THE TOURIST GAZE 3.

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1. THEORIES
The importance of tourism
The concept of the gaze highlights that looking is a learned ability and that the pure and innocent eye is a
myth. Just like language, one’s eyes are socio-culturally framed and there are various “ways of seeing”. People
gaze upon the world through a particular filter of ideas, skills, desired and expectations, framed by social class,
gender, nationality, age and education. Gazing is a performance that orders, shapes and classifies rather than
reflects the world. That means that the tourist gaze changed and developed in different times and social groups
and that the tourist gaze is not a matter of individual psychology but a sociological pattern. The gaze therefore
presupposes a system of social activities and signs which locate the particular tourism practises through the
contrast implied with non-touristic social practises, particularly those based within home and paid work.
Baseline for historical, sociological and global analysis:
1. Tourism is a leisure activity. Work and leisure are two separated and regulated spheres of social practise
in modern society. Being a tourist is being modern.
2. Tourism relationships arise from movement.
3. The journeys are outside the normal places of residence or work; however, there is an intention of going
back home within a relative short period of time.
4. The place gazed is not connected with paid work.
5. It involves a substantial proportion of the population.
6. Places are chosen because there is an anticipation, contracted through non-touristic technologies (films,
DVDs…) which reinforce the gaze.
7. The tourist gaze is meant to separate the landscaped from everyday experience.  out of the ordinary.
8. The gaze is constructed through signs.
9. Tourist professionals reproduce new objects for the tourism gaze.
To be a tourist is one of the characteristics of modern experience. There was organised in premodern society
but it was only for elites. This was even true in Imperial Rome during two centuries of peace where it was
possible to travel from the Hadrian’s Wall to the Euphrates without crossing a hostile boarder. In the 13th/14th
century pilgrimage became the most widespread phenomenon practises – a mixture of religious devotion,
culture and pleasure. By the end of the 17th century the grand tour established between the aristocracy and the
gentry so that travel became fundamental for the education of young boys. In the 18th century also tourist
infrastructures and spa destinations developed in order to provide a urban experience of socialization.
Moreover most towns in England had at least one far a year.
Travel is a marker of status and travel is becoming the largest industry in the world. Nevertheless, the flow
of visitors generates unequally, with only 45 “developed” countries accounting ¾ of the international tourism
departures. (consider also the environmental issues)
Theoretical approaches
Isolated from the host environment and the locals, mass tourists travel in guided groups and find pleasure
in inauthentic attractions or pseudo-events. As a result, tourists entrepreneurs and indigenous are induced to
produce even more extravagant displays for observers. Via advertisement, this “falseness” contributes to the
illusion which provides tourists with the basis for selecting potential places to visit. Such visits then often take
place to isolated American-style hotels (nota: potremmo anche dire western-syle) that insulate them from the
host environment.  indigenous cultures are presented in a superficial way. Tourist places are thus organised
around “staged authenticity”.
The process of sacralisation of a natural or cultural artefact happens through different stages: naming,
framing and elevation, enshrinement, mechanical reproduction of the object and social reproduction as new
sights. Anything is potentially an attraction – it only need someone who gives it value.
We can date the birth of the tourist gaze in the west at around 1840, when the combining together of means
of collective travel, the desire for travel and the techniques of photography reproduction became a core
component of western modernity (= invention of the camera, package tours by Cook, railways…).

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 The tourist gaze 3.0 rethinks the concept of the tourist gaze as performative, embodied practises. Tourist
experiences involve some aspects which are out of the ordinary, if compared with everyday life. This division
between ordinary and extraordinary is established in many different ways:
1. Seeing unique objects – everyone knows them  Grand Canyon, Buckingham Palace. They are a
sort of pilgrimages to sacred centres.
2. Seeing particular sites  Japanese Garden, French Chateau. Tourists can be seen as semioticians,
reading the landscape for signifiers of certain established notions or signs derived from discourse
of travel and tourism.
3. Seeing unfamiliar aspects of what was familiar in the past  ethnographic museums
4. Seeing ordinary aspects of social life being undertaken by people in unusual contexts. Visitors like
to gaze upon the everyday life of other people.
5. Seeing particular signs that indicate that a certain object is particular. The attraction is not the object
itself but the sign  name of the artist on a painting makes the painting interesting.
There are different kinds of gaze authorised by various discourses:
 Educational  Grand Tour
 Health
 Group solidarity
 Pleasure and play
 Heritage and memory
 Nation
Then there are two main ways of gazing. Romantic – solitary, private and personal semispiritual relation
with the object gazed – and Collective – implies conviviality. Furthermore we can identify other gazes:
 Spectatorial: collective glancing and collecting of different signs that have been very briefly seen
in passing at a glance – tourist bus window or cruise.
 Reverential: consume a sacred place
 Anthropological: how individual visitors scan a variety of sight/sites and are able to locate them
interpretatively within a historical array of meanings and symbols.
 Environmental: determine their footprint upon the environment.
 Family: distinct visual environments
A further type of travel implies live events that happen at a specific time (political, artistic, celebratory, and
sporting occasions  intense moments of co-presence.
This is the point of view of the gazer, however the tourist gaze has consequences also upon the gazee.
Moreover, also locals and staff gaze upon tourists  mutual gaze
Mobile words
The internet and the mobile technologies transformed communication practises on the move. Moreover,
many types of work are now found in the circuits of global tourism which overlap with a more general
economy, such as general transportation, hospitality, travel, design and consultancy. But also the production
of global icons and the mediatising of images through media. And finally it involves sex practises.
The vagabond and the tourist are plausible metaphors for post-modern times: the vagabond is a pilgrim
without a destination a nomad without itinerary, while the world is the tourist’s oyster to be lived pleasurably.
2. MASS TOURISM
Introduction
The first example of mass tourism occurred among the industrial working class in Britain. Industrial
working class came to think that going away for short periods of time to other places was an appropriate form
of social activity. The growth of such tourism represents a kind of democratisation of travel. We have seen
that travel had been enormously socially selective. It had been available for a relatively limited elite ad was a
marker of social status. Around 1840 the tourist gaze becomes a component of the western society, combining
collective travel, the desire for travel and photography. Later the car and the airplane further democratised
geographical movement.
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The growth of the British seaside resort
Throughout Europe a number of spa towns developed in the 18th century. Their original purpose was
medicinal: they provided mineral water used for bathing and drinking. The first spa in England dates 1626.
Spas were supposed to improve the health and help with many different disorders and were often opened near
the seaside (seabathing was more immersion than swimming – the beach was a place of medicine rather than
bathing). As a consequence, new resorts developed at the seaside: in the first half of the 19th cen coastal resorts
showed a faster rate of population increase than that of manufacturing towns. Ex. Brighton from 7000 to 65000
inhabitants in half a century also because of the prince regent residence.
In the same period there was a rapid urbanisation which brought to poverty and overcrowding, with almost
no public spaces. For this reason, the idea of civilising the masses through organised recreation became more
widespread among employers. The hours of working were gradually reduced while a half-a-day holiday was
introduced. Afterwards also the week as a regularised period of holiday was introduced, as it showed also
some benefits from the point of view of productivity. This “wake week” mainly involved trips by the whole
community to the seaside or in general to places away from normal places of working and living.
This is also the century of romanticism, which suggested the idea of feeling emotions toward nature and
sceneries. This also lead to the scientific tour.
A further precondition for the growth of mass tourism was the greatly improved system of transportation.
Indeed there were two major troubles with coach travelling: many roads were in poor conditions and it was
expensive. At first the railways companies did not realise the economic potential of the mass, low income
passengers market. In 1844 a legislation obliged the companies to make provisions for the labouring classes.

