Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
it offers increasing scope for consumers to choose from a wider variety of products than the
more traditional forms of holiday booking can. In addition the internet can also help small,
medium and even micro enterprises reach global markets by linking and marketing them
online. While developments such as Route 62 require little more than the coordination of
local businesses in a joint branding and marketing campaign, the past decade has also seen the
rise of internet-based multinational corporations, which are squeezing the high street travel
agents.
To return to the earlier point about increasing individuation resulting in the somewhat
paradoxical situation of individuals being forced into making choices, the rise of internet
travel booking illustrates this well. For example the most successful online travel agent,
Expedia, in the second quarter of 2010 accounted for 33 per cent of all worldwide online
bookings (Expedia, 2010: 3). Internet-based companies can offer greater discounts than high
street retailers as they have signifi cantly lower costs. In turn, this results in declining in-store
sales and branch closures, which in turn results in the increasing use of online companies, and
so a spiral of change develops which favours the creation of more individuated products, to
the extent that consumers have less choice of store-based traditional travel agents and there-
fore have to turn to the internet. It is in such ways that the processes of individuation become
institutionalised. This does not mean that all high street travel agents will disappear, as there
is still a suffi cient market to sustain some, but they too will be acting in a more niched
capacity, serving those who, for a variety of reasons, neither have nor wish to have internet
access, or who prefer to conduct their buying in a face-to-face fashion.
In addition to commercial transactions, all forms of digital communication also contribute
to the further entrenchment of individuation in contemporary society. People can choose (or
not) to acquire mobile phone applications that offer individualised services of various kinds;
different media such as TV programmes, fi lms and of course music can be downloaded and
consumed as and when the individual wants rather than according to any programme
schedule, while social networking media creates new (if perhaps illusory) networks of friends
and like-minded people. In terms of tourism there is also the capacity for individuals to
research destinations and compare reviews of destinations, hotels and so on, as well as to
create their own reviews as well as sharing images of their holidaymaking through travel
blogs (Enoch and Grossman, 2010). In short, a new pattern of social interaction that empha-
sises the individual and encourages the recording, reporting and sharing of individual actions
that cuts across space and time has become institutionalised.
In relation to tourism, this raises some interesting issues about how space is conceptualised.
As has been noted elsewhere, telling stories and relating tales of travel is a fundamental
component of the tourist experience (Meethan
et al.
, 2006; Wearing
et al.
, 2010). Diaries, of
which blogs are the latest variant, are also the most individualised and personal forms of
record-keeping and story-telling, but the use of travel blogs not only opens up what was a
private realm to public scrutiny, but also challenges the ways in which information about
travel and tourism is gathered and acted upon.
There have been many studies that have focused on the controlling role of the 'gaze' ever
since that term was fi rst coined, and the ways in which guides and guidebooks have instructed
tourists on the relative merits of places and sights ever since the early days of modern tourism
(Mullen and Munson, 2010). With the advent of blogs and other travel rating sites such as
Holidays Uncovered
(
www.holidays-uncovered.co.uk)
information about places and services
is no longer fi ltered through the sensibilities of travel writers, travel companies or guide-
book compilers. Like other forms of internet use, it allows for the direct and public sharing
of experiences in both written and pictorial forms, and removes a layer of distance and
