climate crisis”. With this crisis emphasis was put on the capacity to mitigate the effects of this crisis, while blaming malpractice and inefficient management as from the 19^th century onwards. Thus it is about risk and damage management, early warning systems, capacity of and adaptation to recuperation to justify the inversions that the global financial system needs to safeguard its continuation. That is to say the so-called climate crisis createdthe opportunity for financial and political involvement and results of scientific climate investigations were interpreted that way.

3. Global Warming: myths, facts, and questions

Our search on the Internet led us along winding roads through non-linear and chaotic systems, that make any forecast of climate development in the future a tricky business. We looked into the relation between climate and global warming, then at the reciprocal influence between climate and human beings and also in the way the enormous amount of information is used in the press and in social media, on political as well as economic levels.

There exist a series of arguments either in favour or against the different positions to approach the issue of climate change. Following a summary of the most important points we encountered:

1. It seems obvious that the climate changes since this is inherent in its own system; during this interglacial era there exists a tendency for global temperatures to rise, although during the past thousand years there have been marked fluctuations for reasons that are still not quite clear.

2. Apart from this moderate increase in average temperature (within the range of 1-2 degrees centigrade during the past hundred years), a bigger increase can be expected. The question is, if the increase of CO2 content in the atmosphere (from a level of 280 ppm at the end of the 19^th century up to 400 ppm nowadays), actually contributes actively to the increase of global temperatures. Our search on the Internet has left us with the impression, that there does exist an influence in this sense, but just in a moderate way, especially since there does not exist a direct relationship between increase in CO2 levels in the atmosphere and increase in global temperatures, but rather this influence is subject to a series of simultaneous occurrences, which has to be expected in a typical non-linear chaotic system. Moreover, CO2 is only one of various greenhouse gases.

3. Human influence on the climate exists and certainly on the level of gas emissions, such as CO2, but not only that, there are also the issues of forest management (de/reforestation), water and air pollution and in general environmental management. This concerns first of all the quality of life, but also influences the climate, although because of the complexity of climate systems this influence is not well defined in terms of effects or consequences. Therefore it is important to stress that climate is one thing, but its influences on the environment encloses a different set of issues.

4. It has become clear, that the scientific results from the various universities around the world do not point in just one direction, but often can be interpreted differently, which may lead to internal debates in the scientific world. In turn this may lead to different interpretations on political, economic, media or environmental levels and therefore may depend on who is interpreting them.

Related to this theme the gap between political interpretations and the development of independent scientific research has even widened. It may be a coincidence that whenin these post-capitalist times with accelerated globalization and changing international finance structures, suddenly climate change is also accelerating. However, indicators point at an arrangement to suit an economic re-activation based on huge climate crisis investments. According to the independent organization Climate Intelligence (CLINTEL) there does not exist a climate emergency and they emphasize the importance that climate science should be less political oriented, while climate policies should be more scientificly based.

We have encountered a series of facts and noticed some myths - in the sense of what the public in general believes without being scientifically based -, however in the end we are left with more questions than answers. One of them has to do with the reactions or answers on behalf of the representatives of religions or religious groups with regards to global warming. As far as we know from the Internet the official positions of world’s religious leaders towards possible measures that could be pushed on world level to alleviate the effect of greenhouse gases have been quite poor. This near silence on religious levels is about matched by two countries that provide together more than half of the world population: the Peoples Republic of China and India. On Internet level at least no massive campaign could be found to confront a so-called climate crisis, while on the level of the environment extensive programmes can be encountered, directed at mitigating harmful effects and in support of sustainable development. The importance of these observations lies in the fact that the term “global” may not necessarily refer to the entire world, but rather to the western world linked to a neoliberal-capitalist system.

Here we are actually questioning the political-economic influences that lead us to even more uncertainties. Additionally if we take into account the COVID-19 pandemic at the beginning of 2020 and its profound influences on economies worldwide, it must be clear that the important players on the world scene such as the US, Russia, China and the EU will no longer give priority to climate change and will focus completely on savingtheir own economies from a possible collapse.

It must also be clear, that saving the environment as well as supporting a sustainable development in the struggle against poverty, hunger, racism, or gender inequality have been relegated on the world’s agendas to lower ranks. It is the developing world – the third world – that suffers most and it is clear, that they will need the enormous loans offered by the first world.

It seems, that the urgency to try to diminish global warming will lose its impulse, but what really should worry us are the environmental conditions that no longer can be subordinated to an economic development damagingnot only our environment, but to a certain extent even the planet’s climate.

The present article was developed in collaboration with P. Dercksen, MSc.; M. Th. Baayen, MSc. and F.van Sluijs, Ir., whose observations and help contributed enormously to the content and quality of this article.

» This website is not commercial and does not generate income; therefore from those who actively use its content we appreciate a voluntary contribution, small or symbolic as it may be, by pressing the DONATE button (Paypal system) at the bottom of this page «

All rights reserved. Complete or partial reproduction is prohibited without the permission of Marinus Gisolf and without mentioning the source

All rights reserved. Complete or partial reproduction is prohibited without the permission of Marinus Gisolf and without mentioning the source

Phenomena, Experiences and Me: an introduction to phenomenology and tourism

This article intends to demystify the term phenomenology and at the same time to explain the importance to open one’s mind to subjective experiences as source for knowledge acquisition of the reality each of us lives. Therefore the description of phenomenology is something personal, and that could not be any different since the own experience of any phenomenon or whatever happens around us concerns the process of experiencing and becoming conscious. The character of this article is of an educational nature directed at undergraduate students of social sciences in general. At the end the link is made with tourism and some applications of phenomenological concepts.

 Introduction

It should be clear that each person’s awareness and perception is in accordance with the whole range of experiences recorded in his or her memory and is based on notions, images, prejudices and previous impressions. The act of involving our personal criteria in the evaluation of external phenomena and to lift these criteria to an inter-relational level leads to wide and enriching interpretations of the reality we live within ourselves. What we have to realize is that whatever happens to us or in our environment forms a potential source for information, depending whether there exists a particular reason to extract a certain fact or occurrence from its context to be presented on its own. This also means that for information to be recognized as such it must generate some specific interest in someone.

Our own existence embodies a certain representation and interpretation of the lived world and our contact with things is continuously interceded by prejudice and expectations whereby the role of language dominates. Whatever questioning of reality elicits answers that are manipulated beforehand, since there exists always the pre-comprehension of everything we think. We understand through the comparison with what we need to understand with what we already know. Understanding is a circular activity within a circle of interpretation. A sentence for example is a unit of understanding. Its words are interpreted within the meaning of the complete phrase, while the meaning of that phrase depends of its context that in turn depends on the meaning of its elements, what closes the circle. In this sense logic as a linear model is not sufficient for comprehension.

Moreover, things have no meaning within themselves, because they mean something different for the person who projects himself as a greengrocer, sportsman or scientist, for example. Each of them have different projections that determine the way they see things. The greengrocer sees a fruit from his commercial viewpoint, which is different to the view of a biologist or a very hungry person. That is to say this fruit is not so much a neutral piece of data that exists outside our perception, but depends on the intention of which an object is scrutinized and then appreciated. Another way to describe this idea distinguishes different structures of one thing: there is a changing appearance in accordance with our intention and its context, which is called the first structure of a thing; then a thing has certain physical properties that make it stable over time and in phenomenology this is called the second structure. Within the line of thought of Descartes the two structures are presented the other way round – the mathematical/physical structure first, representing a way of thinking that still dominates in most parts of the world.

Phenomenology concerns foremost the first structure and therefore uses rich descriptions of atmospheres or environments and what Husserl calls the categorical observation, that can also be related to poetry or art in general. This partly explains why so-called “phenomenologists” feel a discrepancy with sciences such as mathematics or physics that only study the second structure of things. Therefore we can summarize our perception of phenomena from another angle: within the framework of phenomenology it is assumed that each person holds a different world-view and therefore of each phenomenon. The chair that is right in front of you is different for each person observing it, while according to Cartesian thinking (of Descartes) everybody supposedly sees the same chair. Our experience is much richer in content than just what is observed through the senses and within the phenomenological tradition there exists a direction towards the meaning of things within our experience, and more specificly the meaning of objects, events, the flow of time, yourself and the other as presented in the lived world around us.

We can add that the distinction between the knowledge of our perception of things and the knowledge of a thing itself is one of the fundamental themes in Plato’s philosophy. In his Theory of Forms the intellectual reality possesses immaterial and eternal qualities and therefore cannot be subject to change and constitutes the archetype of the other reality, the sensible one that consists of what we call normally “things” of material characteristics and will change therefore, resulting in being just a copy of the intellectual reality.

 Husserl’s Phenomenology

Phenomenology has its roots in the end of the 19^th century based on a philosophical movement of A. Brentano (1838-1917) and later by E. Husserl (1859-1938). Phenomenology as development by them was directed at a replacement of the reigning paradigms of positivism and adopted individual perception as a reliable resource for knowledge production. It can be seen as a sort of extension of Immanuel Kant’s (1724-1804) ideas, who argumented that what he called Noumenas are in themselves unknown things and have to be distinguished from the Phenomena that represent the world as it appears in our mind. Kant insisted that what we experience in our mind is reality and that no object is knowable by itself if not through the intervention of the subjectivity of the person who is observing.

A complete definition of phenomenology is paradoxical by lack of a central theme. Indeed, it is neither a doctrine or a philosophical school, but rather a style of thinking and a method that is open to experiencing in different ways each time with changing results, which may confuse any person that tries to define the meaning of phenomenology. The phenomenology as a philosophical study field can be distinguished from other fields, such as ontology (the study of existence), the epistemology (the study of knowledge), logic (the study of valid reasoning), ethics (the study of what is good or bad) among others.

The phenomenology according to Husserl concerns basically a systematic reflection and study of structures of consciousness and the phenomena as they appear in acts of consciousness. Literally, the phenomenology is the study of “phenomena”: appearances of things, or things as they appear in our experience, or the forms in which we experience things, that is to say the meaning of things within our experience. Phenomenology can clearly be distinguished from Cartesian thinking that sees the world as objects, sets of objects and objects that act and react to each other. Phenomenology is the study of the structures of consciousness experienced from the point of view of the first person ‘Me’. A wide range of types of experiences are studied, such as the perception, thought, memory, imagination, emotion, wishing and strength of will, while even physical consciousness is involved, physical action, social action and the linguistic activity. The structures of these forms of experiencing involve what Husserl calls the intentionality, that is to say the direction of the experience towards things in the world, dealing with a consciousness of or about something. An experience is directed at an object on the basis of its content or meaning (what the objects represent, also historically) together with the appropriate conditions that apply.

According to Descartes (17^th century) and later positivism among other schools of thought the human being possesses a body and a soul, the latter being linked to our faculty of reasoning. The human being exists because s/he thinks, which is an activity of the soul that forms part of reasoning, while at the same time the human body has certain physical dimensions, size and form, that is to say the body can be mathematically defined. A marked separation is made between a person (body and soul) and the world. In phenomenology this separation is denied and neither it is accepted that things have meaning primarily because of their shape and measures. The denial of the separation of subject and object was originally introduced by Brentano and later by his pupil Husserl. They applied the notion of intention: psychical phenomena posses a direction towards something, which physical objects do not. Consciousness rests not within oneself (Descartes), but maintain a continuous activity of myself characterized by the intentionality towards things.

Phenomenology for Husserl is the science that tries to discover the essential structures of the conscience and is characterized to search for original experiences and to expose them in their context. This means that on one hand one considers an external world that gives a phenomenon some sense and on the other an internal world that realizes how the experience is perceived as a whole from the perspective of the one who lives it. The conscience is always being conscious of something, it is a flow of experiences that does not stop. All that we hear is of something (a song for example) and all we see is of something (a chair or a flower), or all desire points at something we love. One of the concepts in phenomenology is “myself” that exists in comparison to “the other”. Without the other there is no myself (me) and the form in which the other is experienced cannot be separated of the way one experiences the self. The continuity of being oneself can be achieved in a relation and not so much as an exclusive internal process.

Another pillar that supports the concepts and methodologies of phenomenology is the notion of the essence of a thing. Phenomenology presents itself as a philosophical reflection that insists on founding objectivity of knowledge on a method whose main rule is to leave the things themselves present the essence of their content through an intuitive glance that presents things spontaneously as they are to those that experience them, while bracketing their judgement on the validity of their prejudices, opinions or interpretations on those objects. The objective of phenomenological explorations is to be conscious that they are systematically applied through repeated observations and critical studies as to reduce the effects of prejudice. It is therefore preponderant to search for essence free of prejudice, memories or expectations and it is precisely this search that can be compared with peeling an onion whereby layer by layer is removed until getting at the essence of a thing or phenomenon – a search that is also called “epoché” or “bracketing”. The act of seeing a flower for example is an experience regardless if you can touch the flower, if you see it on the Internet or in a dream. The confrontation with this”flower” is a conscious experience whereby the physical state does not matter, since that refers to the second phenomenological structure.

The classic “phenomenologists” (between quotation marks because phenomenology is not something exact and each one handles his or her own version) distinguish two main methods, apart from other trends in this vast area that takes up phenomenology. The first tries to describe the type of experience exactly like we found it within our own experiences (current and past). Husserl and the Frenchman Merleau-Ponty (1908-1961) talk of pure and rich descriptions of lived experiences. With the second method we interpret an experience by relating it with the relevant characteristics of its context. According to this trend the German philosopher Martin Heidegger (1889-1976) used the term hermeneutics, that is to say the art of interpretation within a context and more specifically within social and linguistic contexts. Heidegger’s hermeneutics describes the being-in-the-world (Dasein), among others, giving meaning to our being in the lived world (Lebenswelt) through representations and analyses.

Phenomenology and science

Phenomenology has been applied in about every corner of knowledge production and development. On the level of academic research work phenomenology accepts individual perception as a reliable resource for knowledge production and employs mainly qualitative methodologies, while trying to avoid prejudices and preconceived suppositions concerning human experiences, sentiments and answers to particular situations. Based on impressionism among others, with hermeneutics as developed by Heidegger a new way was paved with specific focus on meaning and not on measures, i.e. not to provide variable results in a positivist sense, but to add a viewpoint of the issue under investigation. This allows a researcher to dig into the perceptions, perspectives, understanding and emotions of people who have experienced and lived effectively the phenomenon or situation in observation.

In the case of psychology, for example, a phenomenological approach implies more an exploration of the relations a person maintains with his external world than an exploration of a person’s inner-world. If this relation is directed towards an object, within this process the object acquires a subjective and human dimension. An example would be the case when a person suffers of depressions and at that moment the world around him seems to be grey, dark and cold. On one hand the human being is reflected in things, but on the other the meaning of things influences the human being. A thing-in-itself (Descartes: ‘chose materielle’) is denied.

Phenomenology can be described as the investigation and description of phenomena as they are experienced consciously by the person who lived them. This is first of all directed through conversations and interviews, apart from direct observation or the study of audio visual material. The degree of experience of the participants does not matter, or their social and cultural background or preconceived ideas, because the research is primarily focussed on lived space, lived body, lived time and lived human relations. The element of context also means that research is usually carried out on the spot under conditions that are as natural as possible and not clinical. The approach of academic research is of a holistic character, which also point at the importance of context and the assumption that a whole is more than the sum of its parts; moreover it should be clear that phenomenology invites a multidisciplinary research approach.

 Some well-known phenomenologists

There have been a series of philosophers and sociologists that have contributed or have applied phenomenological thinking. An example is Karl Marx (1818-1883), who put the phenomenological problem of appearances in the centre of his criticism of political economy in an effort to reveal the interconnectedness and social relations of exploitation. Merleau-Ponty (1908 – 1961) committed himself with the husserlian concept of Lebenswelt (lived world) and understands philosophy as a phenomenological activity of examining the world, wherebythe descriptive method of the lived experience results adequate to treat existentialist problems. Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980) believed that our ideas are the product of real life experiences and that novels and theatre plays can very well describe fundamental experiences within the same standards of philosophical essays. Additionally, for Sartre intentionality applies to emotions as well as knowledge, to desires as well as perceptions. An interesting case is that of Michel Foucault (1926-1984, French sociologist and philosopher) who did not want to have anything to do with phenomenological ideas, although most part of his work respires phenomenological sentiments. For Foucault phenomenology is far too personalized and directed at Me, while within his concepts the human being forms an intrinsic part of a broader discursive formation and even episteme – that is to say the individualistic succumbs to the social and to the environment.

Some applications within phenomenology

To finish this short introduction to a theme without limits some concepts will be explained that have been developed under phenomenological influence:

• Holistic > Holism is a concept created in 1926 by Jan Christiaan Smuts, who discovered that the tendency of nature to use a creative evolution to form a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. In general terms, holism refers to a system and its qualities that are analysed as a whole in a global and integrated manner, because from a functional point of view it can only be understood in this way and not as a simple sum of its parts.

• Liminality > comes form the Latin word limen that means threshold. The term was invented and presented by the French anthropologist Arthur van Gennep in 1909 to describe a rite of initiation of adolescents towards adults. During the 1960′s liminality was applied to concepts of transition from one state to another, whereby it is difficult to appreciate the frontiers between concepts. Within liminality, borders instead of separating serve for interaction and confluence.

• Emic-Etic > phonemics is the study of phonemes, which are sets of sounds produced in one specific language and represents an understandable meaning to the native speakers of that language. Phonemes are only related to one specific language and its culture and each language therefore possesses its own sets of phonemics. Phonetics is simply a physical and acoustic study of the sounds used in whatever language. The terms emic and etic were first introduced in linguistics by Kenneth Pike in 1967 and later these concepts were applied in anthropology, whereby emic referred to the knowledge and interpretations as told by a community itself from within, while etic refers to generalizations of human behaviour from the viewpoint of an (academic) observer. In general the term emic can be related to a phenomenological trend and etic inclines more towards Cartesian thinking.