Holidaymaking is a form of conspicuous consumption in which status attributions are made on the basis of
where you go and how many other people go there.
Cook wrote a lot about the democratisation of travel and it is crucial that women considerably outnumbered
men in his package tours.
Participating at least once a year in leisure events became an important part of brithisness. The tourist gaze
developed in the inter-war period, thanks to some changes:
1. Car ownership, coach travel, tours to the countryside
2. Air transport
3. New organisations: Cyclists’ Touring Club, Youth Hostels Association
4. Holiday camps
5. Cruising and leisure places by the sea
6. Idea that going on holiday was a factor in working-class life  basis for personal replenishment.
Bradford-by-the-sea, beaches and bungalows
A number of major resorts developed in the north of England. Brighton was the first beach devoted to
pleasure, a site for pleasure, social mixing, status reveals while Birchington the fist with bungalow houses – a
specialised form of housing by the seaside.
3. ECONOMIES
Introduction
One major problem results from how the production of such consumer services is not entirely carried out
backstage, away from the gaze of tourists who cannot help seeing some aspects of the industry which is serving
them. Furthermore, tourists tend to have high expectations of what they should receive, influenced by the
anticipations received during the preparation.
Services have to be produced and consumed at the same time and within a specific place. Furthermore,
services need to arrive at a specific time and if it does not happen it can be perceived as poor. And yet services
have an unpredictable afterlife – bad or good they stick in the memory and “travel” through reviews.
The economics of tourism cannot be understood separately from the analysis of cultural, management and
policy development.

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Fordism and post-Fordism
Individuals do not seek satisfaction simply from products, from their selection, purchase and use; rather
satisfaction stems from anticipation, from imaginative pleasure-seeking. People’s basic motivation for
consumption is not simply materialistic but it seeks to experience in reality the pleasures experienced in their
imagination. Nevertheless, reality provides more disillusionment than the pleasures expected, creating the
need for new products. This is also true for tourism, which involves anticipation of new/different experiences
compared to everyday life.
Mass consumption: purchase of commodities produced under conditions of mass production. Commodities
are little differentiated. Thomas Cook invented the first mass tourism which he believed had to be socially and
materially invented and organised through product expertise. As a result, he turned high-risk and time
consuming individual travels to systemised social activities.
Post-fordism consumption: consumption rather than production is dominant with consumer expenditure
increasing as a portion of national income. New forms of credit = high indebtedness. In this case consumers
are against being part of the mass. Industries tried to develop new products having a shorter life. New kinds
of commodities were more specialised and based upon non-mass forms of production and much attention was
paid to developing sign-value and branding.
Change from old tourism (packing and standardisation) to new tourism (segmented, flexible, customized
 changes also in the relation between tourism and other cultural practises). Globalisation then produced
another shift through the emergence of global brands and internet.
Theories of contemporary, post-industrial consumption:
1. Pine and Gilmore – experience economy: services need to be more, they must be memorable and
pleasurable, they must be experiences. Service producers must learn how to perform – they are no
longer providers of benefits but stagers of sensations.
2. Bryman – Disnayization: strategy through which businesses seek to increase the value of goods
and services by transforming them into differential experiences, magically making the ordinary
extraordinary.
3. Ritzer – McDonaldisation: homogenised consumption. Tourists crave for experiences and
services that are predictable, standardised, risk-free and calculable.
Globalisation
The English seaside resort declined when mass tourism started to internationalise. Internationalisation
tourist sites can be compared with those located at home and Abroad, especially via the internet. Potential
objects of The Tourist gaze can be located on a scale and compared with each other, often now more or less
instantaneously via television and via the internet. One consequence of such globalisation is that different
countries or different places within a country come to specialise in providing particular kinds of objects to be
gazed upon. An international division of tourist sites has emerged in the last two or three decades. Britain
came to specialise in history and heritage, and this affects both what overseas Visitors expect to gaze upon
and what attracts British residents to spend time holiday making with Britain. With the formation of a single
European market, tour operators in Europe increasingly operate in each of the major countries. This has
increased competition and reduced the level of concentration within a single country, as well as increasing
cross-borders takeovers and mergers. This has also raised the level of vertical integration, with the operators
also owning travel agencies, hotels and Airlines. With the Increase in leisure time, people are moving away
from the third standardised package holiday and seek many more forms of independent travel. Indeed, only
about one-tenth of overseas Visitors to Britain are on inclusive holidays. This has been further developed by
the popularity of low budget Airlines, new Technologies and in particular ICT. Since the early days of the
internet, Tourism Industries, travel agencies, tour operators in Airlines used the internet for internal and
external management, planning, logistics and communication and for issuing tickets, promoting destinations,
developing appropriate tourist gazes and place myths on websites to tourists. Booking accommodation and
tickets is now commonly undertaken online. Overall, the internet makes possible a networked economy
where tourism suppliers can more easily operate on a global scale, are less reliant on traditional intermediaries

