Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
congregations of thousands of travellers, such as in Hampi, Karnataka, or by one of the most
common survival tactics - teaming up with other travellers and thereby forming a mobile
bubble of tourism culture.
Based on what they had already learned in the everyday of their home environment, the
travellers knew how to act to achieve increased integrity and control. A team of four back-
packers in a crowded Indian bus station has a more powerful presence than a lone one. Two
might look after the luggage and gather information from local passengers. One might stand
in the ticket counter queue. The fourth might buy snacks for all. The group might control
how open they are to outsider access by opening or closing their bubble via a range of behav-
iours. One of the more precarious normative interfaces with the local society in this example -
gender - may also be more effectively controlled by group behaviour (cf. Hottola, 2002b, see
also Tivers,
Chapter 11
of this volume). If a local group with similar enough aspirations
is formed, the foreign and domestic travellers may join together and construct a shared
metaspace. An Indian family and the four backpackers shared an overnight compartment,
entertaining each other in this temporal territory behind cotton curtains.
The idea of visitor dominance in metaspaces does not exclude the presence of local people.
The relatively borderless tourist enclaves of Wilson and Richards (2008) do, however, form a
particularly interesting case. In their analysis of Bangkok's Khaosan Road (Banglamphu) and
Sydney's Kings Cross, they observed how visiting travellers and local actors met in these
spaces
of suspension
, the tourist space evolving into something familiar yet exotic for both the visitors
and the locals, and the enclave becoming an arena for joint activities. In places such as Bondi
Beach, travellers are also welcome as temporary workforce and thereby directly integrate into
the everyday. A mutually driven interaction creates a hybrid space of tourism and work and a
culture of a more durable nature (see also Allon and Anderson, 2009).
A new dimension of metaspatiality in tourism has recently become established in cyber-
space. People have 'always' mailed postcards and other messages home. Today however, the
technological innovations of mobile phones and the internet have signifi cantly changed the
situation by enabling more or less constant interactive communication by text, voice and
digital images. Internet sessions, often for hours, have become an integral part of travel for
many tourists. They publish real-time diaries in blogs and other social media in order to
attract appreciation and attention (Paris, 2010), at the same time increasingly turning their
backs on both local realities and fellow tourists. Some may actually communicate more with
their home domain than with people in their destination, isolating themselves in a digital
bubble. The action of distancing oneself thereby becomes an extension of the metaspatial
enclave and adds another spatial dimension to the culture of tourism.
Social interaction in space
People are generally representative of their own cultures in intercultural encounters. The
search for interpersonal contacts and the often simultaneous avoidance of them is present in
all forms of tourism (Hottola, 2008; MacCannell, 1992). Many tourists wish to meet other
tourists and local people, but also wish to avoid them, depending on situation and individual
interests. A tourist may go for a vacation to have a break in their routines (e.g. work), to
indulge in easy life and to pursue activities not possible in the everyday. They may enjoy
(some do not) the company and variety of other tourists who share the enclave. At the same
time, they might desire (some do not) to interact with the destination, to experience new
things and to meet
Other
people. Only few tourists, however, look for complete, unregulated
exposure. The question is how best to combine these competing aspirations in the given time.
