The Consumption of Tourism - Tourism and Development: Concepts and Issues - page 370

generally unaware of tourism-related consequences and tensions in
destination areas but, as tourism is an essentially ego-centric, escapist activity,
tourists 'do not want to be burdened with the concerns of the normal world'
(McKerchera, 1993a). More bluntly, tourists pay significant sums of money
in search of relaxation, fun and entertainment. They are, therefore, most
likely to give priority to satisfying their personal needs rather than demon-
strating and responding to a positive concern for the consequences of their
actions - their focus will be inwards, on the satisfaction of personal needs
and wants, rather than on the external tourism environment. Moreover, as
we shall now see, this characteristic of tourist-consumer behaviour is rein-
forced by the culture of tourism consumption.
Tourism and consumer culture
As suggested above, the consumption of tourism has long been viewed as
a logical, rational process whereby particular needs or wants may be satis-
fied, in a utilitarian sense, through tourism. As a result, much of the associ-
ated research has been concerned with developing models of the tourism
demand process, or with particular elements of or influences within that
process, in order to explain why people participate in tourism. Conversely,
only recently have researchers come to focus upon the broader role of tourism
as a specific form of consumption. In other words, tourism has, by and large,
been considered in isolation from other forms of consumption in general, and
from the wider cultural framework within which it occurs in particular. As
a result, although the practice of consumption has become a defining cultural
element of many (allegedly postmodern) tourism-generating societies
(Bocock, 1993: 4), the influence of a dominant consumer culture on tourism
has been generally overlooked. In short, relatively little attention has been
paid to not why, but how tourism is consumed in a world where consump-
tion plays an increasingly vital role in social life.
The Tourism-Culture Relationship
Despite this relative paucity of relevant research, the study of tourism
consumption has not remained completely divorced from consumer culture
theory. Since Urry (1990a) first considered the 'consumption of tourism', a
number of commentators have explored the cultural context of tourist-
consumer behaviour, in particular the link between tourism and postmodern
culture (for example, Munt, 1994; Pretes, 1995; Urry, 1990b). Indeed, it has
long been recognised that an identifiable relationship exists between tourism
and the cultural 'condition' of those societies within which it occurs or is
generated. For example, the widespread adoption of sunbathing during the
late 1920s, the popularity of the British holiday camp up to the 1960s and