Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Engaging with local public transport, such as bus or train, and cycling or
walking is likely to result in a greater engagement with the place visited and
potential for place- and transport-related experiences, but also more spending
in the wider economy beyond the main tourism resorts and attractions. Much
though depends on how slow travel is organized. Independent travel is likely
to result in more dispersed visitor spending and a diversity of experiences,
while organized travel will limit spending opportunities to places on a given
itinerary and more staged experiences. Coach tours, for instance, while hav-
ing a smaller carbon footprint compared to other motorized modes, present
somewhat contained opportunities to engage with the places visited. Car
travel, on the other hand, allows independent travel to a diversity of places,
but there is a much larger carbon footprint and potential for more local
impacts such as pollution and congestion. This, however, is a rather limited
perspective of coach travel. As the industry has evolved, coach tours now pro-
vide opportunities for specialist experiences and, in many cases, access places
that tourists, who lack knowledge of the region visited, might never find. Such
considerations are important in the overall sustainability of the holiday and
can be directly related to the type of experiences sought by tourists. In this
respect the choice of mode is intrinsically linked with the other ingredients of
slow travel, discussed next.
The travel and destination experience
Within the conceptual framework the distinction between the travel and des-
tination experience is purposely blurred. This is because slow travel
encompasses the whole holiday. It is not just about the travel, nor does it
exclude the destination-based experience. Within this 'new tourism', and con-
temporary travel more widely, there is no single destination but multiple
destination encounters that involve places, people, modes of transport and co-
creation of experience. Travel to a destination includes experiential elements,
and destination experiences involve local travel. On this basis, it is not clear
why transport has been so overlooked in the tourism literature, given its inte-
gral role.
Work on slow travel suggests that engagement with people and place is
an important theme for slow travellers (Dickinson et al, 2010b). Slow trav-
ellers are involved in the co-creation of experience (Binkhorst and Den
Dekker, 2009) through their interaction with people and place. Cyclists, in
particular, express a desire for mastery that is well beyond typical tourism
spectator roles (Cloke and Perkins, 1998). As a cyclist encountered in the New
Forest National Park, UK, described it: 'being in the car is like watching it on
TV, cycling is really being there'. The embodied sense of being there, physi-
cally coping with the locality and the local transport, and interacting with
local people and fellow travellers, form an important discourse and present
some of the most memorable stories and nostalgia that can be elaborated post-
trip. These stories often relate to more adventurous moments, the overcoming
of a variety of obstacles and to shared hardships.
With slow travel there may be a specific destination; however, travel is an
integral part of the tourist experience where people enjoy the slow pace of
