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Skogland, I., & Siguaw, J. (2004). Are your satisfied customers loyal? Cornell Hotel
and Restaurant Administration Quarterly, 45(3), 221–234.
Urry, J. (1990). The tourist gaze. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
West, A., & Purvis, E. (1992). Hotel design: The need to develop a strategic
approach. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 4(1),
15–22.

Received 2 May 2010; revised 30 September 2010; accepted for publication 18 October 2010
doi:10.1016/j.annals.2010.10.006

Annals of Tourism Research, Vol. 38, No. 2, pp. 711–714, 2011

0160-7383/$ - see front matter Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Printed in Great Britain

TOURIST SIGHTS AS SEMIOTIC SIGNS

A Critical Commentary
Raymond W.K. Lau
The Open University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Urry (2002) argues that ‘the organizing sense within the typical tourist experi-
ence is visual’, and the tourist ‘gaze is constructed through signs, and tourism in-
volves the collection of signs’ (pp. 3, 146). Urry cites the linguist Culler (1981),
who argues ‘All over the world, tourists are engaged in semiotic projects, reading
cities, landscapes, and cultures as sign systems’ (p. 128). Thus, for both authors,
sights constituting signs appear to be a fairly common phenomenon. Their
sight-as-sign idea actually derives from MacCannell (1976).
Contemporary tourism studies owe many debts to MacCannell, including his
concepts of sights as signs, authenticity and tourism as pilgrimage. Whereas the last
two concepts are linked in MacCannell’s analysis, he does not link them to the first
concept; in fact, sights as signs and authenticity seem incompatible since the for-
mer is apparently an anti-essentialist concept, the latter an essentialist one. We
argue that MacCannell’s sight-as-sign concept is valuable but his formulation of
it is faulty; once this is corrected, it becomes linked to the concept of tourism as
pilgrimage; and thus linked, it is complementary to instead of incompatible with
the concept of authenticity. The sight-as-sign cases examined by MacCannell are
special (all possessing pilgrimage value), hence we conclude that, contra Urry
and Culler, whether or not other sights constitute signs can be established only
with careful substantiation.
First, a terminological note: semiotics refers to philosopher Charles Peirce’s the-
ory which stipulates a triadic relationship between sign, designatum and interpre-
tant. On the other hand, linguist Ferdinand Saussure coined the term semiology
for his theory which specifies a dyadic relationship between signifier and signified.
Despite some commonalities, the two theories are different, for example, Saussure,
but not Peirce, methodologically abstracts from extra-linguistic referents (see
Noth, 1990 on Peirce’s and Saussure’s theories). In postmodernist theory, the ref-
erence is usually to Saussure, but the term semiotics is often used. I follow this con-
ventionalized usage.
712 Research notes and reports / Annals of Tourism Research 38 (2011) 708–722

