Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Of significance to the idea of slow travel, many social interactions are depend-
ent on travel, and thus leisure travel is important in shaping social networks
and is often a fundamental force in people's lives (Frändberg, 2008). A mobil-
ities perspective therefore opens up a new analytical framework for travel
research, which moves transport for tourism beyond a spatial problem
that facilitates individualized passage from one place to another. Urry and
co-researchers have identified five interdependent mobilities:
1
Physical travel of people for work, leisure, family life, pleasure, migration,
and escape;
2
Physical movement of objects delivered to producers, consumers and
retailers;
3
Imaginative travel elsewhere through images and memories seen on texts,
TV, computer screens and film;
4
Virtual travel on the internet;
5
Communicative travel through person-to-person messages via letters,
postcards, birthday and Christmas cards, telegrams, telephones, faxes,
emails, instant messages, videoconferences and 'skyping'. (Larsen et al,
2006, p4)
While physical travel is of most interest here, Urry (2007) argues that this can-
not be isolated from the other four mobilities, and these are intrinsically linked
in a tourism context. Indeed, Sharpley (2009, p79) asks, 'is it possible or log-
ical to separate tourism from other mobilities?' It is the focus on the multiple
ways in which social connections are mediated across distance that is crucial
to the study of mobilities (Urry, 2007). For instance, weak ties, maintained by
internet communication, may lead to physical travel across the globe. Larsen
et al (2006) also suggest it is not helpful to separate business and leisure into
exclusive travel categories, as both categories are often mutually linked by
social networks.
Movement is socially organized (Urry, 2007). Mobilities research explores
how people connect with significant others across the globe in various differ-
ent forms of travel (Cass et al, 2004). Based on Harvey's (1989; cited by
Larsen et al, 2006) concept of 'time space compression', people from western
countries are now able to travel quickly, easily and cheaply, resulting in the
spread of social networks, and increases in volume and distance of travel,
known as time-space distanciation. With families now spread across the globe,
some argue, leisure time is increasingly structured to facilitate shorter visits
(Cass et al, 2004), to spatially dispersed locations (Larsen et al, 2006), largely
dependent on air travel (Urry, 2009). The long weekend has become an impor-
tant unit of leisure time that can provide sustained, slow-moving quality time
with significant others (Larsen et al, 2006). This taking of time with signifi-
cant others away from home could be important for slow travel if it is
reconfigured into the journey context.
In these emergent globalized networks of connectivity, tourism is impor-
tant because 'travel, visits and hospitality have moved centre-stage to
many people's lives' (Larsen et al, 2006, p40). Mobilities research particularly
Search WWH ::




Custom Search