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can now 'deploy their imaginations in the practice of their everyday lives' (Appadurai 1996: 5).
It is this imagination which 'is now central to all forms of agency, is itself a social fact, and is
the key component of the new global order' (Appadurai 1996: 31). In a world in motion,
individuals are drawing upon their imagination and access to mobility to cross borders in ever-
greater numbers inside and outside of quotidian realities, in pursuit of opportunities and
possibilities, provoking 'new concepts, new ways of seeing and being' (Robertson 1994: 2).
Connecting 'within and across different societies and regions, transport-systems, accommodation
and facilities, resources, environments, technologies, and people and organizations' (Van der
Duim 2007: 967-68) enables individuals to explore consumerist post-modern aesthetic and
intensifi ed forms of individualized identities (Savage
et al
. 2005) in far greater numbers than was
ever before possible.
To suggest that the tourism industry is fragmented is not new with Poon (1989) noting the
shift from 'old tourism' (e.g. the standardized holiday package) to 'new tourism' which is
segmented, customized and fl exible. However, individuals are now able to 'live “in” the world of
modernity much more comprehensively than was ever possible before the advent of modern
systems of representation, transportation and communication' (Giddens 1991: 211), Cresswell
(2006: 45) noting that 'not only does the world appear to be more mobile, but our ways of
knowing the world have also become more fl uid', which possibility might not just change the
world but ways of knowing it. This identity construction encompasses both people's 'sense of
who they are (what might be termed personal identity) and their sense of who they are like,
and who they are different from (what might be termed social location)' (Skinner and Rosen
2007: 83). This trend has been also been propelled by global competition; economic turbulence;
over-familiarity (and defi ance) with the concept of 'mass destination' (Holden 2008), uniqueness
of new niche products, time squeeze, investment in tourism infrastructure, technology, space
contraction, affluence, economics of scope, new marketing and branding strategies (Lew 2008;
Marson 2011; Poon 1989).
A 'new age of mobility' (Ki-Moon 2009) and individualism has led to spatio-temporal
orderings where 'transitional identities may be sought and performed' (Edensor 2000: 333) and
from which narratives can be constructed and new perspectives communicated. It means
individuals now seem to be more than ever prone to articulate complex affi liations, allegiances,
belongings, attachments and occasioned, intermittent, sustained encounters to multiple issues,
pasts, events, people, places, cultures and traditions, opening up the 'possibility of adjusting
understandings, relationships and self-actualization' (Crouch 2006: 361). As individuals search for
new belongings, changing the way that they conceive of themselves and their perspective on the
world, it is often at the expense of older certainties, belongings, solidarities, loyalties and block
identities. The acceptance of 'personal choice across a range of tourist activities' (Robinson,
Heitmann and Dieke 2011: xii) does not mean the end of mass markets and the systems and
structures that organized much of mainstream tourist life by choreographing mobility and social
relations. While fragmenting, tourism has not dissipated into shapeless crowds. However, as
people rearrange their social relations with regard to the constraints and opportunities that new
and innovative tourist products can give when experiencing the world, the fragmentation of
tourism products (Marson 2011) means the 'the old stories of group (Communal) belonging'
(Bauman 2001: 98) are becoming replaced with 'identity stories' in which 'we tell ourselves
about where we came from, what we are now and where we are going' (ibid. 99).
Policy-makers, planners and many in the tourism industry who largely failed to address more
unique wants and needs now recognize the demand shift in the niche markets is signifi cantly
large, and often made up of consumers willing to pay for meaningful experiences. The late
acceptance and identifi cation of those unique wants and needs was often because they lacked