Saussure argues that the relationship between signifier (e.g., the word or sound
‘cat’) and signified (the idea or concept of cat) is entirely arbitrary, that is, that a
particular word/sound should signify a particular concept is due not to anything
intrinsic about the word/sound, but purely a matter of convention. Within the sign
system, a particular word/sound signifies what it signifies solely because it is differ-
ent from other words/sounds. Hence, meaning derives from difference, instead of
essence (something intrinsic to the signifier). This view, known as anti-essentialism,
constitutes a core postmodernist theoretical position (Barker, 2003, p. 435).
In suggesting that ‘tourist attractions are signs’, MacCannell equates tourist
sight to signified and what he calls marker to signifier. He defines marker as
‘any information about a sight’, including name, picture, plan or map, and infor-
mation ‘found in travel books, museum guides [etc.]’. Thus, the signifier (mar-
ker) signifies (explains) the signified (what the sight is). MacCannell argues how
‘a specific sight is hardly worth seeing but the information associated with it [i.e.,
the marker] makes a visit worthwhile anyway’. As illustrations, he refers, inter alia,
to the exhibition of a moon rock; the Bonnie and Clyde shootout spot (‘As a
sight, it amounts to no more than a patch of wild grass’); a tree in Paris struck
by the bullet of an attempted assassination on a Russian Czar; places where his-
torical battles occurred. In these cases, it is the marker (the information about
the sight) ‘that is the object of touristic interest’ (above quotes and references
are respectively from MacCannell, 1976, pp. 109, 110, 113, 114, 128–130). This
argument is reiterated, and MacCannell’s examples cited, by Culler (1981,
passim) and Urry (2002, p. 13).
MacCannell’s conceptualization of marker as signifier seems problematic.
Firstly, signifier simply signifies a concept, it does not provide any information
or talk about it. The marker is in many cases (e.g., in travel writing) more like dis-
course than anything else. It is remarkable that Culler, a Saussure scholar, misses
this point in taking up MacCannell’s argument. He refers to as markers such dis-
courses as the ‘symbolic encrustations [i.e., ideas, folklores, etc.] with which a cul-
ture has surrounded the sight’ that mediate a tourist’s experience of the sight, and
an authority’s certification of the authenticity of a tourist object (Culler, 1981, pp.
136, 137).
In the above examples, MacCannell is right to say that the sight itself is not the
real object of touristic interest, but is that object the marker? It seems not. For in-
stance, in the case of the site of a historical battle, the object of tourist interest is
likely to be the actual historical event instead of the information about that event.
Tourists’ visit to the sight can indeed be conceptualized in semiotic terms. The sig-
nifier is constituted by the sight itself, not information about the historical event
occurring at that particular place. The signified is the actual historical event.
The information tells tourists something about the signifier and the signified,
but it is neither one nor the other. Tourists come not for any intrinsic essence
of the sight as a sight (which might be ‘no more than a patch of wild grass’), as Mac-
Cannell correctly points out, but because it signifies the historical event. Why
would a particular historical battle attract tourists? Hypothetically, let us say this
battle helped found the nation, thus many domestic tourists come probably as a
form of secular nationalistic pilgrimage.
The case of the moon rock is similar. The signifier is the moon rock itself, not its
marker. The signified is likely to be, firstly, the event of (not information about)
America’s (for some nationalistic American tourists) or humankind’s (for other
tourists) landing on the moon; and secondly (respectively for the just-mentioned
two categories of tourists), America’s technological greatness or humankind’s
technological achievements. Tourists are attracted not so much by the rock itself,
but by what it signifies.
It is surprising that MacCannell, who sees (some) modern tourism as analogous
to pilgrimage, does not make this connection in the above cases. Pretes (2003) pro-
 Research notes and reports / Annals of Tourism Research 38 (2011) 708–722 713

vides an analysis along this line of sights such as Mount Rushmore National Memo-
rial to (at least some) domestic American tourists. The sight is a monumental
sculpture of four American presidents, intended to represent the nation’s found-
ing (Washington), preservation (Jefferson), continental expansion (Lincoln), and
imperial expansion (Roosevelt). As an engineering feat, the sight is intrinsically
attractive. However, there is more to the sight than that. In Pretes’ words, ‘Mount
Rushmore is clearly a shrine and repository of signification, but what exactly does it
signify? . . . in the intentions of its creators and sponsors, Mount Rushmore signifies
American Values and the American Way . . . It becomes . . . an object of pilgrimage . . .
the historian [Gilbert] Fite noted, ‘‘The one who views this monument sees more
than four stone faces. He sees and feels independence, freedom . . . and other qual-
ities which have characterized America’’’ (pp. 133, 134). In short, the sight has
great pilgrimage value for many American tourists.
As noted, a signifier signifies what it signifies purely by arbitrary convention, not
due to any intrinsic essence. Thus, MacCannell’s argument appears to be an anti-
essentialist argument. Is MacCannell’s conceptualization of sights as signs then
incompatible with his concept of authenticity, since authenticity is an essentialist
concept (e.g., Giza’s pyramids are authentic for their intrinsic property of being
built 4,500 years ago)? Take the case of the moon rock, as said, its quality as a rock
is not what attracts tourists, however, it must nonetheless be authentic, otherwise
tourists would be upset. Hence, whereas one aspect of its essence (as a rock) is
unimportant, another aspect (as a genuine moon rock) is because it is what
enables the rock to act as signifier. This also applies to the other cases examined
by MacCannell. Hence, MacCannell’s conceptualization of certain sights as signs
is not incompatible with but complementary to his concept of authenticity,
because it is the authenticity of these sights that enables them to act as signifiers
for tourists visiting them in an act of pilgrimage.
The sight-as-sign cases used by MacCannell are special (all having pilgrimage
value) and carefully substantiated in detail. In contrast, many sights (or tourist ob-
jects in general) obviously attract and are enjoyed by tourists for their intrinsic es-
sence. Scenery comes immediately to mind; so do tourist objects such as local food;
sun, sand and beach; cultural performances. Are there other sights that constitute
signs? That is certainly possible. However, any such argument needs to be carefully
substantiated individually, just as MacCannell does with his cases. Culler’s and Ur-
ry’s claim of sign status for sights in a general way (see quotes at the beginning),
based upon straightforward generalization from MacCannell, unfortunately falls
short in this regard.
Raymond W.K. Lau: School of Arts & Social Sciences, The Open
University of Hong Kong, 30 Good Shepherd Street, Homantin,
Kowloon, Hong Kong. Email <rlau@ouhk.edu.hk>