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such as travel agents, tour operators and check in staff and can make the tourism product more individual and
flexible. For example, cheap airlines cut flight prices through online booking on their website, thereby selling
directly to passengers without the expense of travel agents. Furthermore, international internet-based
reservation websites are becoming more and more used. This was possible with web 2.0 as the internet became
more open, collaborative and participatory. it affords an open online participatory culture where connected
individuals can serve and can make things through editing, blocking, posting, sharing, exhibiting. Consumers
have become part of the production process. This was also important for tourism: people not only share their
travel with acquaintances but also with strangers. They publish their recommendations, reviews and
photographs on reservation websites and travel websites to other tourists who can plan their journeys without
necessarily Consulting tourism brochures and homepages. what Is more, the travel community finds these
experiences more sincere than the always glossy brochures. This is a new economy where tourism services
are continually shamed or recommended on a global stage with millions of visitors. World-Of-Mouth has
always been crucial for the travel industry, but only on a familiar level, however the electronic word-of-mouth
does not know such a restricted world since it is Global. Tourists are now part of a place making an experience
evaluating process. This also means that a moment of poor service at one moment in time can haunt that place
if the tourist goes on to share that experience.
The Internet also affords new ways of communicating directly with the customers, the cheap and
specialised the Promotion of places and services, in other words it helps to extend and democratise the tourist
gaze.
Social relations
Determinants of social relations
1. The number of tourists visiting a place in relation to the size of the host population and to the scale of
the objects being gazed upon.
2. The predominant objective of The Tourist gaze, for example a landscape, a townscape, an ethnic
group, a lifestyle, artefacts or buildings, see. Observations of physical objects are less intrusive than
those that involve observing individuals and groups.
3. The character of the gaze involved and the resulting spatial and temporal packing of visitors. The
gaze may be more or less instantaneously or prolonged exposure, a few hours or a longer and deeper
immersion.
4. the organisation of the industry that develops the service: private or public, locally owned or involved
overseas interests, Local or foreign staff.
5. The effect of the reason upon the existing Agricultural and industrial activities.
6. the economics, social and ethnic differences between visitors and hosts. For example, in western
countries tourism creates fewer social conflicts since many hosts will themselves be guests. Elsewhere
there are usually large inequalities between the visitors and the indigenous population, most of whom
could not envisage having the income or time to be tourists themselves.
7. The degree to which the mass of visitors’ demand particular standards of accommodation and
service (Environmental babble). International Western travellers often expect Western standards of
accommodation and food and also bilingual staff and well-orchestrated arrangements. These standards
are less pronounced among individuals exploring travellers and tourists such as students.
8. Degree to which tourists demand the right to gaze at hosts. 75% of the locals regard tourist
photography as having a negative impact upon their life full stop this can create feelings of being
constantly watched, being objectified by The Tourist gaze.
9. Degree to which the state in a given country actively promotes tourism or tries to prevent it.
10. The extent to which tourists can be identified for supposedly undesirable economic, social and
cultural developments. This is common in places where tourists outnumber locals and invade their
everyday spaces, for example Venice where tourists overcrowd public transports slowing down the
everyday mobility of the locals, increase prices for goods and generate waste.
11. The relational gazes of hosts and guests.

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 The social impact of tourism practices depends upon the intersection of many processes.
In many cases the bodies are the object of The Tourist gaze. The extreme example is the growth of sex
tourism mainly in Asian societies. In South Korea this has been specifically encouraged by the state. these
social practices have been generated by exceptionally strong patriarchal practices which cast women as either
Virgin or Whore. Since the mid-nineties the Thai government has tried to retain the sex industry and promote
other forms of tourism. This is in part because of the growing threat of AIDS and in part because new types
of tourists including women and young families find offensive such sexualized gazes and bodies. (the Grand
Tour was the longest string of sexual Adventures although letters home commonly told of the churches visited
not the brother's).
A further important sexualized space is the hotel.
Part of what is involved in tourism is the purchase of a particular themed experience, and this depends upon
a specific composition of the others with whom the experience is being shared. The early forms of mass
tourism were based around heterosexual couples. By the interwar period the family holiday had become much
more child centred. Tourism is not only a way of practicing or consuming new places, but also an emotional
geography of sociability, of being together with close friends and family members away from home. This led
to our operators to produce brochures with three predominant images. The first one is the family holiday, a
couple with 2/3 healthy school-age children. The second one is the romantic holiday, a heterosexual couple
on their own gazing at the sunset. The third one is the fun holiday, that is same-sex groups each looking for
other sex partners for fun. One more group can be identified in the sex holiday only for men. Social groups
that do not fall into any of these particular visual categories are poorly served by the tourism industry. Many
criticisms have been made of how difficult holiday making is for single people, single parent families, disables,
homosexual couples or groups. Non-white people are another group excluded from conventional holiday
making and marketing material. Advertising material assumes The Tourists are white, there are few black
faces and most of them are presumed to be the exotic natives to be gazed upon.
In the last few years there has been a recent increase in visiting friends and relatives tourism. Various
researchers show how migration and tourism are complexly folded into each other. The migration process
appears to require a return, a journey back to the point of Departure (members of the diaspora). Yet many
tourist developments will include ethnic groups. Certain ethnic groups have come to be constructed as a part
of the attraction or theme of some places; this is mostly common for Asian groups. One example is the
reconstruction and Conservation of Chinatown in Manchester, which is now a desirable object of The Tourist
gaze. A further analysis should explore the social effects for those of Asian origin becoming constructed as
an exotic object and whether this distorts patterns of economic and political development.
Tourism as strategy
The growth of tourism in developing countries (game tourism in Kenya, ethnic tourism in Mexico,
gambling tourism in Macau) does not derive from processes only internal to those societies. It results from
external transformations, for example cheap air travel and internet booking. But the question is: development
for whom? Many of these facilities will be of little benefit to most of the local population. much indigenous
wealth generated will be highly unequally distributed and so most of the population will gain little benefit.
Match employment generated in tourism related services is relatively low skilled and many reproduce the
survival character of previous colonial regimes.
4. WORKING UNDER THE GAZE
Performing a service
Tourist related services are often labour intensive and hence labour costs are a significant proportion of
total costs. Moreover, since in manufacturing technical change can more radically reduce unit costs, services
will overtime be relatively more expensive. Employers in the various service sectors will seek to monitor and
minimise costs.
Services are high contact systems in which there is considerable involvement of customers in the service.
Services normally necessitate some social interaction between producers and consumers at the point of
production. There are two classes of employee: Those backstage workers who have minimal contact with the

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service consumers and those front stage workers who have high face-to-face contact with tourists. different
stage workers literally work under the tourist gaze. The social composition of the Producers who are serving
in the front line may be part of what is in fact sold to the customer. For example, a club in London provides
the consumers with more than traditional English meals. It also offers a whole range of emotional products, a
place where hospitality is offered, where information can be exchanged. This requires what is called
emotional work or aesthetic labour or performative work: the emotional style of offering the service and it
is part of the service itself. This involves smiling in a pleasant, friendly and involved way. Employees need to
be able to manage, surprise and disguise their own feelings behind and every present smile. Another point to
consider is the bodily capital: this refers to the appearance, movement and tone of the servicing body. Indeed,
stigmatised bodies seldom find a job on the front stage of the service economy especially with regard to those
jobs or businesses that have a certain level of coolness and glamour. Live performances and bodily displays
are very common within Tourism. The Moving Body is Often what gets gazed upon, as a spectacular
corporeality increasingly characterizes global tourism. This also leads to reconstructed ethnicity and staged
authenticity.

