Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Slow travel - the whole tourist experience
Environmental
consciousness
Destination experience
Travel experience
Slowness
-taking time
-inactivity
-quality of
life
Experience
-engagement
with people
and place
-co-production
-shared social
experience
-travel integral
-travel glance
Locality
-
local transport
-locality important
-stay in vicinity of
accommodation
-gastronomy
Environment
-hard and soft
slow travellers
-less distance
-longer stays
-carbon
reduction
Choice of mode
Low-carbon
Figure 10.1
Conceptual diagram of slow travel
costs might bring. There is also a need to understand more about slow travel
consumption. There are questions of tourist identity and the role of identity
formation in tourism consumption and a need to understand new market seg-
ments as they emerge. However, Chapter 3 has drawn attention to the need
to focus not only on consumers, but to take a more holistic view of the tourism
system to understand the interaction between provision structures and the
consumer. It is also clear that further analysis needs to consider the social
processes that are fundamentally interlinked with travel.
The slow travel paradigm offers one path, among a choice of many routes,
towards the overall goal of sustainable development in tourism. The com-
plexities of the existing world economic system and unfolding dynamics likely
to be experienced within the next decade(s) preclude neat solutions based on
the past. However, if societies are assailed by external impacts of the magni-
tude that scientists now foresee, there is scope for bolder approaches. Slow
travel seeks to meet the bottom line of ecological survival, whilst delivering
welfare measures that many have become accustomed to in commonplace
lifestyles. Slow travel responds to these needs as it is designed on the basis of
lower-carbon input, less but enriched travel, renewed expectations and
enhanced experiences within proximate localities. It could well, in time,
become the epiphany of low-carbon tourism.
