Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
relations and tourism. This is because it excludes, for example, the type of power relations and
political issues that set in motion the orchestration of dynamics and actors that make tourism
fl ows happen on a local and international level.
Indeed, the international dimension is also central to our approach and the concept of
intercultural communication has become synonymous with global communications, diasporas
and multiple intersectional identity formations. It is only through this international approach
that the tourism-reputation systems can be understood as systems of meaning and mediation of
perceived and real experiences. This applies to the individual-local level where reputation systems
provide meaning to the tourists during their experience as well as to the collective-global level
where public relations mediates culture in global tourism fl ows. This ability to address the
different levels has become increasingly important in times in which 'the global-local tension [of
globalization] has disrupted the traditional notion of geographically situated audiences contained
within isolated national boundaries and identifi ed by a set of permanent characteristics' (Pal and
Dutta 2008: 164).
Consequently, if we seek to understand how tourism-reputation system mediate and create
reality, we need to undertake a social-interpretive approach. This in the sense that our notion of
'reality is socially constructed, not objective; that knowing and acting are made possible through
symbols and codes; that communicative action has a moral dimension and implications for self-
and group identities since communication always conveys both explicit information about a
topic and information that proposes “a defi nition of the participants and their relationship”'
(Banks 1995: 36-7).
On this account, tourism is a socially constructed reality, which is culturally mediated by
public relations in order to articulate symbolic systems of understanding, experience and satisfac-
tion, which in itself can only be understood in relation to expectations created by propagation of
ideas about the event-place. As such, public relations - underpinned by values of commodifi ca-
tion and ideology of neo-liberal capitalism - helps to construct the tourism-reputation systems
as a cluster of expectations to which stakeholders refer when tourism takes place as an action of
performance. The parents visiting a theme-park not only expect their children to be safe and have
fun because they think that that is the purpose of parenthood in general but also expect to
consume these leisure activities as a necessary ritual of validation of their own parenthood; users
of a hotel expect the people to speak their language (or at least be able to communicate with
them) even if it is in a foreign place because for them globalization is in a tangible sense an exten-
sion of their own reality to other places and the ability to access these event-places on their own
terms; visitors to a rainforest expect to see wild animals even if that is unlikely to happen, because
their whole experiences have been mediated in anticipation by expectations disseminated by
mainstream media programmes of natural history and environmental propaganda.
Tourists, who are of course at the centre of the tourism systems, also perform individually and
collectively rituals that bring together expectations and experiences in new ways by evoking dif-
ferent times. The parents who only enjoy Disney World through the enjoyment of their sons and
daughters; the Jews, Muslims and Christians who re-live the suffering of the ancestors in their
pilgrimages to historic or religious sites; the WWII orVietnam War veterans and their families who
re-visit their own or parental memories by visiting Normandy or Ho-Chi-Min City; the British
family who despite having the resources to go somewhere else decide for the rainy Blackpool sea
resort because it reminds them of the past; the couple who live in the beautiful South of France
but decide to visit Sydney or New York to fulfi l their aspirations of modernity and future.
The performance of travelling rituals happens because the tourism-reputation systems create
expectations while mediating the overall experience of reality; going to a resort in Punta Cana
(which creates an artifi cial and secluded micro-environment for the tourist) and fulfi lling all