What makes some visitors return again and again to the same hotel is the recognition between staff and the
guests.
Catering for the customer
Restaurant workers have a 2 bosses, the supervisor or employer and the customer. The total reward depends
upon satisfactory relationship with both.
Flexible and mobile
there are four forms of flexibility:
1. Numerical flexibility: The firms set the level of Labour input in response to changes in the level
output. It may involve the use of part-time, temporary, short term contracts and casual workers.
2. Functional flexibility: the ability of employers to move employees between different functional tasks
according to changes in the work load.
3. Distancing: displacing of internal employment relations by commercial market relations through
subcontracting and similar arrangements.
4. pay flexibility: To reward individual employees who have become multi skilled and functionally
flexible. employment is reconstructed into core and peripheral workers.
The numerically flexible workers are also usually the least functionally flexible. Most part-time employees
(mostly women) do not have the opportunity to develop a wide range of skills and experience to become
functionally flexible as full-time employees (more likely to be male)
Conclusions
We have seen that there are ambiguities and the normal ease in the notion of being hospital in a word of
mass movement, intense commercialization and lightly exploitation.
5. CHANGING TOURIST CULTURES
Introduction
The tourist gaze is part of contemporary experience but the tourist practices to which it gives Rise are
experiencing rapid and significant change. such change cannot be separated from more wide-ranging structural
and cultural developments within contemporary societies.
The modern and the postmodern
The modern involves structural differentiation: the economy, the family, this state, science, morality and
aesthetic real, each of these becomes subject to self-legislation. Value within the cultural sphere is dependent
upon how well a cultural object measures up to the norms appropriate to the sphere (horizontal differentiation).
Vertical differentiation consists of a number of distinctions: between culture and life, high and low culture,
elite and mass forms. Modernism is to be understood as a process of differentiation between the various
cultural spheres both horizontally and vertically. Postmodernism by contrast involves de- differentiation.
Postmodern cultural forms are not consumed in a state of contemplation but of Distraction. There is also the

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problem of the distinction between representation and reality. Signification is increasingly visual and there is
a closer relationship between the representation and the reality then where signification takes place through
words or music. Everything is a copy or a text upon a text where what is fake can often seem more real than
the real. this is a new flimsiness of reality.
Romantic gaze can also be said to involve differentiation. Historically, the romantic gaze developed with
the formation of picturesque tourism in late eighteenth-century England.

Part of postmodernism’s hostility to authority is the opposition felt by many to mass treatment. People
appear to want to be treated in a more differentiated way and this has given rise to much lifestyle research by
the advertising industry, seeking even more finally distinguished categories of visitors. (the power of different
social classes are as much symbolic AS economic or political).
Classes in competition with each other attempted to impose their own system of classification upon other
classes and to exert dominance. In such struggles a central role is played by cultural institutions, especially
education and the media.
Mediated tourism
It is only through the analysis of wider cultural changes that specific tourist development can be understood.
In the 1980s a campaign for Real holidays was conducted. The Author states that it is increasingly Difficult
to have a real holiday because the rise and rise of package holiday has imposed on travel the same problems
that mass production has. At supposedly real holiday has 2 characteristics. first, it involves visiting somewhere
will away from where the mass of the population will be visiting. thus It involves the romantic tourist gaze.
Second, the Real Holidaymaker Will Use Small Specialist agents and operators to get to their destination.
There is a relationship between postmodernism and the current obsession with the countryside. the
attractions of the countryside derive in part from the disillusionment with the modern, particularly with the
attempt to affect wholesale reconstruction of towns and cities in the post-war period. Landscape implies
separation and individual observation. Landscape is what the viewer has selected from the land, edited
and modified in accordance with certain conventional ideas about what constitutes a good view.
landscape is a skilled, learnt performance debt visually and imaginatively works upon a nature that is rendered
passive and submissive. While culturally constructed landscape is not without a material reality. Furthermore,
now the landscape is a place where to engage bodily, sensuously and expressively with their material
affordances. nature for many tourist consumers has evolved from something to look to something to leap into.
the category of tourists is a relatively privileged one in rural areas. to be able to claim such a status it is
normally necessary to be white and wealthy enough to own a car and be able to organise and purchase certain
kinds of accommodation. in particular, there has been a development of ecotourism which stems from a
selective repudiation of modern forms of transport, energy, and industrial and agricultural production.
Here also develops the notion of a post-tourism.
 No need to leave the house in order to see typical objects of The Tourist gaze: with the TV, videos
and the internet, all sorts of places can be gazed upon, compared, contextualised. It is possible to
Imagine oneself really there. there is much less sense of the Authentic and much more of endless
availability of gazers. Some scholars consider it the end of tourism since people are tourists most of
the time whether they are literally mobile or only experience simulated mobility.
 aware of the change and delight in the multitude of choice
 Post tourists are aware to be tourists and are aware that tourism is a series of games and not a single
authentic experience. They are aware that brochures are fake, that the apparently authentic local
entertainment is constructed and so on. One game played by tourists is being a child: especially in
guided coach tours where they are told where to go, what to do, what to eat.
Compared to the first mass tourists, holidays have become less to do with the reinforcing of collective
memories and experiences especially around the family and neighbourhood and more to do with immediate
pleasure. As a result, people keep demanding new out of the ordinary experiences. Yet post-tourism is a de-
differentiation between the everyday and the tourist gaze.