• Space-Place-Cyberspace > Boundaries of spaces are flexible and have been constructed symbolically and interpretatively. In general spaces are cold and emotionally inaccessible, that is to say, spaces may have certain characteristics, but they never have character. On the other hand place means a space that reaches beyond material presence and tangible qualities such as size, proportions of characteristics: a place is what people make of a space through their emotional attachment and interaction – they are humanized spaces. An example is the difference between a hotel room (space to sleep) and one’s own bedroom (place to sleep). In the case of cyberspaces, the Internet is an infrastructure that can be described as a virtual environment where the laws of physics do not apply, since cyberspace has no mass or size, that is to say no physical boundaries. The conventional relation between physical space and time come together in cyberspace: an intangible world, but real, where Cartesian interpretations do not apply, but human imagination rule as an instrument for promoting social relations. Cyberspace does not compete with either places or spaces, but it complements them. It has the ability to relate without occupying any “space”, butstill fulfilling a similar function to architecture: cyberspace provides an infrastructure for social interaction.

 Phenomenology and Tourism

Within the study of tourism, phenomenology has served as a path towards the description and understanding of experiences lived by hosts as well as guests. That is to say it is about an encounter between one and the other, whereby the latter from a phenomenological viewpoint refers to people from outside a host community, in practice being travellers, pilgrims, salesmen, tourists and so on. Tourism and travel studies within a phenomenological framework have concentrated more than anything else on the lived experience by participants in an encounter, dealing with mainly qualitative research with emphasis on rich descriptions and with ample room for interpretations and reactions by participants and researchers themselves.

Within the lived world the concept of a space/place paradigm forms a useful tool to dissect the relations between them and us. The phenomenological approach towards travel practices emphasizes spaces with flexible boundaries based on symbolic interpretations that invite an encounter between what is here with people from out there, whereby an interaction takes place between human as well as material stakeholders. Within this context the space where people live can be understood as places for them: humanized spaces, which translates the encounter into the locals living in their places meeting strangers who arrive at spaces that are unknown to them. When engaging and interacting in this foreign space, that at first may even seem hostile, visitorstry to turn a physical and mental space into a relational place, depending, among others, their liminal status. It is precisely this part of the encounter that is governed by a concept that is as old as humanity itself: hospitality as a set of customs, etiquettes and rights. This means that the economic part in travel practices and the positivist approach that usually accompanies it forms just a part of this much wider concept of hospitality.

The dominating economic view of tourism from late 19^th century onwards was based on a positivist tradtion and followed Cartesian lines, whereby visitors were considered clients and the local population and infrastructure as providers. In these cases too fenomenological based research has been carried out to test client satisfaction among others, systematically ignoring the fact that the encounter between ‘us’ as local population and ‘them’ as visitors embraces a much wider scope on different socio-economic levels, counting with mutual understanding on the basis of equal power. The concept of emic may be useful for research on these levels.

The purpose of this short introduction to phenomenology is first of all to create a recognition of the different ways a human being can view the world and secondly to break a lance for non-linear ways of thinking, whereby, among others, subjectivity is acknowleged as a valid source of knowledge.

This website is not commercial and does not generate income; therefore from those who actively use its content we appreciate a voluntary contribution, small or symbolic as it may be, by pressing the DONATE button (Paypal system) at the bottom of this page

All rights reserved. Complete or partial reproduction is prohibited without the permission of Marinus Gisolf and without mentioning the source

All rights reserved. Complete or partial reproduction is prohibited without the permission of Marinus Gisolf and without mentioning the source.

 Tourists’ Profiles and Lifestyles

 1. Introduction

Trying to understand how tourists may behave in environments that are foreign to them is the object of this article and is of direct interests to those working in tourism or studying the subject. In this article it is explained, that with tourism activities, it is not about what a destination can offer or what tourists want from a destination, rather it deals with what at any given destination can serve each type of tourist. For some time now there have been a series of attempts to classify these ‘types’ of tourists for scientific as well as mercantile purposes. First of all a summary will be presented of the main stream developments regarding tourists’ profiles and their practical uses. Then a framework is presented that may help identify the ends tourists are after and how they can be matched at a destination.

 2. Types of attractions and types of tourists

 Tourism is about the encounter between tourists and their holiday destination and therefore it is this particular relationship we shall embark on. Tourists have their sensory intake from sources, called impact sources (q52). Similarly, other terms used are ‘toured objects’ (q110) or ‘experience clues’ (q169, q221, q66). Holiday tourists may look all the same with their bright-coloured clothing, expensive bags, cameras and funny caps, but in fact each of them experiences their vacation differently. When tourists enter their holiday destination local identities – cultural, sociological or natural – become associated with a significance they may have for tourists, whereby these identities turn into impact sources. In other words each tourist attributes some value to the impact source he or she is confronted with through association, recognition, comparison or imagination, among others. The question how we can differentiate among these attributed values leads to an inventory of tourists’ reactions to impact sources, that is to say to the results of their internal processing of sensory intake (q52): tourism deals with what at any given destination can serve each type of tourist, emphasizing the binomio tourist-destination as nucleus of the tourism activity. However, it would be erroneous to describe the encounter between destination and tourists just as a stimulus-response model. Once we interprete the encounter between destination and tourists as the convergence of emotions and activities being an existentially authentic process of interactions that may lead to experiences for both sides (q163), we shall be able to reach a much broader understanding of the phenomenon called tourism.

Impact sources themselves can also be differentiated on the basis of economic value among others. Tourism destinations consist of tourism services, such as hotels or restaurants, and also of tourist attractions, whereby a distinction can be made between the main attraction embodying the destination’s pulling power and side attractions taking advantage of the tourists’ presence. The former can also be called main impact source and the latter side impact sources (q52). For those attractions that are specifically developed or adapted for tourism, visitors will have to pay – in other words these sources represent economic value and are market dependent.

Next there is the general ambiance of a place, its normal daily life and cultural heritage, which is there anyway with or without the presence of tourists. The destination shares these impact sources or experience clues with tourists and hence they can be called Shared Impact Sources (q52) and they form the basic ingredient of any (tourism) destination. One characteristic is, that tourists do not pay for their use and therefore these do not represent direct economic value in tourism. In most cases locals do not receive money for the tourists’ presence either, other than from additional economic activities such as selling souvenirs or by improved local infrastructure, for example. It must also be clear, that main or side tourism attractions are just expressionsof a destination’s culture and not its embodiment. This is an important observation, since it is in contrast to most marketing techniques following the ruling economic approach, whereby marketing is restricted to these impact sources with economic value, while the rolling hills, neat little churches or the locals’ colourful dresses are used as background for the promotion of specific tourism attractions (q222). In marketing what is of importance to the locals – their daily life and surroundings – is pushed backstage (q225) to create the opportunity for visitors to spend.

Returning to the subject of the encounter whereby tourists convert local identities into impact sources – which may remain unnoticed or intensively lived – setting up a typology for tourists and their likes and dislikes prompts an additional question: any of such typologies may be used for a number of different purposes, each of which may require a specific starting point and development. Predicting what type of holiday or destination tourists may like is one reason for such typologies, another may be the design of a tourist attraction and there is also the direct interest of the marketing sector. It seems that predicting tourists’ destination preferences has received the bulk of research interests and more practical approaches have been designed for this purpose. Afterwards some more theoretical methods will be analyzed concerning the general disposition tourists have and which may serve more the marketing sector.

2A. The practical approaches

There seems to be a widespread consensus on tourist typologies concerning a continuum or linear scale with both extremes represented by few tourists only and the middle sections covering more than half of them. In 1972 Stanley Plog (q219) published one of the first of these scales, which later was to be called psychographs. One extreme of this scale refers to individualists people travelling alone or with a partner or friend. They will make their own itineraries and travel at their own rhythm and pace. They want to be active, tend to avoid typical tourist sites and have a keen interest in local populations and their culture. Volunteer work is a serious option and encounters with one’s self and with people from other cultures are of great importance. This is the idealistic end of the scale and since these people try to depart from the usual standards, we can call it the allocentric part of this lifestyle scale.

The other end of the scale gives us a profile of people who do not want any problems before or during their vacation, they like to have everything arranged for them and they want complete relaxation. They are concerned about their own bodies, and therefore their interests are in the fields of sunbathing, massages, spas or plastic surgery, just to mention a few. They have no particular interest in local people or their culture. We call this end of the scale the psychocentric one – see graph 1 at the end of this article.

Plog’s research led to the identification of three more intermediate groups for a total of five: psychocentrics – near psychocentrics –midcentrics – near allocentric – allocentrics. More recently the terminology has been changed and a sixth group has been added: traditionals – sightseers – journeyers – voyagers – pioneers – venturers (q81). Although over the years underlying concepts have been changed – and Plog has made many changes – the model remains a useful instrument, although thorouhly based on western style communities – especially from the USA. Updates of Plog’s tourists’ profiles description can be consulted at: http://besttripchoices.com/travel-personalities/quiz/

One has to keep in mind that the vast majortiy of tourists can be found somewhere in the middle between these extremes. In practice this means that the differences between tourists at either side of the centre are small and therefore difficult to measure. Additionnally, in an ever changing society increasingly moulded by globalizing effects these smaller differences may in practice be unnoticeable. Plog’s model therefore may be useful for specific societies – such as the USA – but for other continents its use may turn out to be limited. The psychographs are mostly about predicting tourist destination choices, but its usefulness for the design of tourist attractions is not clear.

From 1982 onwards Pearce (q156) started to publish a series of proposals around the concept of the roles tourists play in contrast to roles played by travellers. Pearce (q156) emphasizednot so much tourist behaviour itself, but rather a series of criteria for a taxonomic evaluation of typical tourist roles that in turn can be differentiated from other types of roles that are not typical for tourism, but which are related to travelling in general in some way or another. In his article published in 1987 (q223) he distinguished five travel concepts: Environmental – Close Encounter – Spiritiual – Pleasure – Business. It is about an approach whereby subjectivity is turned into a formal model, based on the presumption that there are typical tourist roles that differ from any another travel behaviour pattern. In the end it is about efforts to predict tourist behaviour and its impact on a destination environment. One of the criticisms that has been ventilated of Pearce’s concepts is that in more recent years the World Tourism Organization has widened considerably the definition of a tourist, which means that nowadays the relation tourist-traveller is seen in a different light undermining Pearce’s original concepts.

These two efforts to set up some kind of typology of tourists have been developed with direct practical use in mind. Next we shall look into two examples, whereby a sheer scientific approach forms the cornerstones for typology theories – the first based on socio-psychological grounds and the second with a clear psychological underpinning.

B. The Theoretical Approaches

Eric Cohen (q30) follows a phenomenological reasoning, in which he proceeds from the degree to which tourists let go of the orientation of their every day world and focus on the Other and the unknown (q69). The tourist experience itself is a varied entwining of alienation from everyday life and longing for a different place. The extent to which one is inclined to detach from the familiar world (centre) and attach to a world elsewhere (centre-out-there) may vary significantly and results in a “continuum” of experiences (q159). Underlying travel needs and motives differ highly among (potential) tourists, revealing the importance of the mental distance in tourism rather than simply the physical one.

Based on Cohen’s five orientations, Elands & Lengkeek (q159) set up a series of five modes as part of a quantitative study of people camping at nature sites, ranging from the amusements mode in which individuals step outside the ordinary in search for entertainment, to the dedication mode, whereby the estrangement from ordinary life is so strong that a new everyday reality is sought elsewhere. These shifts in modes or orientations relate to two other terms often used: travel motives based on escape and search respectively (q35; q69; q68). Some tourists may stick to their daily circumstances, while others open up to different socio-cultural environments. Elands & Lengkeek (q159) aimed to understand this propensity to either stay close or move farther away from what is familiar as a dynamic ‘predisposition’ that influences immediate and retrospective experiences of tourist situations. The typologies of subjective interpretations and experiences can be summarized as follows:

Table 1: Key characteristics per experience mode – adapted from Elands and Lengkeek (q159) with additions made by Marinus Gisolf

Table 1: Key characteristics per experience mode – adapted from Elands and Lengkeek (q159) with additions made by Marinus Gisolf

An attempt can be made to link the modes with concepts such as needs, expectations and liminality.

1. The recreational orientation: the stories and metaphors are well known and do not create any tension with everyday reality. Tourists want to be entertained and do not try to depart from their social roles.

2. The second orientation – the diversionary mode – refers to a real difference with normal life and the need to break away from it. A typical metaphor used is that of “recharging batteries”. There is a genuine search for the unknown and tourists take consciously distance from their home social life. However, many will not deviate from the beaten tracks.

3. The experiential orientation refers to much stronger implications of stories and comparisons. The unknown has to be experienced, the break from the own society is complete and consciously liminality zones are entered. Metaphors refer to the mystical, the feeling that there is more between heaven and earth than we can understand. The wild is symbolized by the big five of animals and nature by erupting volcanoes or dense forests.

4. The experimental orientation is very much directed to the Self. Tourists submerge in their holiday environment in search of new values and experiences. Liminality is consciously sought and lived, while experiencing takes on an existentialist manner. Metaphors tell about deep religious believes, about amazement and rapture. The tourist is prepared to undergo a transformation.

5. This orientation is existentialist and motivations are primarily concerning the Self. Liminality is lived in full and the tourist seriously considers the option of passing the threshold to try to enter the destinations socio-cultural environment on a permanent basis. Metaphors refer to the role of nature for the planet, its immensity and untouchability. Religious experiences can also be related to this orientation.

Concentrating more on a personal socio-psychological approach serves as an advantage when trying to apply this typology to a broad set of different cultural settings as well as an ample array of nationalities. When designing tourism activities it is of vital importance to evaluate the encounter tourists have with the destination and to what extent a destination want tourists to enter their world. In this sense managing spaces and places is one of the keys as will be explained furhter on.

A sheer psychological reasoning was applied for the Tourism Experience Model (TEM) developed by J. Gnoth (q163). The TEM first seeks to understand the process of experiencing itself as the precursor to experiences. This is important when considering, on the one hand, the tourist’s role and desire for fulfilling experiences and on the other the unique nature of destinations that are to be involved. Gnoth and Matteucci (q163) explain, thatexperiencing is not only contingent on how the mind perceives the activity in which it is engaged as it interacts with its environment, but also on what the destination provides in terms of possible experience clues. The tourist’s mind becomes aware of its holiday destination in two outlined modalities: the mind either applies the perceptual norms, standards and expectations of a person whose perception seeks the alignment with roles, or his/her mind is humanistically oriented and seeks spontaneous convergence of emotions and situations that reflects the individual’s existence. In this sense there exists a certain agreement with Cohen/Lengkeek’s vision with regards to the degree of detachment of the home environment.

In describing the interrelated processes by which human beings acquire, change and adapt knowledge and skills as a function of their emotional being-in-the-world, one can begin to understand how tourists structure and perceive their destination (q163). The TEM is based on two axes: the activity axis (from consolidating and self-directed to exploratory and other-directed) and the consciousness axis (from role authenticity to existential authenticity). These also show four overlapping areas: egoistic pleasure seeker, re-discoverer, knowledge seeker and holist. 

Egoistic pleasure seeker: In this mode, the tourist experiences known feelings and outcomes and is able to predict what moderately novel environments may produce, and varies their intensity to a measured degree through choice and decisions.

Re-discoverer: Here, the tourist begins to rediscover him or herself as he/she seeks to apply some form of effort in order to re-establish known skills and capabilities.

Knowledge seeker: Novelty seeking moves beyond self-gratification when becoming exploratory and when the mind is seeking.

Holist: If exploratory behaviour becomes spontaneously playful, experimental and seeking existential, emotional convergence, activity becomes creative and holistic as moments are experienced as Gestalts rather than differentially experienced details.

An additional dimension to consciousness and activity is therefore the tourist destination itself as the physical and mental space that turns into a relational place when the tourist engages and interacts with it. It can reveal the types of agency the destination assumes in the interaction (q163) and it is precisely this point that leads to the question of how different types of intervention at a destination can be distinguished.

3. Destination typologies

The four typologies mentioned here – Plog, Pearce, Cohen/Lengkeek and Gnoth – are just some of the many attempts to frame tourism behaviour, to set up a typology of tourists or to design a Tourist Lifestyle Scale. The next step now relates to how corresponding impact sources can be categorized in order to be matched with tourism experience modes or life styles. Earlier on one particular division was mentioned: main and side impact sources with economic value versus shared and incidental impact sources, which tourists can enjoy for free. There is another possible way to distinguish impact sources.

The structure of experience is based on tourist interactions with places, people and artifacts. However what is considered a place at a destination may turn out to be an unknown space for a tourist.It is the destination’s space-place relation that moulds the tourism encounter and resulting tourism activity. Place implies space, and each home is a place in space. A place requires human agency; it is something that may take time to know and a home especially so (q165). The notion of place goes beyond physical matter and transcends tangible qualities such as size, proportions and features (q173). A place is what people make out of a space with their emotional attachment and interaction. Tuan (q171) characterized places as “humanized spaces”, wondering how people understood and recognized them and how they imparted meaning to them.

In practical terms it means that one’s own bedroom is an intimate place, but a hotel room is just a space to sleep. This is an important observation. Both share structure and intention, but the first contains a wealth of emotions and impressions from experiences gained over a certain amount of time, which cannot be said of the hotel room, a scene for only a few nights. The example turns out to be even more intriguing when taking into account the case of home stays, whereby tourists sleep in spaces that are clearly places to the local people. Tourists become backstage intruders in local life.

For local people their daily environment is directly place related, which turns the encounter between tourists and their holiday destination in the widest sense of the term into a complicated entwining of space/place concepts (q222).

Both spaces and places can be turned into experience sources by tourists, but each can be ascribed distinct features for their functioning in tourism. If a place can be defined as being relational, historical and related to an identity, then the space that cannot be defined as relational, historical and related to an identity can be defined as a non-place (q166). International hotel chains, airports or shopping malls are examples. Main tourism attractions are specifically developed for tourists and represent spaces exclusively for them. This means that local people who might visit this attraction may feel the same distanced space, although in the past they may have known the site as a familiar place. Tourists might try to convert these spaces into recognizable places for themselves, however, they will still remain among tourists (q222). Different are those spaces where tourists intermingle with local people in a local setting. This encounter opens up a wider array of options for tourists in their effort to turn space into place, depending on their own predisposition to either stay close or move farther away from what is familiar. In mixed spaces more often than not tourists are non-paying consumers. The point here is to what extent tourism attractions may be scaled on a space-based perspective. Not only do tourists and local people mix at spaces, this may also be the case at public places. Those present in a concert hall are all listeners regardless their background. In general the mixed places show the most interesting mix of direct contact between locals and tourists, while the latter may actively try to convert the mixed place into a personal place. Finally there are places with different characteristics: so-called backstage local life, which is about living places by definition and it is therefore hard for any tourist to penetrate, although there are examples, such as backpackers or volunteers.

