Tourist Typologies

Throughout our adventure in Jordan we experienced various contrasts to our daily lives in, for at least most of the group, Central Europe. From basic things such as the toilets, transportation methods or simply the food to more complex things as the way we had to behave on street and what types of cultural traditions we had to respect. Tourism is about contrast. Victor Turner turned to this in his anthropological studies (1980) proposing that for the time tourists are “en route” they take a break from the comforts, duties and, what I personally also very much support, the constraints of everyday life. A couple of days before I flew to Amman, I came back from a 2 months backpacking trip through Central America, thus my contrast in terms of getting a break from everyday life couldn’t be noticed as much as Turner proposed it, however, it definitely matched with some of my classmates. This early theoretical explanation of tourism lacks the diversity that tourism comprised of, as noted by researchers, such as T. Endensor and discussed in one of my previous blog entries. The work of Eric Cohen (1988) provides a typology that takes this diversity into account and makes a distinction between experiential, experimental and existential tourists, distinguishable by the degree to which they seek for an authentic experience. I would categorise our honours journey in the lowest category, as the tight supervision, schedule and pre-arranged activities does not leave much freedom for an authentic experience. But in my eyes authenticity also varies from person to person; what I believe is made-up act to please the expectations of tourists might (and certainly did, as I am reading my fellow student’s blogs) be perceived by others as a truly authentic experience. All in all, theories about categorising tourist experiences are various and the categories not well defined. Fitting a tourist experience into one solely is not justifiable considering how diverse the experiences of a single journey can be.
LLM

Cohen, E. (1988). Traditions in the qualitative sociology of tourism. Annals of Tourism Research 15, 29--46.
Turner, V. and Turner, E. (1978). Image and Pilgrimage in Christian Culture. New York: Columbia University Press.


Types of tourism: Eating at a restaurant (Aqaba, Jordan)
Types of tourism: Eating at a local streetfood stall (nearby Arequipa, Peru)