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 The tourist gaze is increasingly Media-mediated. In postmodernity, tourists are constantly folded into a
world of text and images. With the widespread globalisation most places are on the move and connected
through a circuit of images. Through Representational performances, most tourist places have overtime been
inscribed with specific imaginative geographies materialized and mobilised in and through books, brochures,
postcards and photo albums. tourist places are not given or fixed. Markers of tourism seem to be everywhere
this days, whether people travel corporally or simply imaginatively (Media pilgrimage)
Also film studios have become tourist destinations. The potential of popular film geographies enables
tourism organisations to invent new destinations or inscribe new destinations with new imaginative geography
and place myths (Harry Potter studios, Braveheart Scotland or the Lord of the Ring New Zealand). This
demonstrates how Media cultures also creates desires for tourists to travel, Novel destinations and new forms
of mediatised gazing.
6. PLACES, BUILDINGS AND DESIGN
Places
In much tourism writing, the main focus is upon tourists and what they do and why they are motivated to
go to certain kinds of places at particular periods of the year. a particular physical environment does not in
itself produce a tourist place. It has to be designed into buildings, sociability, family life, friendship and
Memories. places immersion as tourist places when they are inscribed in circles of anticipation, performance
and Remembrance. Places are not fixed or giving or simply bounded. they are in play, in relationship to
multiple tourists gazes.
Designing for the gaze
Given how much tourist consumption involves The visual and the significance of buildings as objects upon
which the gaze is directed, it is essential to consider changing aesthetic design, patterns, forms and themes
that those buildings might take.
Contemporary architectures:
1. After the modern is consumerist postmodernism. Las Vegas or Disneyland are it's icons, celebrating
commercialism and the postmodern theming. This is an architecture of surfaces and appearances, of
playfulness. It is an architecture of narrative content that Liberates architecture from its visual silence
by turning it into an imaginary word of appearance. This type of Architecture is now crucial to the
experience economy. The relative success of design lies in the sensation the consumer derives from
it, in the enjoyment it offers and the resulting pleasures it evokes. Experience economy focuses on
experiences and it is no longer the formal design of a building that determines its qualities but rather
it's powers of effecting and engaging uses, emotionally, bodily and mentally.
2. By contrast, there is a style associated with the return to the pre-modern period. The classical form,
the Architecture of an elite and the romantic gaze are celebrated.
3. Against the modern is a sort of critical regionalism and critical postmodernism. It is a critique
of modernism is a Eurocentric and male-centric set of discourses. it privileges the Metropolitan centre
over provincial towns and development of the North Atlantic over the Pacific, of the Western art forms
over the East ones and of men's arts over women's arts. This way of thinking Results in the desire of
people living in particular places to conserve or to develop buildings, at least in their public spaces,
which Express the particular locality in which they live. Such old buildings Appear to have a number
of characteristics: solidity, since they have survived Wars, erosions, developers and town planning;
continuity, since they provide links between past generations and the present; Authority, since they
signify that age and traditions are worthy of preservation; and Craft since they were mostly built using
otherwise underrated pre modern techniques and materials (Tate Modern Gallery from a former power
station).
Because of the globalisation of The Tourist gaze, all sorts of places Have come to construct themselves as
objects of The Tourist gaze. However, one strong objection to modern architecture was how it generated
uniformity or placelessness, and was therefore unlikely to generate many distinct buildings attractive to

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potential tourists. Outside the major cities the tourist gaze has made most other places enhance difference
often through the discovery of local vernacular styles that convey particular Histories.
Themed spaces
Two Specific contemporary architectures are theming and malls. Theming involves the use of overarching
themes, such as Western, to create a holistic and integrated special organisation. It is a process of signification
where geographical representations and meanings are selectively invented, reworked, or borrowed in the
material and symbolic design of self-enclosed Leisure or Tourism spaces. much theming revolves around the
tourist gaze. themed environments stimulate primarily individual sense through spectacular but also
predictable and well-known signs. Space is divided up in terms of signs that signify particular themes but not
themes that necessarily relate to actual historical or geographical processes. themes are elements of the Society
of the spectacle.
This technological ability to create new themes which appear more real than the original has spread far
and wide. One example is Las Vegas where Egypt and Italy are well represented. These and other examples
are environmental bubbles where tourists are shielded from offensive smells, tastes and sides. They are
familiar places where tourists feel at home away from home. Also many shopping malls have now become
major tourist attractions in their own right and represent exceptional de-differentiation through theming.
Theme parks, moles and resorts present membership of a community of consumers. developments of this sort
also represent the changing nature of public space in Contemporary Society. this also involves high levels of
surveillance, where certain types of behaviours, clothing and compartments are expected, while some
categories are considered excluded (homeless…).
A further setting for themed environments are world fairs (Expo). development and popularity of world
Fairs are a further example of the de-differentiation of leisure, Tourism, shopping, Carter, education,
eating... expos are organised around different national displays based often on National stereotypes. They
also represent a kind of micro version of international tourism.
Education and entertainment are becoming merged, assisted by the Increasingly central role of the visual
and electronic Media in both. Indeed, themed spaces are involved in providing “edu-tainment”. Holidays are
not straightforwardly contrasted with education and learning as in the past. much Tourism is more closely
interwoven, returning in a way to the Grand Tour. We will also consider the increasing popularity of museums,
the fascination with lives of industrial workers and the popularity of hyper real historical Recreation. return to
assess the significance of the heritage industry and subsequently of museums to contemporary tourism.
Heritage
The 17th century disease of nostalgia seems to have become a contemporary epidemic. Heritage
destinations, now components of global tourism, include various dark tourist Heritage sites. Many people
now believe that their lives are richer for having the opportunity to visit sites of heritage. 9 out of 10 British
people support the use of public funds to preserve heritage. It is also possible to analyse the conditions in
which nostalgia is generated. Some scholars argue that it is Felt More strongly at a time of this content, anxiety
or disappointment. and yet the times for which we feel more nostalgia were themselves periods of considerable
disturbance. Furthermore, nostalgic memory is quite different from Total Recall; it is a socially organised
construction. Many tourists make associations between what they see at the site and their personal lives.
Also nations are involved in the Promotion of heritage tourism. Heritage tourism and travel to National
shrines and buildings are central to cultures, regions and Nations. Being part of any culture almost always
involves travel. central is the Nation's narrative of itself. National Histories tell a story of a people passing
through history, a story often beginning in the Mists of time. Much of this history of his traditions and icons
had been “invented”. A key point in this was the mass production of public monuments of the Nation.
Recently a global public stage has emerged upon which almost all nations have to appear, to compete, to
mobilize themselves as spectacle and to attract large numbers of visitors. This is the case of the Olympics,
world cups, and expos. The main examples of the last decades are China and Brazil which showed their status
as developing Nations through the hosting of some of these mega events. In other words, they used this event
to announce themselves as having truly arrived upon the world stage.