So far arbitrarily 5 contact zones between holiday destination and tourists have been distinguished: non-places, tourism spaces, mixed spaces, mixed places and local places. The analysis of the role of spaces and places within the tourism activity at a holiday destination on the one hand and the socio-economic factors defining possible experiences sources on the other is summarized in Table 1.

Returning to experience modes and ways of experiencing as presented in this article, a figure can be designed that serves as a general framework of what at a destination will work for each type of tourist. In Figure 1 the horizontal axis shows the various experience modes as set forth by Elands & Lengkeek (q159) whereby visitors and the people being partially visitor/tourists have been added, while the vertical axis shows the socio-economic impact sources.

The different areas representing space/place relations have been indicated in the figure. Figure 1 is an imaginary model that represents the extent to which tourists make use of tourism attractions depending on their alienation from their home society and the level of search for alternative experiences; a similar figure can be designed on the basis of TEM (q163). The width of each column (tourist experience mode) does not refer to absolute numbers of tourists. These figures do not exist, since the distribution is arbitrary. There are many visitors and visitors/tourists, but whether they outnumber the so-called ‘real’ tourists is questionable and different for each destination. Figure 1 serves as a theoretical framework that helps identify at a destination which types of impact sources may generate a way of experiencing or an experience itself and as such serves a dual purpose. First, the framework helps identify and categorize all impact sources at a destination, especially those that do not represent direct economic value for tourism, while, secondly it provides indications for which orientation of tourists experiencing these impact sources may serve. This model will show up differently for each destination, although general outlines are mosty likely to be similar.

An example would be a tourist who has been identified by the use of questionnaires or direct contact as somewhere between the “Change” and “Interest” modes as set out by Elands & Lengkeek (q159) or between the Re-discoverer and Holist headings in terms of the TEM (q163). Following Figure 1 this tourist will generally be avoiding the non-places and will require limited use of tourist spaces. These are already clear indicators for tour operators or travel agents when preparing a holiday proposal. For this example Figure 1 also indicates that direct contact with local people is desired, a liking for everything that is shared with the local population and this tourist may even want to move into places that usually form part of the local daily routine. Choice of hotels would be the more cosy and small scales lodgings and informal relations. Furthermore, this tourist likes to take his own initiatives, so a holiday with a rental car and a flexible programme would be recommended.

4. Final remarks

What popularly are called tourist profiles or lifestyles and the existing interest in these typologies for marketing reasons have to be handled with a certain caution. A isolated tourist profile without context does not exist. Profiles, typologies, personal characteristics are all relative and highly subjective concepts. Two main arguments have been presented in this article: one cannot separate the tourists’ experiencing from the tourist destination. The second argument embarks the uses that is given to the data generated by typologies.

The first argument needs to be reiterated once more: in this article it is explained, that with tourism activities, it is not about what a destination can offer or what tourists want from a destination, rather it deals with what at any given destination can serve each type of tourist. A destination represents the physical and mental space that turns into a relational place when the tourist engages and interacts with it. Tourists’ involvement in a destination depends on their personal disposition, which can be typified on the grounds of psychological or socio-psychological grounds as explained.

The second argument refers to the purpose typologies are developed, being for the marketing of specific tourism products or for the development of tourist attractions at a destination – just to mention a few examples. The data about tourists’ profiles can be used to help predict tourist behaviour, their choice of holiday or destination and their ways of experiencing. However, there is a catch, because there are more factors in play: the external ones. Bad weather, money problems, robbery, heat waves or tropical storms, road incidents and so on all have a direct impact on tourists’ behaviour. First, external factors may influence a tourist’s choice of holiday deviating from his customary profile and secondly at a destination behaviour may also change on the grounds of forementioned factors.

What interferes with regular tourist behaviour paterns according to the various experience orientations is the form and extent with which tourists react to external factors. Among others this depends on the extent a tourist follows his usual logic and reacts similarly as in his home environment or looks for solutions himself for the (unexpected) situations he is confronted with.Up to date there has been relatively little research on this issue of how tourists react to negative external factors and to what extent their reactions coincide with expierence modes and orientations.

 Additionally, there exists the practice among tourists from the 21^st century on, to be involved in what is popularly known as “tourism zapping”, tending to mix various types of holidays: a few days of wellness holiday alternating with some really adventurous tours, then a bit of culture, while not forgetting one’s Self by engaging in a Reiki course (q150). Figure 1 helps select in this case the different areas that may be combined. Specifically under globalizing influences combining different types of impact sources and destinations seems to be more common nowadays.

At a holiday destination matching tourists’ profiles with certain tourism attractions may be useful, first of all for marketing purposes and secondly for arranging infrastructural aspects in accordance to what tourists are supposed to expect. Figure 1 is just about that. At a holiday destination drawing up an inventory of attractions according to features that can be matched with similar social psychological traits in tourists is a vital exercise for understanding what tourism is about. This inventory then can be matched with the existing image or brand a destination presents, while helping tour operators or travel agents classify any destination’s impact sources according to the specific market segments they relate to.

A last remark: from the beginning of the 21^st century a vast part of (western) tourists travels electronically well-equiped, which may undermine the notion of staying closer or moving farther away from the home environment. It is difficult for anyone to separate oneself from home while continuously in touch via mobile telephone or other devices. It is not yet clear what the consequences are for tourists’ attitudes and how tourists with different experience orientations may handle the Internet during their vacation, but I would not be surprised if I had to re-write this article within a couple of years!

This website is not commercial and does not generate income; therefore from those who actively use its content we appreciate a voluntary contribution, small or symbolic as it may be, by pressing the DONATE button (Paypal system) at the bottom of this page

All rights reserved. Complete or partial reproduction is prohibited without the permission of Marinus Gisolf and without mentioning the source.

All rights reserved. Complete or partial reproduction is prohibited without the permission of Marinus Gisolf and without mentioning the source.

Introduction

  The debate on sustainable development started because the world’s future looks gloomier than ever: diminishing biodiversity, a thinning ozone layer, noticeable greenhouse effects, increasing poverty and discrimination against populations among others (see a.o.: q192 , q188 , q190 , q193 ). Eventually these symptoms reached levels that required solutions that are now being recognised as global (q179). The principles of sustainability were originally developed as a response to these problems. Additionnally my interest is directed at the role tourism plays in a sustainable development and also the extent to which this sustainability may strengthen tourism. In the first case it is about preventing tourism destroying itself by unsustainable practices. The latter case refers, among others, to a sustainable development creating an environment that is appropiate for tourism, void of visual contaminants and pollution, while safe and secure for tourists. A stable political context, sound economy and educated workforce are other parametres that refer to a sustainable development that can boost tourism.

In order to examine how deeply rooted destructive elements are in our Western societies and why there is a need to take a look at our environment with different eyes, I shall put things in a historical perspective and give a brief overview of the development of the relationship between people and their environment.

The Issues

From a legal point of view it is interesting to see how the role of our environment has changed over time. I am talking about things, which form part of the collective memory of a whole society or of a group of people sharing the same environment. From a juridical point of view the way people have considered their environment and nature has changed. Roman law distinguishes in this context two important concepts: a thing or good can have no owner, or there are things or goods that belong to everybody. These concepts are known in Latin as res nullius and res communis (see e.g. q216 , q84). The butterfly whirling around light heartedly has no owner. However at the moment she is captured, she is owned and she stops being res nullius and simply becomes a good. In the case of res communis I think of things that belong to all of us, such as the air we breathe or the sunlight we absorb. Those goods never have just one owner.

The more people there are on the planet, the more we can see a tendency for fewer things to belong to the category of res nullius and the goods that belong to all of us are of ever greater importance. It may be clear, that nature in the form of flora and fauna originally was considered to be res nullius (q84). The human being has always organized himself in relation to his environment. Social and economic structures were set up to secure a place in nature and it is this relationship between people and their environment that has seen drastic changes over time. From the development of the first Homo sapiens, humans competed with all other animals in nature for food. Nature did not have an owner, people formed part of nature and the concept of “private property” was not yet invented. When people started to develop agriculture, they became conscious of the fact that there were things in nature exclusively for them, and that other animals had to be excluded (q114). In terms of law, the fact of exclusion forms the basis for the concept of property (see e.g. q220).

The negative influences that gardening and animal breeding had on the environment were mitigated by the fact that people (some 10 to 20 thousand years ago) felt they were part of nature. The magic of growing plants and the close links with Mother Earth were the cornerstones of their vision of the environment. From the time when people stopped being nomads and founded villages – later to become towns – the link with nature started to change slowly. In part, this was a consequence of the conceptualization of God and the belief that the human being was His creation. The vision of the human being in the centre of the universe has led, among other things, to the development of the concept of private property. People claimed the right to possess something, from which everybody else was excluded. This act turned out to be of great importance for the development of the Western world.

Much later in history, a need to protect res nullius arose, which resulted in the legal figure of state or public property: goods whose exclusive use is restricted to citizenship.

As we shall see later, there are economic considerations in play as well: plants and animals in nature are res nullius and as such lack economic market value; but once they are captured, cut down or shot, they are converted into goods with economic value.

From the seventeenth century on, the concepts of private and public ownership developed to such extent that property became absolute and untouchable in character, breaking the link between nature and society and consequently the responsibility for the environment diminished, leading to the situation nowadays whereby property rights include the right to destroy one’s own property (q84). While a few centuries ago there existed agreement on how to handle the environment, this link has been lost and with it an enormous part of social solidarity in favour of untouchable property, even excluding any consideration on the conservation of nature, environment and society. Additionally, property as a right for future generations is only partially acknowledged. On the basis of higher legal security, life insurance and high inheritance taxes in Western societies, the trend is for those living now to have little concern for the future of the coming generations. They think that those newly won securities will cover them during their lifetimes. Diminishing religious interest (as a consequence of this attitude), living in the present, trying to be fashionable, the feeling that “you live only once” and the ever more dominating concept of “this is mine and nobody can touch it” start to dominate Western thinking. The notion of private property has reached such a state that neither children nor grandchildren are being involved. Property forms an inseparable part of the ego of a person. Not only do people’s considerations of their own future generations play hardly any role, solidarity with fellow citizens and with the environment has largely disappeared. Things without owners hardly exist anymore and even those goods under the heading of res communis are under pressure, not only because of pollution, but also because of the tendency to characterize everything in this world as property – either private or public. The conversion of drinking water into a commodity is one example.

From an economic point of view in modern market-related economies the concept of wealth is only related to what has market value. Goods or services for which value cannot be expressed in money (market exchange values) are not counted as ‘wealth’ (q97). This means, among other things, that nature is not comprehended in the concept of wealth, because it does not represent tangible market value. The destruction of nature, therefore, is not seen as a loss. To the contrary, this destruction forms an important part of increasing wealth, as seen from the point of view of market-directed economies.

This has not always been the case. Centuries ago, those economies functioning within capitalist relations were not only focused on the value of things, there was a content side to it as well. Any productive initiative demanded an investment to be able to start its economic life. With capital one can produce. However, this concept of content has been pushed into the background since the end of the Second World War, while the formal side of capitalism – values imposed by market relations – is dominating (q97). This has led to a growing trend of using capital just to earn more money without being productive. Stock exchange speculation is an example; it’s a ‘game’ in which one gets richer while another gets poorer. Real estate, insurance and world currency market dealings are other examples of people trying to earn money without being productive (i.e. creating material or spiritual wealth by its content). How much people earn seems to be the focal point, regardless of what or how much they produce – physically, mentally or culturally.

The increasing pressure on market economies to reproduce capital faster has led to shorter production cycles. This has been achieved in two ways: by shortening the useful life of a good or by combining a good with the concept of fashion. This means that after some time, products become old-fashioned, lose market value and are replaced, even if they are in excellent condition. In other words, to be able to continue producing at an ever higher pace pushed on by the need to produce gains faster, production has to be growing all the time. The consequences for nature are twofold: raw materials are being extracted from the Earth at an increasing pace while rubbish heaps are becoming mountains, because of the growing number of goods that are ‘returned’ to nature. Both effects lead to the destruction of nature, but neither is seen as causing a loss of wealth. They are rather considered necessary elements for creating wealth and development.

Market-related economies have realized that nature cannot be replaced and that its reproduction is relatively slow. This means that if capital wants to ensure its reproduction, protective measures have to be taken towards nature and natural resources. This has led to the curious situation whereby in many market-related economies, big investments are made to ‘repair’ destroyed nature, despite of the fact that this same nature is still considered to have no market value and its destruction is impossible to measure. From a technical market point of view they are investing in something that, according to the same market relations, does not exist. These types of market relations have come to the fore during the last 150 years or so and have been accomplices to the vast destruction of nature to date.

Humanity lives on unequal terms with nature. During the second half of the 20th century the number of species has diminished at the worst rate of the planet’s history (q217). However, nowhere on this planet this loss of biodiversity has been booked as an economic loss. It must be clear that the limits of sustainability have been exceeded and the speed with which nature reproduces itself is well behind the rhythm of the reproduction of capital. In other words, we take more from the Earth than she can spare for us. Our planet not only has limitations in terms of natural resources, but also as a recipient of waste and CO2 emissions, among others (see e.g. q186). The principals mercantile economies are based on do not contemplate the maintenance of the Earth. These economies are so concentrated on the production of profits that all else is subordinate to this and the planet does not receive any attention at all, much less its future.

This development has led to what we call the consumer society, whereby buying has become nearly as important as owning. More and more we are dealing with goods of which we should ask ourselves, do we really need them? It is all about a society where consumption has become a matter of survival, where solidarity within a society has largely disappeared and the human ego and property have become focal points to the extent that people are only concerned with life today and the future hardly plays any role at all.

Unfortunately, there are more factors active in making the total picture only gloomier. Agriculture suffers a lack of investments because of high risks and low returns in this productive sector, but there is another reason, too. Too much money within the mercantile societies is being used with only one aim: how to reproduce money as fast as possible, without minding improductive use or without thinking for one moment that the production of food needs investments as well. Additionally, under the pressure of diminishing natural fuel resources, oil in particular, bio-fuel production is gaining ground, but this means that fewer resources will be available for food production. Food will become scarce and expensive.

The concept of Sustainable Development

Measures to protect nature and the environment from destruction have become of interest to people at a rather late stage in history. The notion of nature and environmental protection, however, is an old one, but as a social movement we have to go back to the nineteenth century. During the 1860′s a number of national parks were established in the United States (Yellowstone among others) and countries such as Canada and Australia soon followed suit. On an international level the first act to be signed was for the foundation of the International Counsel for Nature Protection in 1913, which later became the World Conservation Union. In those times, the focal point was primarily the protection of nature, as well as the environment.

A new movement was observed by the late 1960s. The high post-second-world-war birth rate (‘baby-boom’) and changing population structures in the Third World (‘demographic transition’) that began in the 1950s spurred many environmental changes. The report produced by the Club of Rome in 1972 (q189) called Limits to Growth made clear that nature protection in itself was not enough. Apart from the introduction of many ecological issues, other crucial factors came into play: poverty and hunger. One of the basic concepts from these times was the idea that the achievement of a healthy society would depend on a radical reorganisation of social structures on a global level.

In 1987 a vision on development came to the fore laid down in what is now known as the Bruntland report: ‘Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’ (q195). The urge behind this vision can be traced back, among others, to precisely the report of the Club of Rome (q189). This report assumed that population and industrial production will keep on growing in a world with fixed available resources leading to a series of compromising effects, such as an ever increasing pollution, lack of non-renewable resources and soil erosion, while the resulting food shortages could mean a population collapse during the 21^st century. At the time the case for there being limits to economic growth as a result of environmental constraints did not receive much support by a majority of mainstream economists.

In turn, the Bruntland report pointed to a development structure based on three fundamental pillars, that is to say economic sustainability, social sustainability and environmental sustainability (q194). Sustainability is all about a vision of development clearly directed at the future. This vision includes close cooperation with local populations, which in turn means a clear recognition that a community, local population or ethnically homogenous group need protection for the conservation of their environment and their culture. Moreover, this vision wants to ensure the type of development that will allow all participants to become better off in both material and socio-cultural ways. This may be related to monetary income and/or to improvements in infrastructure or access to (state) services. The vision of sustainable development is therefore based on three fundamental pillars, that is to say (q194):

• Economic sustainability, which means generating prosperity at different levels of society and addressing the cost effectiveness of all economic activity. In this respect a long-term vision is crucial.

• Social sustainability, which means respecting human rights and equal opportunities for all in society. Among others, an emphasis is put on local communities, maintaining and strengthening their life support systems, recognizing and respecting different cultures and avoiding any form of exploitation.

• Environmental sustainability, which means conserving and managing resources, especially those that are not renewable or are precious in terms of life support. It requires action to minimize pollution of air, land and water, and to conserve biological diversity and natural heritage.

It is important to appreciate that these three pillars are in many ways interdependent and can be both mutually reinforcing or in competition. Delivering sustainable development means striking a balance between them (q194).

However, some criticism has been heard. Within the light of economic sciences it is suggested that sustainable development concepts have emerged in an attempt to reconcile conflicting value positions with regard to the environment (q179). Unlike the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the environment is now a global issue that requires both an international response and a global analysis.

During the 1990s a series of proposals were to follow regarding the core issues that surround sustainable development. Tourism as means of poverty alleviation was one of such initiatives (see e.g. q183), while much attention was drawn to John Elkington’s 1998 publication introducing the notion of a triple bottom line: ecology-economy-social with emphasis on sustainable human development (q218). There is now a growing recognition that environmental conservation is ultimately socially constructed and culturally driven and recognition must be given to cultural values, particularly those of indigenous peoples, and broader principles of environmental justice (q179). In practice it means, that to ensure that nature areas are preserved, somewhat paradoxically people will have to be allowed to visit environmental sensitive surroundings so that policy makers can be persuaded to maintain their reserve status.

