Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
to change. People accept and seek innovation in industry, education, family life, the arts, social
relationships, and the like.
In particular, in countries with high living standards, manufacturers faced with quickly saturated
markets concentrate on developing new products and encouraging the consumer to show greater
psychological
flexibility. More and more markets are dependent on the systematic organization of
rapid change in fashion to sustain and expand. With the blurring of class differences and rising
standards of living, travel demand will likely re
ect this climate and express fragmentation of the total
market as people move away from the traditional resorts to a succession of new places.
Dependence versus Autonomy
A widely accepted analysis of modern industrial society is based on the concept of alienation in work.
Brie
y, this view states that most people are inevitably employed in work that, though perhaps well
paid, is not intrinsically rewarding and satisfying and that from this frustration results in, among other
things, a general sense of powerlessness, a withdrawal from political and social activities, and the
pursuit of status symbols. In the
field of leisure, this work alienation should lead to a demand for
passive, time-killing holidays or for holidays where the main grati
cation is the achievement of easily
recognized status. Fundamental absence of signi
cance in work, in other words, would lead to holidays
during which the same sense of powerlessness and dependence would prevail
—
organized holiday
camps, organized package trips, mass entertainment, and so forth.
In fact, very little empirical research has substantiated this description of an industrialized society.
Indeed, the data available suggest the contrary
that many industrial workers, backed by strong trade
unions and state-created full employment, feel that as workers, they wield considerable power.
Certainly industry and social organization is moving in the direction of providing work that is
intrinsically rewarding and satisfying, which should enhance life for today's workers, leading to a sense
of personal autonomy in all aspects of their lives, including their leisure time. They are likely to seek
holidays during which they feel independent and in control of what they do and how they do it. One
would expect that for some time ahead, economic and social circumstances should generate a greater
proportion of autonomous participants in the total demand for travel.
—
Order versus Disorder
Until recently in most Western societies, the training of children has been based on control and
conformity, de
ned and enforced by an all-embracing circle of adult authority
gures: parents,
teachers, police of
cers, clergy, employers, civil authorities. With such a background, it is not surprising
that most tourists sought holidays that reinforced this indoctrination: set meals at
fixed times,
guidebooks that told them the
''
right
''
places to visit, and resorts where their fellow tourists were tidy,
well behaved,
dressed, and so on. They avoided situations where their sense of orderliness
might be embarrassed or offended.
More recently, child-rearing practices have changed in the direction of greater permissiveness, and
the traditional incarnations of authority have lost much of their Victorian impressiveness. The newer
generation of tourists no longer feels inhibited about what to wear and how to behave when on
holiday; differences of others, opportunities for unplanned action, and freedom from institutionalized
regulations are distinctive characteristics of the contemporary traveler.
Summing up, then, one would predict that because of deep and persisting social and economic
changes in modern Western society, the demand for travel will be based less on the goals of
relaxation, familiarity, dependence, and order and increasingly on activity, novelty, autonomy, and
informality. One should not, of course, ignore the fact that, since international travel is a rapidly
growing market, each year
''
properly
''
'
s total consumers will always include a minority who value familiarity,
dependency, and order.
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