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 Nevertheless, such icons are continuously disputed. The power of national elites was for example contested
in the intense debates over the 1988 Australian bicentennial. there was forceful aboriginal opposition to the
celebration of Australian heritage. They termed Australia Day, which was a huge tourist event, Invasion day.
New “Museums”
As a result of the increase of Heritage sites there was also the growth in the number of museums. This is
part of the process by which the past came to be more highly valid by comparison with the present and the
future. Museums have been bathed upon artefact in particular those that are scarce because of the supposed
Genius of their unique creator, Michelangelo, or their culture, the Greeks. Nowadays there has been a marked
change in the nature of museums themselves. no longer are visitors expected to stand and watch the
exhibition. Living museums replace dead museums, open-air museums replace those undercover, sound
replaces silence, visitors are not separated from the exhibits by glass and there is a multi-mediatisation of the
exhibit. Museums are also becoming more aware of the diverse public and how to improve and divide
experiences of Museum visiting. There is acknowledgement that visitors will come from different ethnic,
cultural, national groups and Museum staff must concern themselves with various ways in which visitors may
interact with this place and different Histories they present.
The museum is still a place of visually seeing and collecting, and yet the visually impaired expect to find
ways in which they can Encounter museums non-visually, especially through using the tactile sense to touch
the object. In addition, there is a changed relationship between what is considered a museum and other social
institutions. Indeed, some institutions have become more like museums, for example shops can now look like
museums with elaborate displays of high-quality goods where people will be attracted into the shop in order
to wonder and to gaze.
7. VISION AND PHOTOGRAPHY
Introduction
The vision is Central to the tourism experience. We can now examine the history of visuality and what is
meant by the idea of seeing and in turn being seen and how vision became the dominating sense in modern
societies. afterwards we can link Vision and the tourist gaze with the medium of photography, the most
important technology for developing and extending the tourist gaze.
The gaze is constructed discursively and materially through images and performances of photography.
Photographs activate both imaginative mobility and memory travel and they frame Tourists gaze and the
manipulation of their cameras. photographs are more than just representations and while photographic images
are caught up with the moment, photographic objects have temporal and spatial Duration. They are
performative objects generating affective sensations. photographs are blocks of space-time that have effects
beyond the people or places or events to which they refer. Also tourists take photographs So as to produce
tangible memories to be cherished and consumed well after the journey. many personal photographic images
are now destined to live Virtually.
History of visualty
in the 19th century there were many changes. Visual observation rather than the a priori knowledge of
medieval cosmology came to be viewed as the basis of scientific legitimacy. This was the very Foundation of
the scientific method based upon sense data principally produced and guaranteed by sight. natural history
involved the observable structure of the visible world and not functions and relationships invisible to the
senses. During the eighteenth-century a more specialised visual sensor developed based upon the camera
obscura. Another very interesting tool was Claude glasses. They became standard equipment for pre-
Photographic tourists.
A further aspect of the 19th century is the emergence of a relatively novel mode of Visual perception which
became part of the modern experience of visiting New urban centres particularly the newly grand capital cities.
Indeed, the reconstruction of urban space Permitted new ways of seeing and being seen. one example is the
massive rebuilding of Paris by Haussman. The boulevards were Central to this planned reconstruction. Also
what could be seen and the gazed upon was reconstructed. The plan included the building of markets, Bridges,
parks, the Opera and other cultural places. The street-level was lined up with many small businesses, shops

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and especially cafes. This has come to be known all over the word as a sign of La Vie Parisienne, particularly
as generations of Painters, writers and photographers represented the Pattern of life in and around them,
beginning with impressionism. Millions of visitors have attempted to re-experience that particular quality of
the boulevard and cafes of Paris. However, reconstruction led also to residential segregation and to the worst
sign of deprivation being removed from the gaze of the richer Parisians and from the visitors. Another example
is the development of the skyscrapers of Chicago in the 1880s which led to further separation of the senses.
panoramic windows afforded those inside to gaze down and cross the crowd while being insulated from its
odours and potential touch. There was a growing separation of the senses especially of vision from touch smell
and hearing. new technologies of the gaze began to be produced and circulated, including postcards, guide
books, photographs, cafes, mirrors.
The 19th century development of the Railway was a moment in development of a more mobilised gaze.
From the Railway Carriage the landscape came to be viewed as a swiftly passing series of framed panoramas,
at panoramic reception rather than something to be painted or sketched. The view through the car windscreen
also had significant consequences for the nature of the visual glance, enabling the materiality of the city or the
Landscape to be appreciated in passing.
Desired and the origins of photography
Gernsheim stated that the circumstances that photography was not invented earlier remains the greatest
mystery in the history. But this is less of a mystery of social desire rather than knowledge are understood as
generative of technological innovation. In the eighteenth century and early 19th century the desire for what
we now call photography emerged and manifested itself as a widespread social imperative among scientists,
writers, painters and tourists.
The ability of photography to objectify the world as an exhibition, to arrange the entire globe for the tourist
gaze is fundamental: photography's main effect is to convert the world into a department store or a museum
without walls in which every subject is depreciated into an article of consumption, promoted into an item for
aesthetic appreciation. The multiplication of photographs especially took place with the introduction of
the half tone plate in the 1880s that made possible the mechanical reproduction of photographs in newspapers,
periodicals, and advertisements. Photography became coupled to consumer capitalism and the world was
now offered in limitless quantities. Experiences were democratised by translating them into cheap images.
Small and mass-produced photographs became dynamic vehicles for the spatial-temporal circulation of places.
Places became connected to other places and consumable at a distance. However, rather than mirroring or
representing geographies, photographs partly create them, culturally, socially and materially. They produce
an imaginative geography. We can also say that photographs provided world tour tickets without the need for
daunting and expensive physical travel.
it seems that the camera does not lie. The realism of photographs made such travelling real and seductive.
Visiting places Through photography was sometimes more or less as good as embodied gazing.
Photographs are the outcome of an active signifying practice in which photographs select structure and
shape what is going to be taken and how. In particular, there is the attempt to construct idealized images which
beautify their objective being photographed. Pictures by travel photographers can be regarded as real and
objective not in the sense of mirroring the represented places complex lived realities, but because they reflect
and reinforcing stereotypes to Western imaginations of these Worlds.
Kodakisation
In the late 1880s Kodak launched the first user-friendly and cheap cameras for tourists. Before that
photography was something consumed rather than produced. The company targeted the new middle-class
family and tourism as the agents and the spaces where the power-knowledge relationship of Kodaking could
produce kodak moments. From that moment on, photography became part of the tourist habits; anyone could
take photographs without the need of study, experiment, darkroom and chemicals. Kodak was indeed: you
press the button, we do the rest. The camera became promoted as an indispensable tourist object because it
enabled families to story their experiences and transport them back to the sunshine and freedom. Furthermore,