The Johannesburg Declaration on Sustainable Development shed some new light on the issues and in 2003, the Marrakech Process was begun as a ten year plan whereby several Task Forces would analyze the issues of Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP) in support of regional and national initiatives.

It was not until September 2015 that the United Nations launched a new initiative called simply the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) (q193) , while the even more recent COP21 agreement on climate change has made clear the urge for all parties to be involved. The Paris’ COP21 agreements on climate change (q193) clearly indicate, that the many reports on climate change, global warming or loss of biodiversity (see e.g. q192; q188; q190; q193), reflect what is actually occuring and that a sound sustainable development is paramount, though not the only action to be taken. Furthermore, supporters of the Paris COP21 agreement note that it has already catalyzed private sector investments, and they point to cities and other sub-national actors who have taken the lead up to Paris as a cue to build towards a low-carbon, high-resilience future.

Tourism and Sustainability

Tourism has hardly played any part during any of the three stages of ecological and sustainable developments. When tourism began to develop on a global level, it had little impact on nature protection. During the 1960s and 70s, tourism was not affected by the environmental debate and was still considered a positive phenomenon – the “green industry” and “industry without chimneys” were the metaphors heard the most [QUOTE]. Although initially tourism was hardly mentioned in either of the Club of Rome or Bruntland reports, during the 1990s it had become clear that tourism was a major economic force combining beneficial and harmful outcomes of its activity.

It was not until the end of the 1990s that tourism was lured into the debate on biodiversity. In 2001, rules were established for Biological Diversity and Sustainable Tourism (Convention on Biological Diversity in 2001). The United Nations declared 2002 as the Year of Ecotourism. It is important to note in this context that the concepts of sustainable development in tourism were already playing an important role at grassrootslevels. Many action groups, Non-Governmental Organizations (e.g. The International Eco-tourism Society – TIES – was founded in 1990) or environmental associations had an important stake in the development of sustainable tourism, while international discussion of sustainability had halted somewhat. Meanwhile one has to realize that the lack of the State’s effective capacity to guarantee the complete protection of eco-systems while addressing the need for productive alternatives has created an opportunity for community based sustainable tourism developed by local people in order to find a solution to the eternal conflict between conservation and development.

Tourism was, and still is, seen as a mechanism to both conserve the environment and provide for economic development and employment generation (q193). These recently adopted UN Sustainable Development Goals state in goals 8.9 and 12.8b “…..sustainable tourism that creates jobs and promotes local culture and products.” (q193). However, tourism was only mentioned in 3 of its 17 main goals: in goal 8 on economic growth, goal 12 on ensuring sustainable consumption and goal 14 on the conservation and sustainable use of the oceans. Additionally, the notion that international tourism can be promoted as a means of alleviating poverty while simultaneously reducing tourism’s contribution to climate change has also been increasingly criticised (q185; q186; q190).

So far the role of tourists themselves has only scarcely been mentioned in the literature on sustainable tourism development and this role has been limited to portraying tourists as clients in an economy driven setting. Negative impacts concern the environment directly (diminishing biodiversity, deforestation, waste, etc.), water (quality and supply), the air or culture, affecting not only urban areas, but also rural communities (q184). It should be clear by now that the principles of sustainability can be handled much more effectively on a small scale local level, while global issues such as climate change need international attention at the highest levels. Working to conserve the Earth at the local level requires, among others, a strong educational element focused on making people aware of the harsh facts and giving them tools to create greater solidarity among communities, countries and continents. The role of sustainable development should be extended, since changes at local levels are an inherent part of achieving the solidarity needed.

Involving tourists directly in this development seems to be the only viable option. Tourism and therefore tourists themselves have changed from local to global actors. Canalizing their efforts and with it the convergence of the local with the global is paramount for achieving not only the Sustainable Development Goals, but also the COP21 targets to curb climate change.

On the basis of the previous considerations it must be clear that more is needed than just good intentions and development visions directed at future generations. The reasons why our planet has been affected to such enormous extent are deeply rooted, as explained in this article. The principles of sustainable development form an important initiative, but they are not the cure for the disease. Economic issues that have led to the systematic destruction of nature need much more serious solutions than a mere development vision. People’s attitudes – and most of them have been tourists – and their attitudes towards the concept of property must change drastically, particularly in the Northern hemisphere. However, as long as humans consider property as an absolute concept and as the basis of their individualism and continue to base their vision of life on it, it will be hard to realize any change at all. People’s vision of themselves must change dramatically and with it their relation to their neighbours and to their environment.

» This website is not commercial and does not generate income; therefore for those who actively use its content we appreciate a voluntary contribution, small or symbolic as it may be, by pressing the DONATE button (Paypal system) at the bottom of this page «

All rights reserved. Complete or partial reproduction is prohibited without the permission of Marinus Gisolf and without mentioning the source

GREENLOONS – Greenloons is committed to providing trusted, transparent information about authentic, responsible, sustainable and certified ecotourism travel vacations available around the world.

__________

http://www.villasgaia.com/

Hotel VILLAS GAIA – Ojochal, Costa Rica – your homebase to discover the Southern Pacific coast of Costa Rica

___________

http://www.greenmaven.com/directory/tourism-theories/

GREENMAVEN – the Green Website Directory

__________

http://www.greenhotels.gr/

GREENHOTELS is the first network of Greek Eco Hotels. By the term “Eco Hotels” they refer to those hotels which are committed to environmental and sociocultural management

__________

http://www.jamaica-no-problem.com/villages-as-businesses.html

VILLAGES AS BUSINESSES (VAB) is a community-based membership organization which has been established to assist communities in developing their infrastructure so that they can offer community experience tours to local and international visitors, so that these visitors can experience the lifestyle of our villages, our people, our heritage, our culture, our Jamaican foods and so much more.

GSTC – The Global Sustainable Tourism Council – serves as the international body for fostering increased knowledge and understanding of sustainable tourism practices, promoting the adoption of universal sustainable tourism principles and building demand for sustainable travel.

__________

http://www.iipt.org

IIPT – International Institute for Peace through Tourism – The International Institute For Peace Through Tourism (IIPT) is a not for profit organization dedicated to fostering and facilitating tourism initiatives which contribute to international understanding and cooperation, an improved quality of environment, the preservation of heritage, and through these initiatives, helping to bring about a peaceful and sustainable world

__________

http://www.acoprot.org/

ACOPROT – Costa Rican Association of Tourism Professionals

___________

http://www.actuarcostarica.com/

ACTUAR – Alianza Comunitaria Conservacionista de Turismo Alternativo Rural – Community Conservation Alliance for Alternative Rural Tourism

ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS

http://www.ecoforumjournal.ro/index.php/eco

ECOFORUM is an international, multi-disciplinary, refereed (peer-reviewed), print, online and open access journal aiming to promote and enhance research in all fields of Economics. ISSN 2344 – 2174

Publication: Asociatia de Cooperare Cultural-Educationale – Suceava, Romania

Stefan cel mare University – Suceava, Romania

__________

http://www.revistadeturism.ro/rdt

REVISTA DE TURISM (RDT) – studii şi cercetāri în turism

RDT is a biennial publication of tourism studies and researches within the Economics, Business Administration and Tourism Department of Economic Sciences and Public Administration Faculty – “Stefan cel Mare” University of Suceava, Romania.

__________

http://www.ciret-tourism.com/

CIRET – International Centre for Research and Study of Tourism – To enable access to the 841 research centers currently identified in 111 countries and to the 5,401 individual researchers currently identified in 119 countries and specialized in tourism and travel, and networking between researchers working on a given subject by e-mail or otherwise

__________

http://www.academia.edu

ACADEMIA.edu‘s mission is to accelerate the world’s research and to make science faster and more open. Academia.edu wants to build a completely new system for scientists to share their results, one that is totally independent of the current journal system.

All rights reserved. Complete or partial reproduction is prohibited without the permission of Marinus Gisolf and without mentioning the source

Needs, Motives and Motivations

Introduction

During human history there has always existed the social element of wanting to escape from it all temporarily, leaving the home scene behind as a prime motive without being very much worried about where to go – but preferably to an environment more agreeable than the daily grind. In the case of tourism this motive forms the basis for the desire to travel and includes the generation of a need. In this article the different levels of holiday motives will be dealt with, as well as their interactions with and influences on tourism and its markets.

Needs

 Needs, motives and motivations are the engines of human conduct and they play a fundamental part in the mechanics of tourism. The motivation exists when a person is capable of creating an impulse that leads to a need, which in turn will give a feeling of dissatisfaction until this need has been satisfied. To satisfy a need there is energy with a corresponding direction. Hunger and thirst are good examples of needs (q47).

The reason for wanting to travel is an inner motive and it is related to the question of why, whereas more specific motivations determine the answers regarding where and type of holiday (q154, q29). Travel needs and motivations also underpin the first expectations and may influence the final outcome of a holiday: it turned out better or worse than expected compared to the level of satisfaction of the generated needs. Obviously once a travel need has been satisfied it ceases to exist.

 The subject of travel needs can be studied from different scientific angles, with psychology, social psychology and anthropology as the most important. Many theories have been developed and several models have been designed. The humanist-psychologist Abraham Maslow published his hierarchy of human needs asa pyramid-shaped model with five layers as follows, from bottom to top (in: q29: p141):

1. Physiological needs (such as hunger or thirst),

2. Safety and security, including shelter;

3. Social needs, love and belonging;

4. Esteem, the need to be accepted and valued by others;

5. Self-actualization.

 Many theories on motivation and needs have used this model as a basic outline. Pearce (q156) applied it to the case of tourism and combined it with the tourist’s experience. He proposed five layers of holiday motivations (from the bottom to the top of the pyramid):

 relaxation (rest <> active)

stimulation (stronger emotions)

social needs (family, friends)

self esteem (self development through cultural, nature or other activities)

self-realization (search for happiness)

 Original travel needs and motives follow these different levels, the first two being the most common. It should be noted that this model is based on the Western world and in those parts where community life is especially valued, the ultimate goal is often not self realization but being able to serve the group, for example.

 Motives and motivations

 In the context of travel motives the concepts of push and pull factors are commonly used (q35). There are external motives in tourism that can influence tourists and pull them towards a certain motivation and subsequent decision. Tourism destinations often try to attract potential tourists and this pull factor can instigate a person to create a motive for travelling and to develop the corresponding motivation to visit this particular destination. This pull factor is also related to the search for travel motives tourists develop when selecting their holiday. At first pull factors evoke some kind of desire that can provoke a feeling of some sort of personal deficiency when this desire is not satisfied.

Apart from the pull factors, there are also impulses stemming from the inner person that push an individual toward a certain direction: the push factors. The element of escape is one example. Push factors are normally related to a lack (and not so much a deficiency) and if this lack is not satisfied it may cause harmful effects. A lack of rest (over-fatigue) may lead to a need and subsequent travel motive.

Different layers of motivation can be distinguished. The motives to travel are more generalized and year after year people from western societies generate motives to go on holidays, based on a given need. Then there is the motivation that is more defined and helps determine the type of holiday and destination (q154). The motive to travel stems from the inner person (push factor), but the more specific motivation that fills in the general travel motive often draws on external influences or pull factors. It is this vision of motives and motivations that is used throughout this website.

Additionally, most people are not led by just one motive, but rather a series of travel needs and motives may play out simultaneously, complicating matters even more. It may very well be the case that members of the same group doing the same activities may satisfy different personal needs or are pushed by different motives. Finally, the initial needs and motives may play a dominant role in tourism, but they are not the only springboards for human conduct, because social influences, cultural conceptions or religious views can play their part too (q33, q157), as indicated further on.

Escape, Search and Desire

 Profound changes in the way that place and time are experienced as a result of accelerated globalization have led to a new questioning of identity, the self and the place people take in this world (q36). Not only are ways of living leading to a sense of loss of identity, for many individuals computerized work conditions and everyday roles impose constraining and monotonous routines in which individuals find it difficult to pursue their self-realization (q110).

It is in this context that the development of travel needs is mirrored with fast growing consumerism, increasing insecurity about one’s own identity and the place people take in this world. The various motivations that (potential) tourists generate have a direct influence on the type of holiday they choose. Crompton (q33) based his theories of travel motives on two main lines: the need to escape (fleeing from the western stressful life or work environment) and the search for the new and the other. Although the gamut of travel motives is as broad as the number of people taking a holiday, in this article three main groups are used, with the element of desire in addition to the already mentioned search and escape concepts.

Escape

 Tourism can offer freedom from work and other time obligations, an escape from traditional social roles and the liberty to spend one’s time however one chooses. Indeed, tourism reflects the “anti-structure” of life, an escape from something, rather than a quest for something (q103). The travel motives originate from a lack of things needed for survival: a person can feel strongly that he is lacking something and cannot continue without satisfying it. In tourism terms this may sound harsh, but the fact is that for many a holiday is seen as a necessity for survival and to be elsewhere is seen as the only solution. The primary travel motive is wanting to escape from it all temporarily, leaving the home scene behind without being very much worried about where to go – preferably to an environment more agreeable than the daily grind. In this case the pyramid models designed by Maslow and Pearce relate to the lower layers of needs.

The first requirement of the concept of escape is gaining distance from one’s home environment. It is like living in between two realities: the home environment that has been left behind, and the destination where one is physically present but not as a part of it; this is a betwixt and between situation that is also referred to as liminality. The alienation of the home environment during the period of being a tourist refers to a space-related liminality, wherein places that themselves are liminal, such as beaches (between land and sea), are usually preferred. Temporarily abandoning the work environment seems to be one of the most important motives. For example, every year thousands of Italian tourists take charter flights to Cuba for a ten or more day stay at a luxury beach resort with Italian speaking staff, Italian food service, and Italian television and music. The element of escape refers to a space-related liminality and does not involve any alienation from their home society. There are other examples, whereby tourists do abandon their social status and with it they open up the opportunity to satisfy needs on the third or fourth levels of Pearce’s pyramid model. In that case it is about the individual tourist preferring bodily and spiritual wellness.

Search

 Travel needs and motives may also stem from an inner feeling of wanting to learn about new things, further fuelled by external pull factors that promise just that. This type of tourist has a fairly clear idea where he wants to go and he is not travelling away from his home (such as it is the case with escape), he is travelling toward a fixed destination. His basic need springs from the feeling of a deficiency that he has encountered in his home environment. This deficiency (contrary to a lack) is subjective and a social construct. If the tourist is not capable of satisfying this deficiency (with its corresponding need), he has to look for other ways to continue.

Once at a destination this tourist abdicates from his social status and indulges himself in the liminal practice of being a tourist. The elements of wanting to learn new things, experience different cultures, discover oneself and probe one’s own body are all basic elements of this personal search. In the pyramid models of Maslow and Pearce, this is about the top three levels. The way tourists look around, unimpeded by social obligations and connections, translates itself into a free absorption of impressions and their respective processing into experiences. The element of search is about seeking psychological fulfilment through a journey to a destination that is different from the home environment (q157).

Cultural tourism is based on the concept of search and it sometimes includes spiritual or religious experiences. Oneself and one’s own identity are important sources of traveller inspiration in a society, where people find it increasingly more difficult to develop themselves and their personal feelings of identity. The alienation of the home environment may also induce other types of effects. Once the original societal pressures have been released during a holiday, tourists may indulge themselves in practices to satisfy needs that are not allowed in their own country or region. Even the dark side of human nature may appear with sex and drug tourism as examples.

Desire

A totally different source of travel motives are the specific desires one may want to experience. It is about specialized themes that are more or less well defined. It may be about tangible matters, such as a specific interest (e.g. bird watching trip), a cultural interest (going to concerts of famous singers) or sports events. Another example is medical tourism. The importance lies in the travelling and not in being a tourist. Participants do not alienate themselves from social status and the idea of being in between two cultures does not play a part, nor does liminality. Tourists know what they want, assigning themselves a clear goal or mission and the source of motives and motivation is the desire that as such does not correspond directly to any urgent lack or deficiency.

Desire as a main travel motive may also concern intangibles, such as certain emotions or deep spiritual experiences. Ecstasy and anguish are examples. In the 21^st century so-called dark tourism has experienced a rapid expansion, in which negative experiences based on disasters or perhaps concentration camps may give rise to living extreme emotions that have been selected previously and can be controlled.

 The body, the emotions and me

 The needs and motivations to travel are subject to the state of mind of each individual, the position in society and the social environment. This means that travel motives may change with shifts in society or in someone’s personal life. Changes in conduct and therefore in generated needs are being influenced by postmodern tendencies affecting not only the western societies, but also a large part of the so-called developing nations. One of the most important manifestations through fast and intensive transport and communications channels is the compression of time and space. Life seems to be faster and the resulting pressure is mostly felt on the level of the lack of self-realization and being oneself. Another consequence seems to be that rational factors have started to control the non-rational ones (emotion, bodily feelings or spontaneity) leaving too little space for the satisfaction of the latter (q110). This has increasingly prompted a shift from the need to escape from it all to a need to search for one’s true self, whereby a liminal environment is the most suitable condition.

One of the consequences is that the development of travel needs and related motives is an increasingly repetitive phenomenon. Several times during the year there is this impulse that requires attention and demands free time in order to satisfy these needs – leisure time is still increasing in the West compared to working time.

 During the 20^th century potential tourists often depended on tourism markets, but from 2000 on we see a shift toward a more active role being played by tourists when defining the holiday. Motives and motivations are more geared towards the tourist desires and needs. The interaction between markets and users raises the question of whether the number of different tourist needs has increased and therefore the market has expanded its supply; or perhaps this can be turned around and one can imagine that precisely because of the increased variety in supply functioning as pull factor, the gamut of travel needs has broadened. The answer may be somewhere in the middle: in western societies consumerism has increased sharply and plays a dominating role (q151), generating a need to consume based on a supposed deficiency that did not exist before and this need is related to matters of what is fashionable at the time. In a consumerist society the question is not whether I drive a car, but the type of car I drive (q151). Consequently, travelling becomes more than just satisfying needs and it can be turned into a way to show the world a personal image and success. The social element of prestige can also influence travel motives. An increasing preoccupation with consumption could be said to make tourism the archetypal postmodern activity, as by its very nature it relies on the consumption of artefacts, natural and built environments, and culture (q62). However, this high degree of consumption may turn into an oppressive phenomenon for any buyer because, on the one hand the consumer cannot live without, but on the other he may dream of escaping it – though just for a while during the holiday.

