Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
on norms, tradition, custom as well as promotional and regulatory discourses. Mass tourism is
'deeply embedded in the organization of life in the more developed world' (Shaw and Williams
1994: 175), hegemonic tourist discourses now fi rmly etched into many tourist movements and
spaces, meaning habits are conditioned by institutionalized confi gurations that precede tourists
and which continue to intensify and reproduce across generations. Pre-disposed to act in certain
ways, tourists are often relieved of decision making, standardization meeting limited 'desire
for performance' (Soguk 2003: 30) and expectations of participation (Marson 2011), tourism
imagery often positioning tourists in distinct social spaces that orchestrated new forms of social
life (Sheller and Urry 2006).
Often bereft of market research and customer intelligence, destination managers when
facilitating tourists' experience of otherness have done so through a tried and tested network of
shopping malls, museums, golf courses, and railway stations, hotels, resorts, airports, museums
and beaches. This approach is often successful early in the destination lifecycle (Butler 1980) and
emerging markets such as China, helping to manufacture relationships between elements that
would otherwise have no connection, while facilitating individual independence from group
interests, organic or territorially bounded social relations (Aradau
et al
. 2010). However, many
have critiqued the 'mass markets' approach since it often facilitates the expulsion of alterity
beyond 'the boundaries of some ethnically, culturally or civilizationally purifi ed homogeneous
enclave, at whatever level of social or geographical scale' (Morley 2004: 309). Whilst the positive
and negative effects of mass tourism are well documented (Shaw and Williams 1994), the scope
of economic power and the scale economics surrounding 'mass markets' may mean the tourism-
industrial complex can assert a hegemonic right to regulate and exploit mass undifferentiated
markets within homogenized templates, and circulate tourists according to its own desires for
profi t and capital accumulation. Because of the focus on volume, only limited and tried and
tested choices may be available to consumers and while remaining popular for many, since it
fi nds a way to meet the needs of 'old tourists', it can stifl e diversity and give consumers the
'lowest common denominator' (Lew 2008: 411). It also ignores those willing and demanding to
pay premium prices for more unique, individualized products, services and experiences. While
the 'mass markets' approach is product driven
,
the post-modern and dynamic societies in which
individuals now live means a shift in orientation across industries from a product-orientation to
a consumer-orientation that customizes products and services for distinct 'niche markets',
requiring fl exible and responsive practices and a move from mass marketing to niche marketing.
The refrain from many industries is that there are no more mass markets. From computing to
retail, mass markets have splintered into a myriad of differentiated niche markets, where
demanding consumers have pushed fi rms to offer a greater range of products customized to their
needs. Therefore, the implication is that tourism, a complex phenomenon working more as a
metaphor than a label in a world where everybody seems to have mobility related aspirations,
plans or projects, has seen a similar shift, or at least a nudge.
Fragmenting tourism
Tourism, while complex, suggests and informs the imagination and novel forms of identity
making. Bruner (1991) rejects any deterministic position that confi nes the tourist to a discourse
constituted outside their own physicality, outside their own 'selves', as he states that 'of course
tourists have agency. . . There are no persons without agency, without active selves' (Bruner
2005: 12). Tourism, then, can no longer be considered a single phenomenon where the tourist
role is pre-arranged and produced by a dedicated tourism industry and consumed by an
unrefl exive, habitual population, since the most ordinary of people at the most ordinary of times
