At the same time, publishing companies began to produce explicit guidebooks to cater to the burgeoning tourist market. At the forefront of this industry, Thomas Cook began to put together a guidebook for his expeditions to describe the places that would be encountered and the sights seen during the course of the journey. On this side of the Atlantic, Gideon Minor Davison has been credited with producing the first American guidebook. It described a specific route—termed the “fashionable tour”—that Davison intended readers to follow. One of the unique characteristics of this new book, however, was that it was small and cheaply printed. As such, it was intended to be portable for the duration of the trip and disposable after the trip was completed.6
By the late nineteenth century, magazines were publishing not only special articles by travel writers but also dedicated travel columns that also provided advice to potential tourists. For example, the British women’s magazine Queen was one of the first to make “The Tourist” a featured column. As travel was just starting to become more accessible to women, many were uncertain about what to expect from their first experience, especially in foreign countries. The column offered practical advice on travel arrangements, suitable accommodations, expected patterns of dress, and etiquette, among other topics. This was intended to give women the confidence to travel and the ability to experience new places with pleasure rather than fear or anxiety.7
The lines between this travel literature and early place promotion began to blur as some of the first tourism industry stakeholders began to “sponsor” writers. Railroad or steamship companies would hire writers to undertake trips or provide them with complimentary trips using their services, which the tourists would then write about. For example, in the preface to the travel narrative Back to Sunny Seas (1905), Frank Bullen wrote:
But I want to make it perfectly clear that I was the guest of the great Royal Mail Steam Packet Company, whose hospitality to me was more generous and farther-reaching than I could ever have dreamed of receiving. Yet I would like to make it clear too, if possible, that I have subdued my natural bias in favour of the Company, so that I have written only what I believe to be literally and exactly true.8
These companies were interested in creating and maintaining demand for their services. To some extent, that also meant creating and maintaining a demand for experiences in the places that they served. As the tourism industry continued to grow and destinations began to compete for tourists, they, too, began to offer incentives for authors to visit and write about their places.
Travel writing has continued to evolve, with new trends in both tourism and media. As a genre of literature, travel writing has experienced a marked decline since its rise to popularity in the nineteenth century. Of course, this may at least partially be attributed to the same reasons literature in general has experienced declining readership. Nonetheless, narratives of travel continue to comprise a small section in most bookstores, typically alongside the now more prolific guidebooks. These stories are still written by established authors, such as V. S. Naipaul, recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature (e.g., A Turn in the South, 1989), and recently by other well-known personalities as well, such as chef and Travel Channel host Anthony Bourdain (e.g., No Reservations: Around the World on an Empty Stomach, 2007). As in the past, these individuals are more likely to have the flexibility and the means to undertake the extensive trips to unusual places that become the subject of such books. In fact, some of the most widely known travel writing today is based on the type of extended stays in a place that stretch the limits of the definition of tourism, such as A Year in Provence (Peter Mayle, 1989) or Under the Tuscan Sun: At Home in Italy (Frances Mayes, 1996). The primary function of these books is entertainment; the instructive function of these books has all but disappeared, as few readers would have the ability or the interest to replicate the writers’ experiences.
The more typical experience of modern tourism does not lend itself as well to travel writing. The majority of tourists travel to prominent destinations visited by thousands if not millions of other tourists each year. Although more people are able to participate in tourism than ever before, their trips are of a far shorter duration than earlier generations of tourists. Americans, for example, receive an average of two weeks’ vacation time per year, and few take a single trip for that duration. Given the extent of information about the places visited and the compressed time frame, modern tourists have fewer opportunities for extensive noteworthy experiences. No one writes letters to family and friends back home during these trips; few tourists even send postcards, which notoriously arrive well after the tourists’ return. Instead, with increased access to the Internet, even at many foreign destinations, some tourists choose to transmit a few of their experiences or pictures in the far more ephemeral e-mail or post on a social networking site.
Yet, today’s amateur writers are nonetheless able to find an outlet for the stories of their travels on the web. With the proliferation of blogs on every subject imaginable, travel blogs have become a popular option for individuals to share their experiences. This can be seen on any general blog hosting site as well as the specialized TravelBlog, which in January 2012 boasted over 200,000 members and an average of 100 new members a day.9 While many of these are intended to keep family and friends up-to-date on the traveler’s activities, they are publicly available (figure 12.3). As a result, these sites are often encountered through keyword searches and therefore become part of the representations of a place that make up a potential tourist’s pre-trip information search.