In tourism the question of whether supply or demand drives the market is a complicated one. Shifts in markets have become visible through changes in tourist conduct. In practical terms this means that a slow change is occurring toward individual tourism to the detriment of mass and group travel. This last option is mainly related to the element of escape, since tourists today need more than that as a travel motive. Consequently when tourists search for personal authenticity, a complete rupture with the home ties is essential. Individual travel is accompanied by a wider supply of tourism options and a growing number of niche markets are emerging that cater to nearly every kind of human activity. In the 21^st century tourism destinations are increasingly selected on the basis of the activities they can offer and the motivation for selecting a destination will depend more on these offers and pull factors than ever before. The image of a place in itself is often no longer enough to attract visitors. In other words the selection of holiday destinations is based more on activity-related experiences and tourists are interested in more than one specific activity. Nowadays tourists satisfy a series of needs, whereas before the start of the 21st century only a few needs were being satisfied.

The element of transformation under liminal circumstances in relation to the element of search with travel motives is increasingly related to the element of well being as a result of the physical limitations imposed by western work conditions. During the 20^th century travel needs and motives were primarily directed at the physical distance from the home environment, but in the 21^st century tourists are inclined to (re)discover their own body as an inseparable part of the ego. As a consequence, a growing need for increased luxury and comfort can be observed, which translates into the use of spa resorts, centres for well being and more luxurious hotel rooms (mainly 4 and 5-star ones). Another trend is taking shorter holidays more frequently and this must be related to reasons of deficiencies rather than a lack of something. Economic conditions in the West are still favourable and many people can afford to travel regularly.

Desire as the main motivating factor for a holiday has resulted in a growing number of theme group traveloptions that concentrate on certain specializations such as bird watching, orchids or nature photography. On a spiritual level there are now more opportunities for groups or individuals through courses in yoga or reiki, usually offered in a natural setting or in the countryside.

Final Remark

The explanations presented here about needs, motives and motivations serve as a basis for gaining insight not only into tourists’ conduct, but also into the changes to which they are subjected. The concepts of needs and motivations are complex because they include the reasoning behind conduct and attitudes in general. What has been proposed in this article is a simplified model that may serve very well in practice.

» This website is not commercial and does not generate income; therefore for those who actively use its content we appreciate a voluntary contribution, small or symbolic as it may be, by pressing the DONATE button (Paypal system) at the bottom of this page «

All rights reserved. Complete or partial reproduction is prohibited without the permission of Marinus Gisolf and without mentioning the source

All rights reserved. Complete or partial reproduction is prohibited without the permission of Marinus Gisolf and without mentioning the source.

Marketing ‘Inbetweenness’

Introduction

 Accelerated changes in style and speed of daily life in Western societies have sparked an urgent need for new tools to analyse the increasingly rapidly changing tourism markets and especially the tourists themselves. Hasty life styles, intensified communications and many other globalizing trends impede free self realization of most individuals living in the so-called developed countries and holidays have therefore grown in importance to counter the negative effects western life styles are causing. Escaping used to be the main motivation for a majority of holiday-makers, but conditions in Western societies seem to force people towards a search for re-encountering their true selves.

As part of the reflexive approach to tourism, in this article changing tourist behaviour is analysed as well as the involvement and the experiencing tourists show during their holidays, since these are of fundamental importance for an understanding of market changes in the hospitality sector and tourism in general. The period a tourist temporarily abandons social status and home influences can be described as a time of transition and transformation; it is like living in between two realities: the home environment that has been left behind, and the destination where one is physically present but not as a part of it; this is a situation of a betwixt and between. Postmodern tourists are locked into an ‘inbetweenness’ of two cultures, of falseness and authenticity or of constraint and spontaneity.

Inbetweenness is described in this article with an introduction to a fairly recently developed concept called liminality, which serves as a tool to get a clearer insight into the changes tourists and tourism are subject to. On this basis shifts in tourism markets are explained and finally a reference is made to the difference with other travellers in general concerning the relation between sustainable tourism development and postmodern liminal tourists.

1. Post-modern tendencies and tourism

From the 1960s on, new social and cultural actions have been coinciding with accelerated globalisation movements leading to what is now known as post-modernism (q60, q62, q117, q120). It has been most noticeable in Western societies and among others it has led to what is called cultural pluralism, which in essence means that people have started to lose their own feelings of belonging to a place by embracing many expressions of different cultures in one way or another (q92). Nationality, ethnicity, gender or class are no longer cornerstones people can build their identity on. This in turn has resulted in a growing egocentric preoccupation with the self (q86), with an increasing consumerist behaviour as one example and preoccupation with the bodily self as another (q62). Having lost their sense of “belonging to” a certain place or culture, it refers to the trend in which people’s strong feelings of once having been tied to that place and culture are now slowly giving way to being tied to a certain time or era (q50). Most people living in postmodern societies have not only lost the links with their cultural backgrounds, but also with authenticity and nature. They seem to live in a world that is increasingly dominated by images and representations, rather than by real and realist objects and phenomena (q92).

The loss of a feeling of identity amid un-authentic people, cultural pluralism, and time-space compression has created uncertainty about the present day and the future (q50). However, at the same time this has prompted a search for historical roots, an idealistic authenticity, longer lasting values or an eternal truth, often drawing explicitly upon the spiritual traditions of the East ( q60, q88, q120). Profound changes in the way that place and time are experienced as a result of accelerated globalization have led to a new questioning of identity, the self and the place people take in this world. Not only are ways of living leading to a sense of loss of identity, for many individuals, work and everyday roles impose constraining and monotonous routines in which individuals find it difficult to pursue their self-realization (q110).

An increasing preoccupation with consumption could be said to make tourism the archetypal postmodern activity, as by its very nature it relies on the consumption of artefacts, natural and built environments, and culture (q62). Additionally, if in postmodern times individuals cannot realize their authentic selves in everyday life, then they are liable to turn to tourism in order to reach this goal (q110); of course this does not imply that nobody can realize self-fulfilment in work or routine life. Tourism can offer freedom from work and other obligatory time, an escape from traditional social roles and the liberty to spend one’s time however one chooses. Indeed, tourism reflects the “anti-structure” of life, an escape from something, rather than a quest for something (q103).

2. Post-modern tourists

The increase of tourism activities is unsurprising therefore as reflected in the growth figures published by the World Tourism Organization (q113). Post-modern tendencies have influenced tourism in general through globalizing and others trends, whereby tourism is seen as a cause as well as a consequence of global transformation. Van der Duim (q41) explains that tourism as a cause, is supposed to induce global flows of people, ideas, imags and capital, whereas tourism as an effect results from increasing global interconnectedness of economic, technological and socio-cultural transformations. Within the context of postmodernist tourism, the clear tendency for more individualist experiences and exclusive authenticity have widened the boundaries of the tourism panorama as well as the number of activities and experiences that can legitimately be categorized as tourism. It seems that nearly every dimension of human culture now has the potential to become a form of tourism. At the same time, to become a tourist coming from a post-modern society and having travel needs based on escape and search encompasses three fundamental understandings:

1. Being a tourist means having to leave the home environment as part of satisfying a travel need;

2. The potential tourist expects to have experiences that in turn will affect him in some way or another; some kind of transformation has to occur. At the end of the holidays a tourist expects to come home having satisfied (some of) his needs and being enriched in many different aspects, other than the monetary one; most tourists expect that they are or feel different than before the holiday and this may just mean a nice suntan or a completely different outlook on life;

3. The third understanding is that tourists enter the unknown motivated by escape and search, where they have to rely on their expectations, previous experiences, factual travel knowledge and personality. Tourists are well aware that they enter a different socio-cultural and economic environment during their holiday where their home “rules” may not apply.

Preceding any tourist’s expectation there is motivation interacting with the need to travel. The need behind the travel motivation may refer to wanting to experience new things or to escaping in the sense of avoiding certain situations; breaking away from the daily grind may serve perfectly well as a motivation to want to travel. In other words, there are the explicit motivations often related to the element of escape, such as wanting to have a rest, recharge batteries, to have some variations from daily life or based on some specific hobby or field of interest, and then there are the implicit motivations: searching for inner-balance, wanting to take one’s own initiatives, pursue self-realization, use one’s own skills or experience involvement and engagement with a certain destination (q47). In the literature on the subject of travel needs and motivations, escape and search form the core elements that can be distinguished (q30, q35, q68, q69). However, the extent to which escape is a necessary step before searching is arguable.

Apart from the importance of the need to travel (point 1 above) and the role of expectations (point 2), point 3 refers to the issue of a tourist’s status at the holiday destination. The period a tourist temporarily abandons social status and home environmental influences can be described as a time of transition and transformation; it is like living in-between two realities: his home environment, which he has left behind, and the destination, where he finds himself physically but does not form a part of it. It is a situation of a betwixt and between or a no-longer but not-yet. Tourists enter into the unknown, where they do not participate in daily routine activities and slide into a world where their “rules” no longer apply.

3. Tourism and liminality

When analyzing this social phenomenon of temporary alienation, comparisons can be drawn with observations stemming from anthropology. In his writings published in 1908, a concept was introduced by French anthropologist Arthur van Gennep based on the Latin word “limen” referring to a “threshold or boundary.” Van Gennep described rites of passage such as coming-of-age rituals or marriage as having the following three-part structure:

1. Separation
2. Liminal period
3. Re-assimilation

The initiate (the person undergoing the ritual) is first stripped of the social status that he or she possessed before the ritual, he or she is then inducted into the liminal period of transition, and finally given his or her new status and re-assimilated into society.

But it was not until the second half of the 20th century that the terms “liminal” and “liminality” gained popularity through the writings of Victor Turner (q102). Turner borrowed and expanded upon Van Gennep’s concept of liminality, ensuring its widespread usage not only in anthropology, but other fields as well.

Examples can be found on different levels. Twilight serves as a liminal time, between day and night. Illegal immigrants (present but not “official”) and stateless people, for example, are regarded as liminal, because they are betwixt and between home and host, part of society, but sometimes never fully integrated. Trans-gender people in most contemporary societies or those accused but not yet judged can be liminal. Another case is that of just married couples: after the honeymoon (time of seclusion) they enter their new home, whereby the bridegroom is supposed to carry the bride over the threshold (“limen”) of the front door. The concept of liminality can be applied to individuals (rites of passage, puberty), groups (graduation ceremonies, religious gatherings, pop concerts, soccer hooligans) or populations (carnivals, days of national mourning or celebrations). The term liminal may apply to short or longer term occurrences, as in the case of periods of wars or revolutions.

The spatial dimension of liminality can include specific places, larger zones or regions. Liminal places can range from borders to no-man’s-lands or disputed territories. Mountain passes, crossroads or bridges are all liminal and do not forget the most important one in tourism: beaches as liminal zones between water and land, whereupon visitors forget their social backgrounds for a moment; besides, in a bathing suit everybody looks more or less the same – it is the physical status that starts to rule rather than the social one.

In most Western societies affected by post-modern tendencies there is no better way to demonstrate one of the most visible consequences of this than to point to the places in this world that have no cultural-historical ties or any fixed identity at all. They are also called non-places and are part of a phenomenon that started to spread around the world from the 1970s on (q22). Often they are seen as beacons for postmodern globalisation and include: international airports, shopping malls and international chain hotels. These are designed and built so that anyone from any culture can feel comfortable and have something they can recognize; places that are inseparably linked to consumption and trade and have an air of luxuriousness; places where people – tourists among them – will have little sensory intake and will be left with hardly any memories, other than their encounters with fellow human beings, although even these seem to be superficial. It is about liminal places and in tourism, airports or hotels where people pass through but do not live in them highlight theinbetweenness that defines these spaces. For a hotel worker (an insider) or a person passing by (an outsider), a hotel would have a different connotation for these two people; however, to a traveller staying there, the hotel would function as a liminal zone. These liminal zones are also characterized by a certain timelessness and cleanliness, erasing any signs of wear and tear.

4. Being liminal

For people, being in a position of liminality means foremost a withdrawal from social action and structures; actually the very structure of society is temporarily suspended (q102). In liminal zones a liberation occurs from the social, intellectual and physical limiting factors inherent to working conditions in the Western world and this refers to the body as well as the emotional inner-person: the liminal experience refers precisely to the feeling of being more one’s authentic self with a higher degree of freely expressing it. There are four recognizable effects this temporary suspension may cause.

First, hierarchy and social structures do not apply anymore, which means that their forces do not limit thought or self-understanding. In liminality people are able to analyze their lives and backgrounds more clearly and they tend to deny prejudices that may rule within their home environment (q110).

Secondly, generally social differences are de-emphasized or ignored (q115). Among groups of liminal people there exists a state of equality and even solidarity, especially when a common goal is sought, such as a pilgrimage, soccer fans accompanying their team, or at rock concerts. Spontaneous friendships, warm contacts and completely undifferentiated social relations tend to prevail. Even on a national level, the celebration of commemorative days or matches of national sports teams (Olympic games!) may “unite a nation.”

Thirdly, the liberation of societal constraints opens up possibilities for a more authentic self with higher levels of self-expression and spontaneity. It also means that reason, prevailing so much in daily life in Western societies, gives way to a more free flow of emotions. The original idea of transformation such as in the case of rites of passage takes place in liminal zones or in state of liminality.

Fourthly, on the basis of diminished social pressures another element may also manifest itself: the darker side of human nature. Under the influence of being in a state of liminality people may want to do things they otherwise are not allowed to do at home. In the case of groups, soccer hooligans are an example of such behaviour and on an individual level, sex tourism and excessive consumption of drugs can serve as examples.

Additionally there is the phenomenon of permanent liminality: an individual or usually a group of people enter a state of being liminal, but for internal or external reasons do not pass on to the next state of re-integration. Monasteries or convents are examples as are groups of hippies living alternative lifestyles. Refugees are by definition liminal and there are cases that their status remains so for an indefinite period, stuck in a society they do not belong to and unable to return to their home environment. This may lead to dangerous developments, precisely because of the lack of societal norms and standards. Extremist groups personify the dark side of the permanent liminal state and in most cases this is related to violence.

Another significant variable is the “degree” to which an individual or group experiences liminality, which depends on the extent to which the liminal experience can be weighed against persisting social structures (q96). Whether people are able and willing to enter a state of liminality voluntarily or by force or whether they consciously try to avoid it can depend on personality traits as well as socio-cultural backgrounds. Distancing oneself from the home social environment may also be different for young people (students) and children, since their involvement in the home society has not been fully developed yet and entering a liminal zone may not be experienced as a fundamental difference or as response to the hasty and stressful life the thirty to fifty five age group has to deal with. The same can be said of elderly people, especially when they are retired.

5. Tourists in liminality

Arguably indeed tourism enacts the three stages that characterize liminality: separation, marginalization, and re-aggregation. The second phase – marginalization – is linked to the concept of liminality. For most tourists entering the state of being liminal consciously marks the moment a holiday really starts. The physical distance away from the home environment helps tourists separate themselves from home societal life, freeing themselves from social structures in favour of a feeling of social equality among tourists in general with a feeling of increased emotional freedom and spontaneity. Clothing and in general the way of dressing is a nearly obligatory external sign for tourists to show they are entering liminality.

 Liminality in tourism can be explored from the inter-personal point of view or the intra-personal one (q110). The latter refers to tourists that are alienated from the home environment, which means a liberation from social constraints and from the loss of the “true self” in public roles and spheres. Tourism activities under conditions of liminality can help tourists re-find themselves as a direct antidote to the loss of the true self in ordinary daily life at home (q15). In such a liminal experience, people feel they themselves are much more authentic and more freely self-expressed than in everyday life, not because they find that the objects or phenomena visited are authentic, but simply because they are engaging in non-ordinary activities, free from the constraints of the daily routine. Among other things this means that the authenticity of emotions starts to prevail, enabling tourists to act much more freely among themselves.

The concept of the authentic self is mainly based on the balance between reason and emotion, and the latter on body and inner feelings (q116). Tourism serves in large measure as a means to help put this balance back on track after the sometimes devastating attacks imposed on most people in developed countries by the stressful and complicated life. Liminality helps create the environment in which tourists can regain their authentic self in the sense of a balance between self constraints and spontaneity (q110) and we could even go one step further and say that the authentic self can primarily be found while staying in liminal zones, while in the daily routine of life at home, it is rather a question of the in-authentic self caused by the process of alienation through the constraints and limitations put up by working conditions and societal pressures (q110).

As far as the bodily part of the self is concerned, beaches are a fascinating domain for analysing liminality in all its aspects, not only because of the territorial liminality between land and sea, but also because of the lack of a clear dress code and therefore the growing importance of bodily feelings at the expense of the mind. Moreover, the time after sunset and before it gets dark plunges the scene into the extra dimension of a liminal time zone. No wonder beaches are still a favourite spot for tourists to rid themselves of any feelings of homesickness. Stripping clothing and social status is different from sunbathing in a local park, where workers pass by and watch or criticize, in other words where normal social life continues.

When exploring the domination of body over mind that is occurring in beach areas, in the case of the bodily a sensual element can be distinguished that can be translated into feelings among other sensations and a symbolic element as part of a culture of sign systems – fashion and ‘good looks’ being two general ones (q44). The latter is related mostly to the idea of a “display” of personal identity, including health, naturalness, youth, vigour, vitality, fitness, beauty or energy, while the sensual element is related to inner-feelings concerning relaxation, diversion, recreation, entertainment, refreshment, sensation-seeking, sensual pleasures, excitement, play and so on (q30, q31). The element of escape is most clearly demonstrated by the physical freedom a tourist enjoys with the minimal clothing used as extra value. The element of search is less obvious and does not always exist for all people. Getting to know one’s own body, having a clearer feeling who one is physically and the sensual pleasures that are often not present in the home country help tourists free themselves from constraints at home and supports their self confidence and esteem. In general the terms used here refer to what is generally known as ‘wellness’ and beach zones have very much to do with that part of the authentic self.