12
it was possible to see the places just as the tourists saw them. Although the picture could seem like those of
other people they were to be considered unique because the tourists themselves had caught them.
Seductive commercial images
From the Invention of photography, commercial photographs have increased their role in the production of
desires of consumers. knowledge-power art of commercial photography involves crafting images that
stimulate desires for transporting one's body to the photographed place. Commercial photographs are assigned
a two-fold role by the tourism Industry. They produce desires for bodily travel and they script and the stage
destinations with extraordinary imaginative geographies. Photographers seek to avoid vehicles, cars or
anything that would date a picture, people look with the plastic bags... because they are aware that potential
tourists would consider them out of place. What is more, surgery and makeup turn beaches crystal white, seas
and skis deep blue and bodies tanned and trim. The Time-machine of the tourist industry and photography
often freezes townscapes in an idyllic and untouched “chocolate box” vision where time moves slowly if at
all. When locals enter this scene, their function is to signify authenticity, induce romanticism and bring life to
the. promotional images, also alluring tourist places through collective and family gazes. In of people of the
tourist brochures 40% of the photographs depict tourists only with an emphasis on tourist groups. 24% show
places without people, Landscapes, and only 7% show locals, often working under the tourist gaze. The main
reason is that people desire to be seduced to and such images are artfully constructed to seduce.
Photography and the tourist gaze
There has thus been an enormous proliferation of photographs since its invention. Photography overloads
the visual environment. It involves the democratisation of many forms of human experience, both by turning
everything into photographic images and enabling anyone to photograph them. The consumption and
production of images become all-important and participating in events is equivalent to seeing and capturing
them as spectacular imagescapes. Photography began with photographs of the notable and has ended up
making notable whatever is photographed. Photography is a promiscuous way of seeing which cannot be
limited to an elite.
Much tourism became n effect a search for the photogenic. Sometimes it seems that tourist travel is a
strategy for the accumulation of photographs and hence for the commodification and privatisation of personal
and family memories. Photography has thus been enormously significant in democratising various kinds of
mobilities, making notable whatever gets photographed rather than what elites might have specified.
Gazing and photographing is a hermeneutic circle. What is sought for in a holiday is a set of photographic
images which have already been seen in brochures, TV, blogs, social. Much tourist photography involves a
ritual of quotation.
In other words, photography ends up with travellers demonstrating that they really have been there by
showing to friends and family their version of the images they had seen before they set off. A photograph
provides evidence that someone really was there.
The art of much tourist photography is to place one's loved ones within attraction in such a way that both
are represented aesthetically. According to a study of an island in the Baltic Sea, more than a half of the 1000
tourists photographs collected from visitors contained one or more family members or Friends in the
foreground while very few contained other tourists or locals. Holidaymakers Desire private photos. socially.
Yet their private photographs reflect a socially and media constructed notion of loving family life or
friendship. Indeed, Traces of unhappiness or friction are absent. The desire for capturing memories in image
forms anime photographing. cameras magically transform events into artefact that provide memory travel.
Photographs are material objects full of life and emotions and not to be easily discarded. Sceneries and gazes
become graspable objects that can have a long afterlife. places and humans are transformed into objects passed
from person to person, to be put on walls or on other places.
Digitalisation and internetisation
The latest moment of this history of tourism photography is its recent digitalisation and
Internetisation. photographs are now very widely produced, consumed and circulated among computers,
mobile phones and via the internet, especially through social networking sites. Few tourists now take pictures

13
with analogue cameras. In general, the technical affordances of photography dramatically expanded. Digital
photography makes photographic images instantaneous, mobile and instantly consumable on screens. If
analogue photography was directed at a future audience, camera phone photography travels timelessly, so the
Receiver can gaze upon events and folding more less in Real-Time. In a short span of time, tourists have learnt
to consume photographs instantly and digitally upon screens and to delete those unpleasant. This delete-ness
represents something radically new. consuming and deleting photographs have become part of the production.
Most images that survive deletion at this stage are uploaded to computers and viewed on yet another screen.
From here a small selection is mobilized and distributed, emailed or uploaded to social networks where they
will be consumed upon further computers around the world. On the web photographs can be deleted, edited,
distributed freely and timelessly: this is a crucial component of web 2.0. Millions of people upload personal
photographs on social networks every day. In this sense photographs can be easily distributed to significant
others at a distance or Exhibited in Virtual spaces. Nevertheless, the life of photographs on social media is
Shorter: they are talked about today and forgotten tomorrow, yet this does not make them insignificant or
unnoticed. Suh photographs on Facebook or Instagram have become part of everyday life. This also means
that once a photographer lets loose a photograph on the internet they lose control over its destiny as everyone
may use it in unforeseen contexts or distribute them further.
Photography has been crucial in developing the tourist gaze.
8. PERFORMANCES
Let’s now consider the tourist gaze as a performance.
Performance turn
The performance turn Argues that tourism demands new metaphors based on being, doing, touching and
seeing rather than just seeing. The performance turn highlights how Tourists experience places in multi-sensor
ways that involve bodily sensations and affect. Tourists have become bored of being mere spectators and many
tourist activities explicitly provide active and multi- senses activities. In this sense tourists are not only
audience but also performers.
Nevertheless, tourist performances are in part pre-formed. Performances are never for the first time because
they require rehearsal, imitation of the performance and adjustment to Norms and expectations to such extent
that they appear natural and become taken for granted rituals.
Standardized marketing does not have to standardise tourists. Studies on staging of tourist experiences in
mass tourism Often reduce or overlook the uniqueness of all personal travel experiences. Tourists are not just
written upon, they also enact and inscribe places with their own stories and they can follow their own Path.
Tourist places are often presumed to be relatively fixed, given, passive and separated from Those touring
them.
Tourist places are continually reproduced and contested through being used and performed. places only
emerge as tourist places when and as they are performed. The performance turn emphasises how objects and
technologies, such as cameras, tour buses and cars, are crucial for making tourism performances happen.
Crucial to analysing performances is the concept of affordances. These are objective and subjective, both part
of the environment and of the organism.
The Performance turn does not see tourism as an isolated Island but explores connections between tourism,
the everyday and family members and friends. Most tourism performances are performed within teams and
this sociality is in part what makes them pleasurable and annoying. Tourism is not only a way of consuming
new places, but also the emotional geography of sociability, of being together with close friends and family
members from home.
Embodied gazing
tourists encounter places through a variety of senses. Flavours, Touches, smells, and sounds and doing
and acting can also produce difference and the extraordinary. Nevertheless, many tourist buildings, objects,
technologies and the practices are structured around visualisation as discussed in relation to photography.
while the visual sense is not the only since it is the organising sense. While many tourist places are designed
according to the logic of Visualism, we now put forward a relation approach that acknowledges the complex

