The Consumption of Tourism - Tourism and Development: Concepts and Issues - page 374

Consuming tourism as experience
The consumption-as-experience perspective, focusing upon the subjec-
tive or emotional reactions of consumers to particular consumption objects,
draws attention to the ways in which consumers make sense of different
objects. As Holbrook and Hirschman (1982: 132) explain, 'this experiential
perspective is phenomenological in spirit and regards consumption as a pri-
marily subjective state of consciousness'. Moreover, 'how consumers experi-
ence consumption objects is structured by the interpretative framework(s)
that they apply to engage the object' (Holt, 1995: 3); consumption objects are
embedded in a social world which provides the framework for their defini-
tion or understanding.
Tourism is no exception to this process. As a form of consumption it is
firmly embedded in tourists' social world and the ways in which people
experience, or consume, tourism will depend very much on their interpreta-
tion of the meaning of tourism within that social world. For example, and
following on from the earlier discussion of tourist motivation, tourism may
be interpreted as a form of sacred consumption - it occurs outside normal
(profane) times and places, a 'festive, liminal time when behaviour is differ-
ent from ordinary work time' (Belk et al. , 1989: 12) and is consumed as a
sacred or spiritual experience. Tourists' behaviour will, therefore, be framed
by this sacralisation of tourism and may be manifested in different ways.
Some for example, may seek the spiritual refreshment of solitary, natural
places (Urry, 1990a); for others, the sacred nature of tourism may be reflected
in the collective experience of sites and destinations.
The consumption of tourism is also framed by the experiential aspect of
modern consumption as a whole, namely, that 'the consumption experience
[is] a phenomenon directed towards the pursuit of fantasies, feelings and fun'
(Holbrook & Hirschman, 1982: 132). In other words, modern consumption
is directed towards the hedonistic pursuit of pleasure which results not from
physical (utilitarian) satisfaction but, according to Campbell (1987), from
romantic day-dreaming. Thus, tourism represents the consumption of
dreams, again an escape to the non-ordinary, the sacred or novel 'other'.
Consuming as play
As a form of consumption that is autotelic and interpersonal, the consum-
ing-as-play perspective suggests that people utilise objects as a resource or
focus for interaction with other consumers rather than for the object's expe-
riential characteristics. In other words, from the play perspective, the object
of consumption becomes a vehicle for the achievement of broader, interper-
sonal goals. Thus, in the context of tourism, consuming-as-play does not
refer, for example, to the ludic or 'tourist-as-child' (Dann, 1996) character of
certain tourist experiences, but to the fact that tourism is used as a means of
socialising or sharing particular experiences with fellow consumers.