Next to the intra-personal element of tourists in liminality, there is the inter-personal focus and whether liminality is conceived fully or partially there are some basic traits that can be identified.

Tourists in a liminal situation will regard each other as social equals simply based on their common humanity that generates spontaneous relationships developed between equals stripped from their structural attributes (q103). They form part of a liminal travelling tribe whose members will show their typical social contacting: they exhibit none of the reluctance to greet complete unknown fellow travellers they would otherwise demonstrate at home, while commonly introducing themselves to each other with the first name only and the place they come from. They exchange some travel impressions, joke about any general topic and mention their likes and dislikes of globalized products such drinks, top hit-songs or films. It is unusual during the holiday to mention social or occupational status, while attributes such as jewellery or brand-name clothing are left at home. Most tourists have similar consumption patterns, bathing suits, going around in brightly coloured clothing and baseball caps while shopping in more or less the same stores. The food served often reflects the liminal status: different from the home fare, but not typical of the destination either. With group travel, the liminal tribe element tends to show even more clearly. Often friendships within a tour group constitute one of the most important elements of the entire holiday experience and even after returning home many members of the group remain in touch with each other (q52). Liminality here refers not only to the alienation of the home social environment; it very much refers to the state of being liminal and the interaction between liminal people. Thus experiencing within a group is an element derived from liminality, whereby not only the pleasure exists of seeing uncommon things or phenomena, but also of sharing and communicating this pleasure instantly with fellow travellers (q24, q106).

Another point is that of nationality and customs for each country. Countries where people dispose of a relatively large period of leisure time – 4 weeks per year or more – tourists will have various medium or short holidays per year and their need for escape is probably less than their urges to search for new experiences. With 2 or 3-day escapes liminality is usually not sought and the main motivation is a particular interest, hobby or just going shopping (consumerism therefore). In other countries where people can enjoy only one or two weeks off work, the element of escape is likely to dominate the holiday agenda. In this respect it is worthwhile to mention that there are still large parts of the world where people do not enjoy any form of vacation.

One of the effects of being liminal is the opportunity for transformation either bodily, emotionally or mentally. Entering voluntarily a state of liminality creates expectations that may vary according to each tourist. Therefore it would be erroneous to presume that the liminal situation of tourists would erase any differentiation between them. On the surface and in the eyes of many local residents, tourists may all look similar, but the various orientations of experiences expressed by tourists indicate that motivations may differ considerably (q30, q69). Tourists find themselves in more or less liminal situations as part of their efforts to satisfy one or various needs and each tourist tries to have the experiences that fuelled his expectations originally. The liminal travelling tribe is out there on a mission and although this mission is distinct for each of them, nevertheless tourists also have common ground to share between each other.

6. Liminality – an illusion?

The influences of liminality can be analysed from a different perspective: what happens when something goes wrong during a holiday. An accident, robbery, natural disaster or illness will force any person to react to it and only this pressure of having to react breaks the spell of being temporarily free of daily responsibilities. Any mishap will trigger negative emotions such as anger, disgust, pain, disillusion and so on (q47), which are in complete contrast to the freedom experienced in a liminal zone. Under the pressure of negative emotions a tourist will fall back on his home environment, having to contact insurance companies, police, hospital or any other local or international body. Not only does a tourist have to again be involved in a series of networks he had tried to escape, he must also contact family or friends in his home country, picking up the thread of home social life and with this liminality disappears. It shows how delicate a liminal zone is in tourism and the extent to which voluntary liminality may be based on an illusion. With any mishap a tourist will quickly get the feeling that the holiday spell is broken, his being a tourist has finished while he is seriously considering getting home as quickly as possible where he can at least manage his environment and can feel much more secure again. The inbetweenness that defines liminal zones are constructs of the mind made virtual and the same zone may get a completely different connotation as a result of negative emotions. Additionally there is the observation that in the case of forced liminality (refugees for example) a mishap or similar would not change anything regarding their status. Turner (q104) coined the term liminoid to refer to optional liminal experiences such as those in tourism, limiting the concept of liminal to those that are part of the ritual of society itself.

7. Marketing the inbetweenness

The concept of liminality was introduced during the 20^th century, but the idea itself is obviously much older. Even in Greek mythology examples can be found of liminality (q101) and in Oriental as well as Western mythology many examples can be found of liminal personages, places and times. In tourism the concept has been used little so far and the first interrogative therefore is, to what extent the status of tourists being liminal and liminal tourist zones could have been applicable in the past. Hardly any academic research has been carried out on this issue and therefore the only useful leads come from field experiences.

As a practical example the observation can be made that at least until the 1980s it was common for tourists to send postcards with pictures of their holiday destination to friends and family. Colleagues would even be offended if they did not receive a holiday greetings postcard, even though this may not arrive until weeks later (q52). With the years texts became shorter and just before electronic mailing took over, they were even limited to simple picture language: a sun, knife & fork and a little heart to indicate that the weather was fine, food was good and love flourished (perhaps this picture language was the predecessor of electronic messaging and emoticons). It definitely seems that until the 1990s, most tourists had their home crowds very much in mind, meaning that their break from home society during their holidays was only partly experienced as such. It also means that tourists talked with each other about their worries at home and social status was not hidden as is now the case with most 21^stcentury tourists. Nowadays few tourists send email messages to friends or relatives during their holidays and if they do, it is by mass mail, lacking any personal touch and most of Facebook or Twitter use should be interpreted within this context. Communications via computer, iPod, mobile telephone or any other device is fast, voluminous and aggressive, leaving many tourists no choice but to disconnect themselves completely.

 Many tourists used to spend hours buying little presents for their relatives at home. But in the 21^st century, if tourists do buy presents during their holidays, this is left for the last day when the process of de-liminalization has started. The type of souvenir tourists buy nowadays seems to be more geared towards the cultural expressions of a local population, rather than buying something that would just remind them of the place they have been (ashtrays, T-shirts).

 Another observation is that tourists under liminal circumstances do not like to be reminded of time and this is another characteristic appreciated by liminal postmodern tourists. Timelessness is an important ingredient in liminal buildings such as international airports or hotel chains, made visible by the absence of clocks and the continuing presence of cleaning personnel, making sure that any traces of the use of the facilities is removed as quickly as possible, emphasizing the time-spacelessness of liminal zones.

 Tourists have much more access to information compared to the pre-computer era, which enhances the level of preparedness before the start of the holiday. Factual travel knowledge and backgrounds on the destination seems to inspire tourists to want to know more about where they go, increasing therefore the learning element (search as motivation).

 They are all signs of tourists slowly shifting their holiday behaviour to a progressive alienation from societal pressures as from the late 1990s onwards and these signs point therefore at an increasing degree of liminality. The changes in tourist behaviour are caused basically by the post-modern tendencies that increasingly affect societies around the globe. One of its most important manifestations through fast and intensive transport and communications channels is the compression of time and space. Life seems to be faster and the resulting pressure is mostly felt on the level of the lack of self-realization and being oneself. Another consequence seems to be that rational factors have started to control the non-rational ones (emotion, bodily feelings or spontaneity) leaving too little space for satisfaction of the latter. Emotional constraints seem to characterize post-modern living conditions, unbalancing the reason-emotion relation in favour of the former. This has increasingly prompted a shift from the need to escape from it all to a need to search for one’s true self, whereby a liminal environment is the most suitable condition.

 Therefore it is unsurprising that under post-modern influences the concept of liminality is rapidly gaining importance and people coming from post-modern societies tend to enter a liminal status more easily than it is the case with more traditional societies. The concept of liminality therefore is a tool to get a clearer insight into the changes that tourists and tourism are subjected to. The levels of involvement and experiencing that tourists show during their holidays are of fundamental importance for an understanding of market changes in the hospitality sector and tourism in general. As a result these shifts have become visible through various changes in tourists’ behaviour:

1. In practical terms it means there is a slow change towards individual travel to the detriment of travelling in groups or mass tourism. The latter is very much related to the element of escape exclusively, but nowadays tourists need more than just that, which also means that in search of one’s true self a complete breakaway from the home environment is essential. To resist the in-authenticity of post-modern life the authentic self is thought to be more easily realized in spaces outside the reigning social relations, where one can be true to oneself and keep distance from the constraints caused by work conditions, societal life and in-authenticity resulting in a growing importance of being absorbed by a liminal status (q110).

2. Inherent in individual travel is a wider range of possible holiday interests and with this a growing number of niche markets on nearly all levels of human activity. These tendencies have led to a series of market shifts, whereby new niche markets seem to arise at high speed. Similar to the fact that nearly every dimension of human culture now has the potential to become a form of tourism, any search for one’s inner-feelings and bodily needs seem to open up new niche markets. From the 21^st century onwards tourism destinations can be differentiated on the basis of a wide array of activities from health tourism to dark tourism or from new age tourism to sports tourism. As far as group travel is concerned, there is a tendency to organize them around a central theme, rather than just going to a destination.

3. The shift from group travel and mass destinations toward individual tourism and the growing importance of being liminal have prompted many tourists not to emphasize a specific destination they want to go to, instead they appear to look first for the activities they want to carry out. Since being liminal is a priority for many tourists to be able to fulfil their various needs, the choice of destination will depend more on the possibilities to satisfy those needs in the sense that for a destination just being famous is not enough anymore. Tourism destination selection is increasingly based on activity related criteria, while at the same time tourists are less fixed to one particular type of activity. In marketing terms the motivational element of escape can be related to push factors, while search as motivation can be directly connected with the pull factors of many marketing strategies. Along the same lines there is the tendency to do the so-called ‘tourism zapping’; like the postmodern way of watching television by “channel-surfing” – dipping in and out of different settings that capture the interest momentarily, regardless of whether or not the entire programme is watched – they readily mix different styles during the same vacation period: some adventurous trekking, a few days at a spa resort, culture in a city, a Reiki course at an ecological farm for a few days and finally some days at the beach. Dipping into different niche markets as part of the search for finding a personal balance has very much been related to tourism practices since the beginning of the 21^st century and with it the importance to be able to do so under liminal circumstances.

Of interest for marketing strategies is the fact that staying within a liminal status sparks off some side effects, of which the two most important ones are mentioned here:

First, the element of transformation in liminal zones, which is related to the element of search regarding tourists’ travel needs, has to do with tourists’ bodily wellness as a result of the restrictive use of the body in most work environments in post-modern societies. This is partly remedied by the use of gyms and fitness schools and the development of green areas, local outdoor attractions or “theme” parks in the tourists’ home countries, but generally speaking there seems to be a tendency for increased care of one’s own body during the holidays. It concerns a niche market that has grown so fast (q112) the word ‘niche’ no longer applies. Wellness, health or spa tourism is receiving an increasing response from a broad public that dedicates either part or the entire holiday to this tourism market. The existential experience and the importance of finding the authentic self prompt many tourists, once they have entered liminal territory, to focus just on body and emotions and the balance between the two. The quest to recuperate and discover oneself is gaining importance and it is one of the main themes encountered among postmodern tourists (q112).

Secondly, as part of an effort to regain a healthy balance between body and mind under liminal conditions there is a marked tendency for tourists to insist more on luxury. For example, twenty years ago a hotel room with a shared bathroom was still common, but nowadays many tourists insist on rooms with private bathrooms, preferably with a jacuzzi, flat screen television, air conditioning, mini-bar, Wi-Fi, and so on. These luxury items often jeopardize sound sustainable development and furthermore they do not directly enhance the level of experiencing a holiday destination in general; however they do caress bodily feelings, which is often exactly what tourists are after, and furthermore they help create the dream a stay in a liminal zone is supposed to be, therefore forming part of the concept of liminality. An important element of spa resorts is precisely the high level of luxury and comfort these hotels offer. As an extreme counterpart to this type of physical wellness, adventure tourism can be mentioned wherein physical hardship is a base element in the process of getting to know oneself. Those tourists looking for spiritual experiences only may also shun the comfort zones, for a short period at least, and the hardships of staying at New Age farms is a rapidly expanding niche market, not to mention the option of voluntary work.

8. The non-liminal travellers

The concept of liminality has another application: as a tool to help distinguish tourists from any other traveller. For the former it means that social status is temporarily abandoned, but other travellers remain socially the same, regardless of where they are. This also means that at a destination the tourists’ gaze (q106) is different from that of any other passenger, visitor, participant or lecturer, who will look at their environment according to their socio-cultural status and views. In tourism the liminal status of tourists is voluntary as are their motivations and expectations; in contrast, travellers in general have an obligatory reason for moving from one place to another. Having personally enriching experiences is the primary source of motivation for tourists, but that is not usually the case with other travellers such as athletes, lecturers, business people or family visitors. There are many travellers that may fit into the ‘official’ category of tourists, but if they lack the element of liminality, one could arguably doubt to what extent they can be considered tourists or not.

Some more differences emerge from the liminality concept: it means that tourists often expect that holiday destinations are adapted in one way or another to the tourists’ needs, whereas any other traveller will accept a destination as it is. This point of adaptation has an additional connotation. Inevitably tourism will leave its marks on the destination’s environment, economy and socio-cultural life. Although sustainable management is a priority on most development agendas, practice and an extensive literature on the subject indicates that tourists are hardly involved directly in any sustainable development and only a few efforts have been made to involve tourists directly into mitigating their footprints.

There seems to be two clear reasons: the first is related to marketing efforts from tour operators or any other travel organisation that follows the current post-modern approaches of viewing relations from an economic and specifically mercantile viewpoint, wherein the tourist is pictured as the client and the client is King. If a tourist insists on having champagne in the middle of the jungle, any sustainability principle is quickly put aside just to satisfy his majesty’s supposed needs.

The second reason is related to the liminal status, whereby tourists temporarily abandon the daily social responsibilities they are used to at home; this is precisely what liminality is about, so this means it would go against the liminal feeling to demand a responsible attitude from tourists. With most sustainable management schemes tourists are asked to behave just as well or better than they would at home, ignoring the fact that this is exactly what tourists are trying to escape. As was pointed out before, the trend as a part of liminality to demand more luxury puts more pressure on sustainable management. Winning tourists’ support for responsible and sustainable development is therefore a hard task. Marketing the need for sustainability measures has also proven to be a challenge (

MacCannell, D. (1976): “The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class”. New York: Schocken Books

Another case concerning the application of the liminality concept refers to domestic tourism. People who take time off to explore their own country and decide therefore not to change their socio-cultural environment are obviously less likely to enter the liminal status. The element of escape dominates and in most cases this is simply space-related without any connotation of freeing oneself from the constraints of societal pressures in home or work environments. In one’s own country many societal pressures will remain the same whatever the purpose of the journey is, with the exception of very large countries such as Brazil or India, where internal cultural differences are extensive and people from one area can very well be liminal in another.

The distinction between liminal tourists and ordinary travellers is reasonably clear but arguable. The businessman who takes a few days off during his stay in a foreign country to explore some of its beauties will do so viewing the environment from his own social perspective. Tourists however, may be in a position to take a different view of things they have not been used to before as part of their social alienation. For the same reason appealing to the sustainability sensitiveness of ordinary travellers will have a greater response than in the case of the travelling liminal tribe. Those in favour of responsible tourism should in fact advocate the thesis that all should be travellers and not tourists, but at the same time they should realize that a large part of the difference between the two is a result of socio-economic conditions in the developed world.

 For those working in tourism, students and scholars please remember that this website is not commercial and depend on voluntary contributions, small or symbolic as they may be, by pressing the DONATE button (PayPal system) at the bottom of this page.

All rights reserved. Complete or partial reproduction is prohibited without the permission of Marinus Gisolf and without mentioning the source.

I would like to thank Dr. Eduardo Costa Mielke of the State University of Rio de Janeiro for his observations and help, enormously contributing to the quality of this article.

Introduction

From the seventies onwards possibilities have been explored for tourism to be an instrumental tool for the development of rural economies, but in general terms it seems that there are more failures and unsustainable practices than success stories to be told, especially in developing countries (q147, q148, q149). This article explores some of the problem areas, trying to reconcile (academic) theory with the practice of rural tourism, while highlighting the main issues at stake.

Within the framework of postmodernist tourism the clear tendency for more individualist experiences and exclusive authenticity has widened the boundaries of the tourism panorama as well as the number of activities and experiences that can legitimately be categorized as tourism. It seems that nearly every dimension of human culture now has the potential to become a form of tourism. Although the search for the authentic in the modern sense, where time seems to have halted and the poor must remain poor and culturally stagnated, is still very much alive within postmodern holiday trends, simultaneously there are many groups of tourists with different lifestyles searching for the authentic in the sense of a reality they do not know and want to learn from. Within the same parameters, there is a rapidly growing number of tourists interested in a genuine countryside style as well as in learning skills and customs as a personality enriching set of experiences. It is about tourists who do not travel to a specific tourism highlight, but want to have personal learning experiences and this particular allocentric lifestyle may suit rural tourism development, including elements of volunteer work and home stays.

There is a marked tendency to view life as being economically driven and tourism is no exception. The producer-product-client chain dominates western (postmodern) thinking and it is therefore also applied to rural development. The use of tourism as part of a rural poverty alleviation scheme has followed this same line of thinking: the locals provide a product (lodging and/or tourist attraction) to be sold to clients: the tourists. As shown in literature on the subject, a majority of community-based tourism projects have failed so far in terms of visitor numbers, which has led some people to think that rural tourism development is falling short in poverty alleviation processes.

However, there are other ways to view tourism apart from an economic viewpoint. From a socio-psychological perspective emphasis is being laid on the role a local community plays vis-à-vis a tourism community. The meeting between tourists and their holiday destination is the focal point, which is a view that invites an examination of community-based tourism on the basis of this encounter and at the same this is one of the main concepts of the reflexive approach to tourism. Simple questions such as what each party is looking for and to what extent they share some common ground become much more relevant. Before starting any rural tourism development one must not only investigate what the possible objectives are for each party involved – including tourists – but also the socio-psychological motives that make stakeholders act.

