TOURIST

TOURIST

A person travelling for pleasure for recreational (rest) or cognitive purposes (sightseeing, getting to know other places, cultures), usually in an organised and group way, in the home country and abroad, to places focused on tourist traffic, providing various kinds of tourist attractions.

According to the World Tourism Organisation, a tourist is a visitor who spends at least one night at public or private accommodation facilities in the visited country. The modern type of traveller, educated in the conditions of globalisation of culture and aesthetisation of the environment, is represented by a person who temporarily leaves home, changes the routine of everyday life and the life environment (Przecławski) in order to experience extraordinary impressions and come into contact with the visited environment (natural, cultural, social). The tourist pursues a form of consumer tourism, the beginnings of which can be traced back to the nineteenth century and associated with the development of local landscape tourism based on the idea of visiting picturesque landscapes. Although quickly absorbed by fashion and the goods market, it contributed to the democratisation of travel and the development of the tourism industry.

The tourist most often uses the intermediation of travel agencies, which offer a diverse tourist product (from all-inclusive stays in resorts to extreme tourism) and shape tourist needs through guides, advertising brochures, TV commercials, etc., designed to stimulate travel, according to the principle that the tourist goes to places that are attractive, but already rendered familiar by culturally shaped images (MacCannell). The tourist uses tourist spaces (hotels, airports, railway stations, etc.), understood as non-places (Augé), i.e. makeshift, temporary places that are indistinguishable from each other and are not conducive to establishing social relations.

According to Edensor, the tourist visits two types of places: tourist enclaves (closed, controlled, isolated from the local population, fully self-sufficient) and heterogeneous tourist space (open, uncontrolled, disorderly), where tourism is only one of the activities and the tourist infrastructure is embedded in the local one.

According to Cohen, we can speak about four social roles of the tourist and four types of tourist experience. The first two are institutionalised roles: (1) an organised mass tourist who is reluctant to experience adventures and show own initiative while fully submitting to the travel plan set by the guide, and locked in a “community bubble” that allows him to transfer his own world and his habits; (2) an individual mass tourist who relies on a tourist agency, travels along tourist routes but organises his own time and travel itinerary. Two further roles are non-institutionalised: (3) the discoverer seeks novelties, establishes relationships with the natives, gives up his habits, but is not inclined to immerse himself completely into the society he visits; (4) the drifter takes the risk of travelling his own roads and completely ignores the tourist infrastructure, travels without a plan and a clearly defined purpose. It is the opposite of the mass tourist, reminiscent of the wanderer of old.

An important aspect of tourist activity is sightseeing, watching, taking the form of a “gaze”. (Urry, Adler) expressing aesthetic but superficial (perception turns into recognition according MacCannell) interest in objects, views and events. This principle applies to the attractions of the tourist industry, i.e. everything that is intended to be visited: views, monuments, parks, old factories, temples, staged events, etc. Attractions prepared for tourists have the character of a spectacle (MacCannell), in which the tourist remains a spectator. The spectacle can be a standing of historical events, folk feasts, but also the way of presentation of monuments (type of lighting, models, etc.). The tourist is a collector of frequently viewed and superficially experienced places, often not interested in visiting the same place again. The tourist expects otherness, a departure from the routine of everyday life, unusual impressions, especially visual ones, so that his experiences fit into the tourist experience. In this respect, the tourist’s attribute is a camera, supporting the memory and remembrance of visited places.

A type of tourist is the post-tourist who “admires” the tourist spaces and attractions, without leaving home and experiencing them through the screen monitor. In this respect, the tourist experience is a sensually limited experience, a form of play with images, texts and signs, and being at one step removed, it has no trait of authenticity. The tourist is a model figure of contemporary (postmodern) man according to MacCannell, Bauman, Urry. According to Bauman, he represents a postmodern type of subjectivity, while according to Urry – a model of human shaped by contemporary culture.

[B. F.]

Literature:

Bauman, Zygmunt. Dwa szkice o moralności ponowoczesnej. Warszawa: Instytut Kultury, 1994.

Bauman, Zygmunt. Postmodern Ethics. London:, Blackwell, 1993.

Cohen, Eric. „A Phenomenology of Tourist Experiences. Sociology”. The Journal of the British Sociological Association 2 (1979): 179-199.

Edensor, Tim. Tourist at the Taj. London: Routledge, 1998.

MacCannell, Dean. The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.

Podemski, Krzysztof. Antropologia podróży. Poznań: Wydawnictwo Naukowe UAM, 2004.

Urry, John. The Tourist Gaze. London: Sage, 2002.

Wieczorkiewicz, Anna. Apetyt turysty. O doświadczaniu świata w podróży. Kraków: Universitas, 2008.