Guidebooks, which appear to be one source that has experienced relatively few changes, continue to be an extraordinarily popular source of information for tourists. Most destinations are now covered—at least within a region—while some of the most popular destinations have a tremendous selection of guides from companies such as Baedeker’s, Fodor’s, Frommer’s, Insight Guides, Lonely Planet, Michelin Green Guides, Rick Steves, and Rough Guides. Although these companies also maintain some online content for pre-trip planning, websites have not replaced the books themselves. That guidebooks are still used as a portable reference during the course of a trip is easily seen at any major destination.
Figure 12.3. Florinda Klevisser created this blog to keep her friends and family updated during the course of a three-month-long trip. Upon her return home, she used this blog as a basis for writing a travel narrative, published in her native Italian, called Viaggia Con Me. (Source: Florinda Klevisser)
Place Promotion
At least initially, tourism stakeholders relied on travelers’ written accounts and word of mouth to promote both places and the services that would allow people to get to those places. Throughout much of the nineteenth century, rail companies in Britain did relatively little to advertise their services or the places they served. However, their American counterparts more quickly realized the value of generating tourism for the purpose of creating a steady market for the places they served. These companies, and later the British ones, produced abundant information and advertised in newspapers and magazines.
Both of these patterns were perpetuated in the twentieth century. Travel service companies—also including airlines by this time—and national/regional tourism organizations continued to produce pamphlets, brochures, and magazines to highlight the specific attractions of the destination(s). These materials could be distributed to potential tourists by mail (through targeted marketing or by request) or through travel agencies. In addition, these stakeholders continued to adapt to new forms of media by using television advertisements as well. To some extent, television advertising is still used, often by specific destinations or resorts. For example, starting in 2009, the California Travel and Tourism Commission began to run a series of “Life in California” television ads featuring a host of celebrities ranging from Jason Mraz to Kim Kardashian, David Beckham, and Betty White.
In today’s world, the Internet has become the most important medium for place promotion. Although In
ternet access is still not evenly distributed around the world, the areas that continue to have the least access are the poorest places, which export relatively few tourists. For the major tourist-generating regions, the Internet has quickly become the way in which the majority of people learn about a destination, book their travel arrangements, and form expectations for their experiences. It is sometimes argued that electronic media will not entirely replace print media for this purpose, and some types of information will continue to be made available at the point of consumption (e.g., the destination). It is still typically necessary for tourists to have access to printed information during the course of the trip; yet, the dramatic rise of smartphones and other portable electronic devices with Internet capabilities, e-reader functions, and apps for just about everything may ultimately change this in the future.
The destination website, typically produced by national tourism organizations, has become a particularly important source for place promotion. This has largely superseded the role of destination magazines or brochures in raising awareness, providing information, and creating a demand for tourism to that place. Websites are considered to be more accessible than print media in that they have the potential to reach a much wider audience. They are also more flexible since they have the ability to provide a greater quantity of information and more options for the viewer to customize the information to his or her interests. Websites offer a greater quantity and variety of media, including more images as well as sound and video files. In addition, the Internet now also hosts sites for specific hotels and resorts (e.g., Sandals.com), tour packages (e.g., VikingRiverCruises.com), various types of tourism experiences (e.g., SkyAdventures.travel), travel booking sites (e.g., Expedia.com or Vayama.com), and travel review sites (e.g., TripAdvisor.com or VirtualTourist.com).
Consequences of Representing Places in Tourism
Representations of place can be extraordinarily powerful, and they can have distinct if not always intended consequences. These are not accurate portrayals of reality but partial and selective ideas about places. Typically intended for an external audience, place promotion is sometimes criticized for creating superficial ideas about a place that have little to do with reality or the meanings that place has for the people who live there. Tourism promotions naturally represent places as something to be experienced and enjoyed by tourists. As such, aspects of the place, including its people, may be objectified as they are essentially turned into an attraction for tourists. The idea of place as playground discounts the daily activities, lifestyles, and livelihood patterns of local people. Moreover, place promotions that represent places without people or nontourist activities can reinforce the segregation of local people and tourists. For example, the destination may prevent residents from undertaking activities in a place to ensure that the “natural” condition of the site that is used to attract tourists is maintained for their pleasure.
Box 12.2. In-Depth: The Cycle of Expectation in Caribbean Tourism Representations
Today, any reference to the Caribbean is likely to conjure up certain images: bright sunny skies, clear turquoise waters, soft white sands, and lush green palm trees gently swaying in the breeze. This is the ubiquitous imagery that populates the place promotions across the region’s island destinations. Yet, these images associated with the modern tourism industry are hardly new. In fact, they have a long history that can be traced back to an earlier era of tourism in the region and the representations of the islands produced by the first generations of tourists.