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intersections of the census in people's encounters with places. In almost all situations different senses are
interconnected with each other to produce a sensed environment of people and objects distributed across time
and space.
Most people there form gazing in the company of significant others and the social composition of the team
affords some ways of seeing more than others. For example, children influence the look of their parents.
Gazees often have a burning desire to touch, Walk or climb upon and collect animals, plants or objects.
While most museums do not afford or permit such physical proximity between the gazer and the object of the
gaze, in most other places gazing comprises seeing and touching.
Social relations of gazing
The parental look specifies how children influence the rhythm and the gazes of their parents. and yet from
time to time, children are forced to follow in their parent’s footsteps and see adult things. Gazing is a relational
practice involving bodily and verbal negotiation and interactions between the team members. gazing almost
always involves significant others. For example, travelling with an affectionate partner makes it easy to fall
in love with the romantic Paris. yet this romantic Paris can make the single traveller feeling lonely or a troubled
couple realising that even this place can't re-establish their affection.
Also the host contributes to the place ballets that make up tourism performances and stages. In general, we
describe this relation as asymmetrical because the gazer powerfully constructs and consumes gazee. However,
new theories demonstrate that the gazees are not totally passive and powerless.
The gaze becomes a mutual gaze. it brings out the resistance and power of hosts when interacting face-to-
face with tourists. The local gaze is based on more complex, two-sided pictures where both The Tourists and
local gazes exist, resulting in what is termed mutual gaze. Tourists are hardly aware of this gaze, mainly
because they Arrogantly dismiss its presence. There are three modes of response to tourists that locals largely
regard as shallow, hedonistic and rude people, who are badly educated and can be easily deceived.
1. cooperation: locals become the powerless who always and unconditionally meet the needs of tourists
and they change their lifestyle and business according to satisfy these desires.
2. Veiled resistance: locals laugh and gossip about tourists as well as exploit the staged authenticity of
goods, services, spirituality and so on that can easily seduce the visitors. The authenticity seekers are
not aware of the local gaze and are unlikely to notice this staging.
3. Open resistance: local Strike Back at ignorant tourist behaviour through verbal confrontations, written
instructions about respectful behaviours, poor services to rude customers and businesses banning
tourists with signs.
Mutual gaze is complementary to the notion of The Tourist gaze, which can be made more complex,
performative and interactive by recognising that it is always a mutual gaze with a multitude of responsive
gazes.
Gazes and places
The performance turn brings forth how tourists are co-producer of tourist places and Tourists can
experience a given place through many different Styles, senses and practices. → Gazing is never
predetermined and fully predictable. Tourists do not only decode past texts, but are part of creating new ones
through ongoing interactions and performances with other tourists, guides, buildings and objects.
Performing tourist photography
Tourist photography is often seen as passive, superficial and disembodied, a discursively prefigured activity
of quotation. However, photography is not a performance of a single eye but an engaged and multi-senses
body. When taking a photograph, people tend to stage intimacy, which tends to be put away when the shooting
has finished. Indeed, through posing one can try to convey specific images for the future. Photography often
involves a teamwork and poses are instructed by photographers or other members of the team to bring into
being certain appropriate fronts or break off inappropriate activities. Careful impression management
insurance returning home with photographic memories of apparently loving family or friendship life. This
does not mean that there are no conflicts between the team members about what poses are
appropriate. example: teenagers resisting their parents’ instructions. There is also a playful pose where

15
tourists fool around and make-up humorous faces and obscene body gestures; widespread among the youngest
people.
9. RISKS AND FUTURES
Introduction
Since around the 1990s there have been many new analyses of risk, And the question whether and in what
ways tourism is self-destructive.
Risk and danger
Although tourism is supposedly all about pleasure it often involves disease, danger and death.
Consuming other places often involves gazing at and collecting places of violent death (dark tourism). It
is not unusual that blood thirsty cultures are converted into cultures that can be consumed and played with
(vikings). Many places of death, disaster and suffering have come to be performed as places of leisure.
There are also many connections between the mobility of people and illnesses. → AIDS, SARS - Of course
sex tourism has largely contributed to the geographical spread of diseases. The fear of illnesses can Turn a
tourist place into a place fearing death and Panic can cause visitors to avoid that place.
There are also many examples of the attraction of tourists for criminals, prostitution, and illegal businesses
relating to the addictions of visitors.
Tourism Itself often involves putting the body into other kinds of personal danger → Bungee jumping, off-
piste skiing, paragliding, rafting and high altitude walking… Or use of drugs and alcohol especially between
young people.
another risk and fear concerns terrorism. terrorists often target tourist areas as a key of their campaign So
dead two places it can attract both tourists and terrorists; what is more, some tourists can become
terrorists. Indeed, tourists are now subject to the most intrusive monitoring, surveillance and regulation in
order to be a consumer in the Global market. Tourists are now routinely captured by and subject to a powerful
digital machine Justified by the perceived risk of crime and terrorism.
Positional competition
There are also other risks related to tourism such as congestion, overcrowding and local environmental
degradation. This includes a generally undesirable effect of overcrowded beaches, lack of peace and quiet,
noise of air flights, destruction of the landscape and damage to plant and animal life. The spread of mass
tourism does not democratise travel. tourism n is an illusion which destroys the very places being visited,
mainly because Geographical space is limited.
We can also distinguish between the physical carrying capacity of tourist places and visual capacity. With
the physical carrying capacity it is clear when a mountain pass literally cannot take it any more Walkers
since it erodes and disappears. The visual capacity takes into consideration the subjective quality of the tourist
experience. The path may still be physically passable, it no longer signifies the pristine wilderness Upon which
the visitor had expected to gaze.
oil
today’s global economy and Society (Industrial, agricultural, commercial domestic and consumer system)
is deeply dependent upon cheap oil. without it there would be no global tourism and corporeal tourist
gaze. These complex interests that go around oil directly and indirectly fund climate change scepticism and
lobbying against regulation and intervention in energy markets.
Not having sufficient oil to sustain rising levels of global economy, travel and consumption will generate
significant economic downturn and Resources Wars (see oil crisis sanja). Indeed, oil crises had consequences
for travel, for example on flights and car production.
Climate change (portarlo argomento a scelta?)
On top of the Peaking of oil there are likely future consequences on climate change. With business as usual
and not significant reductions in emissions especially of travel, stock of greenhouse gases could treble by the
end of the century. Climate change will result in a global catastrophe, costing millions of lives in war and
natural disasters.

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Futures - possible scenarios
1. Hypermobility and hyper tourism consumption. Frequent migration, frequent travel, constant move of
people, quick means of transportation and constant communication.
2. Worldwide reconfiguration of the economy and Society around the idea of local sustainability.
Dramatic global shift towards lifestyles more local and smaller in scale. Almost all travel would be
localised with very little tourism as such.
3. Breakdown of mobility, energy and communication connections due to climate change and
Wars. collapse of infrastructural systems, disappearing of mass tourism.
None of these scenarios is desirable and without costs for the tourism industry. First of all, we need to
dispense with the exotic gaze which drive so much contemporary tourism and instead favours discourses
which develop local gazes. Then we need to reduce the scale of signposting and instead search out and find
treasures that are less known but as beautiful. The effect of the Internet needs to be focused upon revealing
The pleasures of the nearby. Finally, we need to radically change the means of transport making them
sustainable.
Dubai
since the 1980s the so-called neoliberalism developed new designs and themed places, Define also as EVIL
paradises. These are places of high consumption of resources and bodies of. Dubai has been the best example
of such excess. It is a place of monumental excess.

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