REFERENCES
Barker, C. (2003). Cultural studies (2nd ed.). London: Sage.
Culler, J. (1981). Semiotics of tourism. American Journal of Semiotics, 1(1–2),
127–140.
MacCannell, D. (1976). The tourist. New York: Schocken.
Noth, W. (1990). The handbook of semiotics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Pretes, M. (2003). Tourism and nationalism. Annals of Tourism Research, 30(1),
125–142.
Urry, J. (2002). The tourist gaze. London: Sage.
714 Research notes and reports / Annals of Tourism Research 38 (2011) 708–722

Received 25 February 2010; revised 9 August 2010; accepted for publication 4 November
2010

doi:10.1016/j.annals.2010.11.002

Annals of Tourism Research, Vol. 38, No. 2, pp. 714–718, 2011

0160-7383/$ - see front matter Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Printed in Great Britain

A PHOTO ETHNOGRAPHY OF TOURISM

AS NEO-COLONIALISM

Ranjan Bandyopadhyay
San Jose State University, USA

‘‘Social anthropology and sociology have had a rather troubled relationship with
the visual image, and its use in the representation of social knowledge and of soci-
ety itself.’’
(Banks, 2001, p.14)

‘‘Journals no longer need to be totally text bound. . . cutting edge research should
challenge the status quo. . . encourage reflection on the limitations of simple text
in social sciences.’’
(Tribe, 2008, p. 925)
Scholars have well documented the power of western tourism discourse to con-
struct the Third World destinations as ‘Exotic Other.’ Manning (1978) and Britton
(1979) were the first authors to argue that Western touristic representations por-
tray destinations as stagnant and thus open to all the exotic fantasies for tourists.
Later, these claims have been confirmed by authors (Bruner, 1991; Pratt, 1992)
that Western tourism representations perpetuate the colonial ideology of the past.
Recently, Echtner and Prasad (2003), Bandyopadhyay and Morais (2005) and Ban-
dyopadhyay (2009) strengthened this argument using postcolonial theory. All
these authors were unilateral in their opinion that these representations are
embedded with a colonial discourse adding to Edward Said’s notion of Orientalism
(1979).
But what happens when these tourists persuaded by fantasies created by the
media arrive at these destinations? Surprisingly, apart from few contributions (Ban-
dyopadhyay, 2010; Bandyopadhyay & Nascimento, 2010; Maoz, 2006; Palmer,
1994), scholars have ignored to study how tourism acts as an instrument of impe-
rialism in these destinations. Encouraged by John Tribe’s (2008) influential article,
The Art of Tourism, in which he lamented on the narrowness in our understanding
and representation of tourism and discussed a unique method called ‘‘virtual
curating’’ to advance the field of tourism theoretically and methodologically, this
research note seeks to add to an increasingly growing body of work exploring the
relationship between visuality and tourism. In so doing, this photo ethnography
reaffirms that a picture is worth a thousand words and ‘‘the camera does not
lie’’ (Albers & James, 1988), thus emphasizing this importance of photography
in tourism research.