As the Caribbean was one of the first colonial regions in the era of Western European colonialism, explorers, scientists, and plantation owners had long produced information about the region. However, it was not until the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 that the Caribbean came to be seen as a potential tourism destination. At this time, the region was relatively free from conflict, largely devoid of a hostile native population, and increasingly accessible by transatlantic steamship routes. Many of the first tourists to the islands made sketches of the scenes they saw and kept journals of the experiences they had. Then, as tourism continued to increase, subsequent tourists relied on the accounts of those who had gone before them. They prepared for a journey by reading the available literature and even took these books along for reference. Thus, they already had an idea in their mind of the places they were going to see before they arrived. For the most part, they found that their own experiences lived up to their expectations, and they perpetuated these ideas in their own travel narratives.
Ultimately a circular relationship evolved between representations of place and experiences of place: representations created preconceived ideas and images of the places to be visited; experiences in places tested those preconceptions. Because tourists generally felt that the experience lived up to their expectations, these ideas and images were reaffirmed and perpetuated through successive generations of tourists. As a result, traces of the past may be seen in modern representations of tourism in the Caribbean. Certainly the nature of these representations has changed over time, but the legacy is nonetheless clearly seen. For example, in 1869, English historian and novelist Charles Kingsley wrote of Dominica, “The whole island, from peak to shore, seems some glorious jewel—an emerald with tints of sapphire and topaz, hanging between blue sea and white surf below, and blue sky and white cloud above.”1 In 2002, the Caribbean Tourism Organization’s annual publication described St. Lucia as “a brilliant green jewel in the blue Caribbean . . . from the Pitons’ majestic twin peaks rising above the southeast coast, to Mt. Gimie—the island’s highest point—to its miles of pristine beach. . . .”2 Although early visual representations were charcoal sketches, pen-and-ink drawings, or black-and-white photographs, similar scenes are depicted in glossy color photographs of today (figures 12.4 and 12.5).
Discussion topic: Why do you think the same ideas and images are as effective in place promotion today as they were in the past?
Notes
1. Charles Kingsley, At Last: A Christmas in the West Indies (New York: Harper & Brothers Publishers, 1871), 57.
2. Caribbean Tourism Organization, Caribbean Vacation Planner (Coral Gables, FL: Gold Book, 2002), 53.
Source
Nelson, Velvet. “Traces of the Past: The Cycle of Expectation in Caribbean Tourism Representations.” Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change 5 (2007): 1–16.
Figures 12.4 and 12.5. The waterfall is one of the most common features in tourism representations of landscapes, as shown in this image from 1887 (left). Cascading through the center of the image, the waterfall is surrounded by jungle-like vegetation. The water collects in a pool at the bottom with large rocks in the foreground, and the people positioned at this pool marvel at the scene. Scenes highlighted in tourism promotions haven’t changed much since then—modern tourism organizations often feature images such as this (right). (Sources: James A. Froude, The English in the West Indies or the Bow of Ulysses [London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1909], 72, and Velvet Nelson)
Place promotion must maintain a balance between tapping into generalized ideas of place and creating a sense of distinction among other destinations. Because some destinations appeal to the same tourist motivations as others, promotions from places around the world draw upon the same themes. However, these places then run the risk of becoming “placeless.” Placelessness is described as a loss of identity, in which one place looks and feels like other places, often as a result of the superficial, stereotypical images circulated by the media.10 As tourism destinations, these places essentially have the same experiences to offer. For example, the idea of a tropical island paradise is clearly important in tourism representations, but the stereotypical imagery associated with it can, in fact, describe places in many different parts of the world. In their search for a destination, potential tourists may seek this type of place, where they believe they will have the experience they desire, rather than a specific place. As such, a destination needs to be able to attract potential tourists’ i
nterest with these themes but also provide them with a reason to choose it over other destinations that may appeal to the same motivations or desires.
Perhaps most important, the representations in place promotion must maintain a balance between presenting the characteristics of a destination that are most likely to attract tourists and creating realistic expectations for the experiences they would have at the destination. The ideas and images created for promotional purposes are often simplified and generalized, and not all aspects of the destination will fit that mold. To some extent, destinations can mitigate the potential for conflict between expectations and reality by the way in which tourism is developed. In many destinations, the tourism infrastructure channels tourists into certain places that are most likely to fit the idea of the destination presented to them before they arrive. Likewise, they are kept away from those parts of a place that don’t fit the image, such as an inner-city slum adjacent to a fashionable metropolitan district, a section of clear-cut forest near popular hiking trails, or a landfill just a few miles from a pristine beach. Because of this geographic separation, tourists’ expectations for a place are often met or even exceeded.
An Introduction to the Geography of Tourism Page 37