This article describes some parts of the complicated road that local populations have to follow to develop tourism initiatives within their communities. This is a process that should lead to learning experiences and it applies to the people of local communities and tourists alike. For a local community objectives should not only relate to profits, but also to improved infrastructure, contacts with different cultures, new social networks, improved social organization and more cultural awareness, while the tourists’ learning experiences should include a broadening of their horizons, increased awareness of the environment and alternative lifestyles, among others.

Rural Tourism

Rural Tourism can be considered from the point of view of space, time and social relations. Geographers, sociologists, economists and environmental planners alike have long indicated that from a spatial viewpoint there only exists a blurred separation between what can be considered to be urban and rural, mainly because of the physical widening of suburban development, increasing population mobility and the phenomenon of a second home. Some authors define what is rural as the environment where main economic activities are related to agriculture (q67, q78). A wider view differentiates between types of rural space according to the size of the agricultural activity, such as an extensive one with high numbers of (day) labourers and large villages, medium-sized horticultural areas usually near urban centres, or those areas dominated by small family farming.

What is considered to be rural can also be viewed from the point of view of time: people living in urban areas usually have a view of rural areas as being behind in development, where time seems to have halted. It is this nostalgic view of what is considered rural that contrasts with the post-modernist and ‘fast’ life styles of the big cities. This view coincides with what rural tourism development usually tries to convey: the contrast between life in a city and in the countryside. The main traits of this view on rural areas can be summarized as follows:

• rural in functioning, including small firms, little labour division, open countryside, contact with nature, rural heritage or “traditional” practices;

• rural as far as scale is concerned (buildings, farms, etc.)

• traditional in character; slow and organic growth, close family ties with fixed positions within the family (rather than by achievement), locally controlled with a long term development vision;

• represents complex relationships between environment, economy and rural history.

In this sense the ideas of what is rural does not necessarily coincide with the actual rural development or reality of an area (q67) .

From a social perspective rural tourism refers most of all to the community’s participation, empowerment and its receiving most of the benefits (q64). What is not clear is to what extent local participants themselves should have decision making powers or whether this should be channelled through local associations or cooperatives (q100). This issue is closely related to the extent that rural tourism development is following a top-bottom pattern or the opposite. A complete involvement of everybody and everything local seems to be in line with what is called the reflexive approach to tourism, whereby the encounter between tourists (guests) and rural destination (hosts) is the pivot on which tourism hinges (q52).

Obviously the term Rural Tourism can also be viewed from the point of view of tourism and it can be sub-divided according to the type of activity carried out by tourists, based on their motivation to travel. It should be equally obvious that the distinctions made between types of rural tourism can overlap – they usually do. Mowforth (in: q29) summarized:

• Cultural rural tourism: refers to the opportunity offered to tourists to get to know the cultural expression of the rural area visited. This may refer to tangible items (either historical, cultural or both), through the performance of cultural expressions (music or theatre for example), but also by means of the direct contact tourists have with local people and their way of living;

• Eco-tourism: refers to tourists who travel to a destination to observe and enjoy nature and to help preserve these natural resources;

• Adventure tourism: the characteristics of tourists’ motivations are the active participation, sometimes not without risks, in discovering and exploring rural areas; the tourist’s objective is not so much to gain knowledge (such as it is the case with Eco-tourism), but rather the exploration of themselves;

• Specialized tourism sectors: the tourists’ motivations are directed to specific areas, such as agriculture (agro-tourism), social experiences (community-based tourism), etc.

With these subdivisions of tourism activities in mind, there is another common denominator: the main attraction of a rural destination is the destination itself and not some particular tourism highlight. It is about enjoying a type of rural environment that would be the same with or without the presence of tourists (q52); in other words, it is about an authentically rural environment and not some attraction developed for tourists. Additionally, there exists a distinction between soft and hard tourism (q59) (also referred to as the activities of either allocentric or psycho-centric tourists (q81). The first term relates to responsible medium to small-scale tourism, while the second concept has to do with the massification within tourism destinations. Rural tourism, especially when it is community-based, refers to soft tourism, which may lead to constructive and sustainable development for a population, whereas hard tourism may cause more harm than any good to any tourism environment in the long run (q59).

This distinction between two forms of tourism can also explain what the difference is between rural tourism and beach tourism: both forms of tourism take place in non-urban areas, but the latter lacks the agricultural element and in most cases it is related to hard tourism and massification. At the same time it should be clear, that both concepts – rural and beach tourism – do not necessarily exclude each other, because there is rural tourism at coastal areas.

The wide scope of the subject of rural tourism invites a narrowing down of concepts and this article will deal mainly with community-based rural tourism (RCT) for three reasons: as sustainable development, rural tourism projects can only be successful when the local community participates actively; secondly, in Europe, the USA, and increasingly on other continents, rural community tourism is seen as an important tool for protecting cultural heritage and poverty alleviation; and finally, we want to focus this article on showing the principles of the reflexive approach to tourism more clearly.

Some theoretical tools: networks and interactive approaches

The roots of rural tourism development are cultivated by many entities with either global or local interests, fertilized by government authorities or private sectors with macro or micro climates in mind, while the clear aim is to produce win-win situations. Power relations, however, are unevenly distributed by the sheer nature of the stakeholders involved. Some actors may have economic superiority, others fulfil hub-positions, there are groups with a strong cultural heritage to share and others with a lot of know-how. It also means that many different scientific disciplines are involved and the relations between the people having some stake in rural tourism development can be seen from sociological, social psychological, anthropological, economic, geographical or political points of view, just to mention a few. Stakeholders in rural development processes are connected in some way or another and the relations between entities – human actors and natural or built environments alike – are constructed on the basis of common interests and may develop into networks that in turn define the roles each entity will play (q41). This is an interactive view of rural tourism development, whereby tourists themselves are stakeholders just the same and they therefore play their role on equal terms with any of the other entities forming and cultivating the roots of rural tourism development.

Networks are thought to play an important role in regional development. Consequently, stimulating networks has become a dominant policy goal, whereby there is a shift of concern from the outcome to the development process itself (q25). This also implies that the emphasis shifts from mere economic results towards the importance of building and expanding networks, since it is on the basis of new networks that opportunities can present themselves for further development. In most cases this is a process of innovation, in which not only local communities have to be involved but outside actors must equally play their part – including potential visitors.

Rural community tourism is a services-related activity that differs from agricultural or manufacturing production and therefore the introduction of tourism into rural areas impacts much more than just having a “new product” that can be sold. The latter suggests an incremental innovation that doesn’t deviate much from current practices, while the starting up of service-related activities means a radical innovation from all points of view. These radical innovations or novelties demand drastic changes in attitude and business management (q56). Tourism is a novelty within a rural environment and it is related to different sets of networks from those a community may be used to. Thus the introduction of tourism into rural areas leads to changes on the level of networks, infrastructure and community organization among others and it should be clear, therefore, that the introduction of this novelty may take some time (q25). Any new organizational structure imposed either from above or developed from within will take a considerable amount of time and effort to become embedded within a local community.

Innovations as part of a rural tourism development strategy have to be radical in order for them to become embedded within the socio-economic activities and as such there are various areas that can be distinguished (q56). For most rural communities, organizational structures have to be renovated; different infrastructure is required with which the local people may not be acquainted, a complete innovation of marketing efforts is needed, while on a regional level new networks have to be developed (q25). Only with the support of the people from a local community can these goals be achieved and their commitment to any development programme is crucial. A bottom-up approach seems to be the only viable way of ensuring that a rural tourism development will reach the stage of embeddedness.

Rural community tourism development projects

When approaching RCT development from a socio-psychological point of view as part of the reflexive approach of tourism a clear emphasis is placed on the first planning stages that have to make sure that a sound tourism activity is being developed with all or most of the stakeholders in agreement. Starting with the basic conditions for tourism to function local communities have to follow a quite complicated road to arrive at the point of a lucrative and sustainable tourism activity as an established practice within their local way of living. Based on literature and case studies, below we present a series of requirements, conditions and suggestions that have been grouped together in response to a series of problems that RCT projects often suffer, taking into account a socio-psychological approach to the RCT phenomenon.

1. Basic conditions for a tourism project

When any rural community wants to incorporate elements of tourism into their economic activities, it must meet a series of requirements in order to be functional within tourism-related networks. In other words it is about what tourism activities should look like and what requirements there are from the point of view of the encounter between tourist and local community (reflexive approach). A rural community tourism project should be able to produce:

1.1 A general ambiance that helps tourists feel the difference from their own home environment, based on anything local that has not been developed specifically for tourists and would have been there anyway with or without the tourists’ presence; existing agricultural practices or small manufacturing may form part of this ambiance. Local people themselves must never serve as a tourism attraction (this applies specifically in the case of indigenous groups).

1.2 Services related to tourism infrastructure, such as hotels, restaurants, information centres or souvenir shops, among others – in practice these may concern a small inn with a limited number of rooms with shared bathrooms or home-stays with home-cooked food.

1.3 Services related to the sources of tourism experiences, such as tourist attractions, trails, socio-culturally interesting sites and anything else specifically developed or adapted for tourists.

When developing tourism initiatives a distinction can be applied between those elements in tourism related to the internal situation within a community and those factors related to the reality outside. From the point of view of networks, these three points (1.1 – 1.3) refer to internal networks. Points 1.4 and 1.5 refer to external networks:

1.4 The community has to be relatively easily accessible and should be located in between other possible points of interest for tourists at a reasonable half travel-day distance;

1.5 The community should be able to offer telecommunications services and therefore be able to receive reservations and payments while maintaining the corresponding administration, bookkeeping and marketing efforts.

2. The Encounter

The reflexive approach to tourism relates to the interaction between host and guest or destination and tourist. The focal point is the encounter between these two and what happens as a result. From the economic point of view, there is an exchange of goods and services for money (or voluntary labour for example), but at the same time there is the act of experiencing, which may or may not be a result of this economic transaction. Specifically in the case of RCT, tourists gain experiences from things or phenomena they did not pay for: the local culture, landscapes, gastronomy or just the smells and noises that may be quite different from what a tourist is used to. Social contacts, comparing destinations with home environments or just dreaming of a different way of living one could have are assets and part of a series of experiences tourists expect to have and get for free. Rural community tourism is about this encounter between a local community and the tourism communities and before attempting to set up such a tourism project, there must be clear insight into the nature of this encounter as well as the functioning of tourism in rural areas. Analyzing this encounter leads to three levels that can be distinguished:

• Encounters of one human being with another: shaking hands (or whatever local etiquette dictates), a conversation (depending on the language abilities of the tourists or locals), paying for something and receiving change; waving to one another or – even more human – exchanging smiles.

• Encounters with a culture: tourists observing houses that have different architecture, use of colours, new smells and dishes, foreign styles of dress, indigenous music or intriguing religious relics; for a local community the arrival of people from different cultures may open new horizons, too.

• Encounters with oneself: tourists find themselves in exotic environments, whereby some tourists come to learn, others for a social challenge or tourists may be interested in mainly physical activities, while the people of a community can mirror themselves similarly and become more conscious of the cultural roots they possess.

The first type of encounter may provide the actors with social experiences, while the second deals with possible cultural, gastronomic, aesthetic or religious experiences. With the first encounter there may be a barrier owing to different languages and customs – with the second encounter this is no barrier at all; this is precisely what the tourists came for: to experience something new. The third type is related to the kind of authenticity a tourist is looking for.

The basis of RCT is this encounter, which only works when both parties enter on equal terms. In other words a provider-client relationship, which is so dominating in western economic thinking, cannot be applied; instead a much more interactive host-guest relationship should occur in which both parties are partners in tourism.

Any village or community has matters that may capture tourists’ interests and that form clues for possible experiences. These clues or impact sources (Impsources) together form the community’s story come to life through the tourists’ sensory intake leading to experiences. In this sense the encounter between local people and tourists is about the framing of expectations for experiences.

3. Expectations

Before starting out with any rural tourism design plan, expectations for this encounter have to be set according to what is reasonably realistic. Expectations in tourism, in turn, are based primarily on needs and motivations from any actor’s point of view. What can be observed extensively from literature studies and practice is that local communities tend to be motivated by (or lured into) economic opportunities, while tourists are being motivated to have socio-cultural experiences, which means that both parties of this encounter start off with completely different sets of expectations – not a promising start. Too often tourists are taken to believe that socio-cultural experiences can be bought with ready money, while local people are made to believe that by acting according to what tourists like to see, they may be able to earn a living. One often envisages a more romantic version of tourists being attracted by the engaging stories local communities want to tell and after the encounter has taken place, both part in tears for the new friends they have made and the incredible experiences they both have had. Whatever the case may be, actors in RCT development, including tourists, should have a fair start with a chance to tune in on motivations and expectations the various players may have. In the case of local communities dealing with a novelty like the introduction of tourism, this can be translated into the opening up of new external networks that give access to knowledge about tourists and what tourists may be interested in vis-à-vis what the community’s own reality has to offer.

On both sides expectations have to be set according to what can reasonably be expected, which means that existing prejudices and fixed ideas have to be readjusted. In the case of a local population, too often economic gains are presented unrealistically, fuelled even further by some fixed ideas that all tourists are rich and should be charged a lot. This phenomenon can best be observed with regards to communities of homogeneous socio-cultural composition. It is quite understandable that tourists are assumed to be rich, arriving in expensive rental cars or in luxury coaches compared to the old buses the locals have to use for their public transport. Cameras, mobile phones, Ipods or sunglasses tourists carry with them may provoke a certain air of luxury locals are not used to and may lead to certain fixed conceptions of what tourists are like. The opposite may be said of the tourists’ case, where the notion of poverty may evoke certain feelings of being superior and – even worse – the idea of cultural superiority, while obviously the opposite may well be the case. Breaking down prejudices is therefore one of the important tasks RCT has to try to accomplish.

For both parties expectations have to be broad so as to take best advantage of the novelty of the situation, although both parties should know what tourism is all about and what they can expect in tangible as well as intangible terms of the encounter between the two. For both sides of the encounter an increase in networks should be valued highly. In addition a local community should have some understanding of the extent to which a higher number of tourists may mean more direct involvement of national and local authorities in terms of improving infrastructure (electricity, roads, telecommunications, health care, schools, among others). Expectations in tourism also have to do with branding/marketing and the exercise of comparing of what a community can show to what some tourists may be interested in should take place at the very beginning of any tourism development process in rural areas. With traditional tourism project design the expectations of tourists are usually left out, denying that rural tourism is precisely about the encounter between tourists and locals while being a radical innovation for any rural community.

4. Basic conditions for the encounter

Exploring the tourism possibilities a rural area or specific community may have and the sheer nature of the encounter between people of different cultural backgrounds invites another set of observations. An important part of the tourists’ social experiences is based on communication with people from the community, which means that for RCT to be successful, tourists should speak the language of the local people or there should be a language common to both; this means that domestic tourism should be the first choice in the development of RCT projects. Local people generally tend to treat tourists as guests, but at the same time they should understand that tourists want to try to be as “un-guestlike” as possible in their effort to experience “real” (authentic) local life. This point coincides with the observation that in a guest-house or small inn, a tourist can try to feel at home, but with home-stays invariably the tourist will be a guest. In practice it means that in the case where tourists are from a rather distinct cultural background, guest-houses are recommended, while home-stays should be used with those tourists who have closer cultural links (city dwellers going to nearby rural areas, for example). Then there is the point of the extent to which tourists want to be involved in activities with or without the participation of local people. Nature hikes, bicycle trips or agricultural activities can be converted into tourist attractions and it should be clear which of these activities are especially designed for tourists and those that form part of the locals’ everyday life. It also refers to what extent tourists and locals alike open their minds for new experiences and how much this opening may be blocked partially by existing prejudices. The voluntary work option may enhance any social experience. It should be clear that the role of tourists must be taken into account from the beginning of the planning stage of any rural community tourism project.

5. The authenticity of the encounter

What is attractive for tourists first depends on their travel needs, motivations and expectations, further fuelled by their personality and referential frameworks. The view of what is rural from the city-dweller’s point of view usually invites a more nostalgic view of the pure, clean and authentic rural life people are supposed to be living. Postmodern living trends often include elements of being more tied to an era than to a particular (birth) place combined with a distinct feeling of uncertainty about the future. The nostalgic past with clear cultural and economic stagnation forms part of this image of the postmodern urban tourists’ dream some think they can find in rural areas.

In this case authenticity has to look like real, since the resulting authentic experience is what matters. Obviously, real and objective authenticity is one possibility, but there is also the type where an object or phenomenon is experienced as authentic, without having to be real. The story about the object may induce a feeling of authenticity, forming part of the relationship between the tourist, the object and its image. This observation touches the importance of the difference between tourist attractions as being staged for tourists and the daily village life, which is there even when tourists are not. This daily reality cannot be staged, otherwise it would be converted into a tourist attraction and as such, would no longer form part of the locals’ everyday life. How local people deal with their environment is one example of their authentic way of living: their relation to nature is quite different from what a tourist might be used to, since sociocultural and environmental survival factors are usually quite distinct, with a possible exception in the case of domestic tourism.

Another postmodern variant of authenticity in tourism is activity-related authenticity, which directly concerns a person’s self and his change through experiencing an object, phenomenon or activity. By going fishing, one may get a tremendous feeling of peace and quiet – an authentic experience therefore, although not necessarily related to a well-defined tourism attraction. Adventure tourism has much to do with this type of authenticity and rural areas often have plenty to offer. In this case authenticity relates completely to the tourists’ own experiences regardless of the source these experiences stem from while social experiences, for example, tend to be of lesser priority.

On the basis of the issues mentioned so far, an inventory can be made of tourism possibilities at a given rural community. Although tourism can appear in many different forms and present as many “faces” as there are tourists, the types of tourism activities that can be distinguished are eco-tourism, agro-tourism, community tourism, and so on, as spelled out earlier on. Next, activities such as day excursions, multi-day stays, voluntary work, etc. must be decided upon and they should be closely related to the authentic experience value any of these activities may represent.

6. Connecting rural communities and tourists

Viewing RCT from the point of view of the encounter between host and guest as the centre of tourism means that a series of requirements must be met to make this encounter come true. Destinations as well as tourists must be aware of each other’s existence as well as what the motivations are that may bring the two together. Therefore marketing seems to take up an important part of such an exercise, taking into account that it is about the transfer of knowledge combined with the opening up of new networks.

It is hard for a local population to see how tourists arrived at their community and too often locals simply feel that tourists come from nowhere. Suddenly there they are! The complicated machinery of the interconnected networks that got the tourist to a certain place is a reality that most local communities are usually unaware of. Locals often do not know how the tourists got there or how tourism markets function; they are also unaware of what was promised to the tourists or what to expect; neither do they realize who ‘sent’ the tourist or how many tourists they can expect to arrive. Additionally, the inconsistency of tourism, the effects of high and low season and the uncertainty of its markets are well beyond the control of local communities.

External networks should be involved therefore to help local communities connect with those people and organizations that (A) could have a direct interest in their tourism projects and (B) that could help them with designing web pages and other means of communications for marketing purposes. A well defined presence on the Internet through a web page (most likely to be sponsored by an NGO) and/or a presence on Facebook and Twitter are indispensable for the development of RCT projects. In this regard, presence on the Internet serves as a tool to further extend networks outside the region of the RCT project. Websites should have two target audiences in mind: potential travellers and travel agents. It is important to establish a balance between tourists and hosts, and the website should carry a clear message in this respect. First of all this means that the pages should not provide what tourists may like to hear (advertising and propaganda); they must reflect what the community looks like and the activities that can be carried out. It should be made clear that this is about responsible tourism and that tourists also have certain responsibilities.

A common challenge for tourism development in a single rural community is its pulling power because of the absence of a distinctive image. In order to make the most of rural tourism resources, communities could therefore approach their marketing activities from a cooperative perspective, whereby win-win agreements must be set up. This may be difficult without a third party intervention such as public sector entities, since local communities usually lack the necessary financial and technical resources. The use of NGOs, either overtly supported by national authorities or acting with support from international organizations, has proved to be one way to help solve this challenge, although this runs the risk of involving local communities in long-term dependencies and thus jeopardizing their autonomy. Local travel agencies can also be called in as they have expertise with tourists’ expectations and demands. However, responsible tourism policy as applied by these companies should be checked in the field.On the same level cooperative branding can be mentioned that helps to synchronize the pull factors across multiple rural communities or a region as a whole. A mix of complementary businesses involving chains of projects (i.e. tourism routes) may stimulate tourism cooperation and opportunities, hence the mention under 1.4 of the requirement of easy access to other sites suitable for tourism not more than a half-day’s travel away.

What are the pull factors RCT can use actively? Most tourism destinations attract visitors on the basis of certain tourism highlights, famous landmarks, impressive natural phenomena or historical monuments. However, in the case of RCT, tourists are not drawn in by ‘famous’ attractions; instead it is about normal local people with strong historical ties and ways of living. Therefore there should be a clear distinction between those rural areas offering a clear tourism attraction that form part of the more traditional ways of tourism, and those areas that show an endogenous tourism based on primary resources and not artificial ones, with a strong anthropological connotation of meeting the needs of sharing culture and lifestyles. A provider-client relationship should be avoided therefore in favour of host-guest interactions, which should become clear on the websites concerned.

Tourists may get in touch with rural community tourism initiatives directly through the Internet or by electronic mail. In these cases the tourism project can be found simply by surfing the web or from the recommendations of people who have been there. More common, however, is the practice of contacting a travel agent, either inbound in the destination country or outbound in the tourist’s home country. Supply chains as sets of networks help tourists find what they are looking for. Travel agents may fulfil a hub function and therefore it is of some importance that they are involved at some stage in the rural community tourism development process, mostly for their knowledge of what certain groups of tourists may like or dislike. As intermediaries, the role of travel agents is a delicate one, since they have to make clear to potential tourists that a visit to a rural community includes certain responsibilities and these agents themselves should know about local situations.

An important Internet application consists of Social Information Seeking (SIS). In recent years there has been a fast growing number of sites where people can ask questions and they are answered by groups of people or communities. One of the early examples is the site ‘Answerbag’ and since then more have sprung up – Yahoo!Answer appears to be one of the most popular.

The basic idea is quite similar to the Wiki concept, of which Wikipedia is the most famous. Generally, a site consists of 4 parts: a mechanism whereby people can submit questions, a venue for submitting answers, the community built around this information exchange, and finally answers are indexed for search engines, thus enabling web users to find answers given to previously asked questions in response to new queries. This means that these sites can fulfil a second role at the same time as database provider, based on previous answers, which in turn are provided by the people of a community or by any outsider. This can be on global level or limited to specific groups of people with a common interest (communities). The term community is used here in the broadest sense of the word and those sites are called cQA sites. These kinds of sites began to appear on the Internet in 2003 and they have been a growing phenomenon ever since. Apart from this, there was already a tendency for people to ask for information via the Internet, rather than trying to find it themselves. An ever increasing number of people seem to think “why bother seeking an answer when the Internet can connect me with the people who have it?” The habit of asking questions on forums and similar communication platforms is also expanding rapidly.

The possibilities for those interested in tourism are enormous and cQA sites may provide a necessary link between (pre-) tourists and the people from a destination or local community. Due to the fast-growing influences of the various Internet applications that provide people with information and the tools for acquiring specific data such as Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques, potential tourists can find a lot more information directly on the Internet and the additional cQA sites carry the concepts even further along a new route of social information exchange, controlled jointly by a community and its visitors.

7. New networks

Once a local population has decided on a project for receiving visitors within their community, an opening is automatically created to connect with outside actors, either being potential visitors directly or other actors involved in some way or another with visitor flows, transport or marketing: the so-called forward linkages. From a development point of view, making an inventory of existing contacts has to be combined with the inventory of external networks the community should have access to.

A major emphasis on rural development processes themselves will lead to the need for taking stock of existing networks as well as the technical and experience knowledge that is available. The questions of who has the knowledge and who has the skills must be the foundation for the inception of a development process. These inventories of knowledge and of the internal as well as external networks not only form the basis of the process design, they also indicate the strengths and weaknesses of internal organization or functioning and as such give an indication of the necessary training and education that should be internalized within the development process. Additionally, the introduction of a novelty like RCT means that new knowledge has to enter the community. Capacity building is one of the major objectives of any development process, but there must also be an exchange of technical as well as experience knowledge.

There are three types to be distinguished:

A. Exchange of existing knowledge. Networks reaching outside a community may enhance contacts with other villages or people from the region as a basis of information and opinion exchange; in other words, these networks build on locally existing knowledge (also called horizontal network integration).

B. New input of knowledge

B1. From governmental authorities, universities or NGOs

B2. From tourism contacts (travel organizations, etc.)

A different case has to do with contacts with NGOs or government agencies, since these networks are about a flow of knowledge towards the community and may contain new concepts, ideas, information or techniques (a vertical flow, therefore). When applying to a process that stresses a bottom-upward approach, new impulses from outside sources are of great importance, but networks have to be established first to let this happen.

C. New initiatives:

C1. Training, instruction and education

C2. Marketing, Internet design, accounting, etc.

A third form is that of forward linkages and it concerns contacts with possible buyers, not only of agricultural products and manufactured goods, but also of the (tourism) services provided. In the latter case this may refer to the tourism services in the community itself and networks concerning travel agents among others.

Once the motivations and nature of a particular rural tourism project have been established among the various actors and a start has been made on acquiring additional knowledge of the possibilities rural tourism may present, the next stage is to define what new elements have to be developed within a community to adapt to some kind of tourism activity. Will it be just an attraction for day-visitors, for multiple-day stays or will there only be indirect participation through the supply of guide services, agricultural products, handicrafts, and so on.

8. Requirements for the RCT development process

On the basis of the theoretical tools introduced, a description can be given of the process of rural community tourism development, keeping in mind that a bottom-up approach is recommended and that these projects are being viewed as radical innovations within the rural environment. Hence, the underlying arguments for a successful implementation of community-based tourism projects in rural areas are based on five assumptions that are interconnected. Once having established that a rural community or area can be of interest to tourists and the locals have shown interest in such an undertaking, all actors must have this awareness for a local rural community project to prosper:

2.1. RCT projects must be developed with the full participation of the local communities involved and should depend on their initiatives; for any initiative to develop into an embedded practice within a community it is this same community that should initiate this development process.

2.2. RCT projects must lead to socio-economically and environmentally improved living conditions for the local community; although the economic effects of tourism in rural areas have been emphasized extensively under the influence of pro-poor movements, benefits should also include improved living and working conditions as well as infrastructure and cultural awareness, among others.

2.3. RCT projects must lead to an increased number of internal and external networks that stimulate creativity and new knowledge in the community. Since the introduction of tourism is a radical innovation, a new flow of knowledge has to enter the community. Training as well as capacity-building form fundamental elements to help local people cope with new tasks, services and technologies so that they are not continuously dependent on outside knowledge, which could jeopardize their autonomy.

2.4. RCT projects must be complementary to any other already existing economic activity in the community and must build initially on the available organizational infrastructure; this assumption is first of all a “safety-valve” to help ensure that tourism evolves into an embedded practice. Secondly, it means that the innovation of introducing RCT may be radical, but at the same time that its influence on a local population and the way the people are organized does not change social structures radically.

2.5. RCT projects must produce an organizational structure that appoints, among others, those community members that are directly involved with the tourists and the tourism infrastructure to be developed; tourism networks depend very much on personal involvement and service, as part of the hospitality offered and to help create the image the community will have towards its visitors. Tourism in general depends largely on personal contacts and networks and therefore any tourism identity cannot afford to have a different person attending network contacts each time. Working in tourism, as in any other activity, needs special skills and not everybody has to be involved directly with tourists. Participation may also involve associated products, such as food cultivation or handicrafts, hence the importance of governance in appointing roles to play and tasks to fulfil.

9. Governance

So far an outline has been given on the basis of a reflexive approach to tourism of all pre-requisites that help identify the feasibility and viability of potential tourism projects in rural areas initiated by local communities themselves. The majority of actions described so far have dealt with the preliminary stage and it has been argued that these actions are of fundamental importance for a RCT project to be successful. However, it seems that a majority of RCT projects carried out did not take this road and rather followed the more traditional theoretical discourse of the provider-product-client model.

Literature and case studies on the topic of RCT show that a failure of marketing and a lack of governance are the major stumbling blocks for rural tourism development to prosper, and this view is supported by many observations of RCT in practice. Both issues are part of the radical innovations that have to take place within a community to successfully develop tourism initiatives. It is precisely the last mentioned element (see 2.5) of internal organization and the managing of external networks that seem to cause problems, and more specifically, the lack of organization is one of the main themes within communities; this is the major problem that women in rural communities have to face.

Governance, management and leadership relate to the internal organization of a community and to the way decisions are being made. Community organization is about a process that relates to responsibilities and commitments; if this were not the case there would be no political sustainability, which in turn may affect the autonomy of a community. A dependency on external organizations concerning knowledge transfer may develop, inducing a lack of self-confidence and lack of decision-making power, thus again undermining autonomy. Additionally, in a given community it may have taken decades for decision making processes to reach their state of embeddedness, but tourism has the power to turn around these processes drastically in the short term and the challenge therefore is to ensure effective decision making within a local population’s reality, maintaining the community’s autonomy and creating efficient organizational structures.

The organization within a community will largely define to what extent the various networks will be established and how they will function. Acting as a community requires many levels of internal organization and this usually involves the formation of some kind of association, cooperative or foundation – these three being the legal frameworks mostly accepted by government authorities and NGOs. On one hand, these forms of organization may help the strengthening and building of networks, but on the other hand one has to realize that they are western legal structures that do not always coincide with local traditions and may mean the exclusion of parts of a population.

10. Sustainability issues

When the first moves are made to look into the possibilities of the introduction of a tourism project together with a local community, sustainability development issues must be high on the agenda. Tourism exerts environmental pressures and impact studies must show to what extent a village or area can support them. Apart from the ecological issues, it has to be seen that the story a community has to tell does not change under foreign influences. The community’s story must be observed by external entities, such as tourism authorities or consultants, and balanced against certain expectations tourists may possibly have as part of the process to test the feasibility of a RCT project. This testing includes the vulnerability of cultural heritage, traditions and customs and how much a community or its members want to expose these to outsiders.

RCT projects have to be seen as an expression of sustainable development itself, although local communities may encounter severe problems mitigating the harmful effects increased numbers of visitors may have on their direct environment. Waste management is one example, since most communities have no other means available other than the rubbish dump just outside the village. Although recycling is a necessary practice, in remote rural areas specifically this is simply not viable. Along similar lines there are many restrictions – often of an economic nature – that stop a local rural community from meeting the sustainability standards set internationally. Local communities may feel they are living in harmony with their environment, but broader ecological issues concerning a region as a whole may demand additional measures be taken, which may be considered by local people as external interference. Tourism may not be a part of these sustainability issues, but the opening up of external networks and the resulting connection of a community to a complete region can lead to consequences at all levels. Additionally in most communities local people care about their natural environment as part of their survival and therefore they are well aware of the solidarity this involves with future generations, but this solidarity might be changed by the presence of tourists, especially when there are too many of them. A local population may give up part of this solidarity under the pressure of tourism, the prospects of financial gains or when pushed by government authorities or investment companies.

Sustainable tourism development in rural areas has captured the interest of government authorities and travel organization at large, but this has not always been translated into practice. The public sectors’ more traditional views invite shorter-term thinking and often seem to deny some of the basics concerning rural community tourism: a local community meeting the tourism community in an encounter where no exchange of money is involved. Similarly the private sectors coincide with the economic approach and the logic of linking rural tourism with sustainable development may contain a large element of wishful thinking, since tourism in general has never distinguished itself as being either sustainable or taking a long-term view of development. Meanwhile one has to realize that the lack of the State’s effective capacity to guarantee the complete protection of eco-systems and the need for productive alternatives in nature buffer zones have created an opportunity for sustainable tourism developed by local people to find a solution to the eternal conflict between conservation and development. RCT, therefore, may well turn into a sustainability tool that can serve the purposes of various stakeholders on national and regional levels.

Final Remarks

Rural Community Tourism development projects have mainly focused on economic impact, but little attention has been paid so far to view these types of development processes from the tourism point of view: the role of tourists, the relation between tourists and community and the windows that are opened for locals and tourists alike. The lack of success of a majority of RCT projects, in terms of low numbers of visitors, particularly in developing countries, seems to be related to poor governance and marketing efforts. Practice has shown that a RCT project may initially break even in economic terms at most and therefore RCT must be developed for reasons other than economic ones. Some more gains in addition to existing income is always a possibility, but there is the point of expanding networks opening the door for innovation as well as creativity and with it the opening of opportunities for new developments with the additional benefit that locals become more aware of their culture and their way of living; tourism therefore is a way of opening horizons not only for tourists, but also for local rural people who can come in contact with a world foreign to their own.

However, the bottlenecks encountered in the form of failing governance and marketing can be taken as symptoms of a deeper rooted problem. In the case of marketing, or to be more precise the lack of it, seems to be directly related to the absence of preliminary studies of what could be presented to tourists, what story a community has to tell and the bridge between the two. The lack of these insights may lead to the problem of how to decide what is best for a community and how to set up corresponding organizational structures. The common denominator of these issues seems to be the reigning economic attitude of external actors towards tourists: “They must be taken advantage of.” This can lead to a development process whereby economic factors dominate and there is no insight into the mechanisms that make tourism work and prosper. Income issues are important as long as they are treated on the basis of responsible tourism principles, while the specific tasks laid down in a well-worked out management plan based on a previously agreed tourism infrastructure are crucial for proper governance. Additionally in practice it seems that public and private sector initiatives should better understand a community’s possibilities and strengths, since the population’s cultural and natural heritage, the exact thing the tourists are coming for, are at stake.

Public and private sectors have been of vital importance to RTC and without them, RCT development processes are hard to envisage. The same holds true for training programmes, which are important elements in preparing communities for the tasks ahead of them. There is no room for a top-bottom approach as RCT consists of the voluntary encounter by both locals and tourists and this encounter does not include any monetary transaction. The traditional view of tourism as the relation between providers and clients cannot be fully applied to the RCT reality. Viewing tourists as clients worth nothing more than their money and hosts as providers who try to gain as much as possible is a view that unfortunately still rules in many handbooks or academic discourse on the subject of rural community development. One has to realize that with most RTC environments tourists pay for lodging and food combined with some services such as guiding or entrance fees to specific tourism attractions, but tourists do not pay for what they have come for: experiencing community life, local culture or rural landscapes, generating experiences that are priceless.

It is about the postmodern tourists from city areas that want to have an encounter with rural people and this tourist has to understand that he has no status within that community other than being a visitor. For any RCT project it is important that rural people maintain the type of hospitality they are used to and that they are not forced to change this for a pattern of a servant-client relation (as often dictated by tourism hospitality manuals), while tourists should clearly understand that they are not going to be served and they must behave as visitors in a foreign environment. The logic of money does not and should not apply, in order to preserve what makes the encounter between the two parties a unique one. However, travel organizations in general still see RCT projects as attractions to be sold to tourists and they want to make sure that the locals provide “complete customer satisfaction” – whatever that may be within a rural context.

Travel organizations, NGOs in general or the public sectors combining economic thinking and socio-psychological perspectives of the encounter between tourists and locals is not just a tendency for the future; it should be today’s reality.

The view that a socio-psychological approach determines the essence of RCT instead of sheer economic reasoning may be contested by many and effectively this has yet to be proven, nevertheless first indications from the field point clearly to this direction. The main aim of this article is to invite the academic world to direct its interests toward these aspects of rural community tourism and the roles tourists play. The views expressed in this article are also directed to those working in tourism to start looking at the activity from a different perspective understanding that profit is not the only goal and RCT is a good example to show that point. Finally, the learning experiences local communities and tourists may acquire are not limited to just these two, but apply similarly to the academic community, travel organizations and public sectors alike.

I would like to thank Dr. Eduardo Costa Mielke of the State University of Rio de Janeiro for his observations and help, enormously contributing to the quality of this article.

For those working in tourism, students and scholars please remember that this website is not commercial and depend on voluntary contributions, small or symbolic as they may be, by pressing the DONATE button (PayPal system) at the bottom of this page.

All rights reserved. Complete or partial reproduction is prohibited without the permission of Marinus Gisolf and without mentioning the source