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Cruising Nowhere: A South African Contribution to Cruise Tourism
Abstract
This chapter explores one aspect of South African cruise tourism, namely cruises-to-nowhere. Unique in the realm of cruise tourism, ‘cruises-to-nowhere’ has become a hallmark of the South African cruise season during the southern hemisphere’s summer months. Such cruises without a destination trade port call for the promise of liminality on the high seas. At the same time, these seaborne holiday experiences provide access to cruising to South Africans new to cruise tourism and generate income for cruise lines operating in South African waters during the European winter months. Using netnographic methods to collect and analyse online travel reviews, travel forums and social media, this chapter explores a new generation of domestic South African cruise tourists and the ways in which they perform liminality through a mix of sun, sea, sex and especially alcohol. Building as it does from tourism literatures focusing on cruise-, alco- and party tourism, this research does not intend to moralise debaucherous shipboard tourism, but rather to explore its development and growth in the unique context of South African cruising. This chapter concludes with a call for a more deliberate focus on what may be termed debauchery tourism, and South Africa’s contribution to this underexplored niche.
... The COVID-19 pandemic further underlines the importance of developing strategic interventions which are targeted to the requirements of specific niches and informed by an understanding of the changing supply-demand situations of different niches in the post-/continuing environment of COVID-19 (Samarathunga and Gamage, 2020). Creative South Africa (Rogerson, 2006;Booyens and Rogerson, 2019;Drummond and Drummond, 2021); Thailand (Somnuxpong, 2020) Cruise South Africa (Rink, 2020) Culture/heritage ...
The COVID-19 pandemic is a catalyst for new patterns of demand and supply for the tourism sector. One
consequence is a renewed policy interest in the importance of niche tourism products for destination development. This paper
investigates the importance of niche tourism and its (re-) emergence on the policy agenda of tourism stakeholders in South
Africa. It is argued that with a resurgence of niche tourism as policy focus there is a need for an extended research agenda on
niche tourism in South Africa. The analysis represents a contribution to the changing agendas of tourism scholarship in the
global South which have been impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
This book explores the nature of climate change in southern Africa, its impacts on tourism and the resilience, adaptation and governance needs in various tourism operations and environments. Previous studies on climate change and tourism have mainly focused on the Global North and specific forms of tourism such as snow-based winter activities. Drawing on case studies from a wide range of countries including South Africa, Lesotho, Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe, this book fills this lacuna by describing and analysing the climate change and tourism nexus in the southern African context. The book begins by providing an overview of the current and estimated impacts of climate change to the tourism industry in the region, highlighting the deepening socio-economic inequities, and environmental and social injustices. It focuses on the importance of sustainable tourism in tackling these issues and highlights that resilience and robust governance and policy systems are essential for a tourism destination to successfully adapt to change. By synthesising the key lessons learned through this analysis, Climate Change and Tourism in Southern Africa also draws attention to specific adaptation and policy strategies which have value for other regions in the Global South. This book will be of great interest to students and scholars of climate change, tourism and environmental policy and justice.
The COVID-19 pandemic is a ‘trigger event’ which is remoulding new patterns of demand and supply for the tourism sector. For policy makers and destination managers it highlights the potential significance of niche tourism
products. South Africa is viewed as fertile terrain for the promotion of different forms of niche tourism. The aim is to investigate international and South African research debates concerning niche tourism. The paper analyses
the conceptual development of niche tourism, international debates, the (re-) emergence of niche tourism on the policy agenda of tourism stakeholders in South Africa and the state of existing literature and debates surrounding
niche tourism in the country. The article represents a contribution to the growing and vibrant scholarship around niche tourism and change in the global South.
In mainstream urban tourism scholarship debates there is only limited attention given to the urban global South. The ‘other half’ of urban tourism is the axis in this review and analysis. Arguably, in light of the changing global patterns of urbanization and of the shifting geography of leading destinations for urban tourism greater attention is justified towards urban settlements in the global South. The analysis discloses the appearance of an increasingly vibrant scholarship about urban tourism in the setting of the global South. In respect of sizes of urban settlement it is unsurprising that the greatest amount of attention has been paid to mega-cities and large urban centres with far less attention so far given to tourism occurring either in intermediate centres or small towns. In a comparative assessment between scholarship on urban tourism in the global North versus South there are identifiable common themes and trends in writings about urban tourism, most especially in relation to the phenomenon of inter-urban competition, questions of sustainability and planning. Nevertheless, certain important differences can be isolated. In the urban global South the environment of low incomes and informality coalesce to provide for the greater significance of certain different forms of tourism to those which are high on the urban global North agenda. Three key issues are highlighted by this ‘state of the art’ overview, namely the significance of an informal sector of tourism, the distinctive characteristics of the discretionary mobilities of the poor, and the controversies surrounding slum tourism.
This article introduces a theme collection of geographical authored contributions on tourism in Southern Africa to reinforce the position of South Africa's premier geographical serial as an important publishing outlet for research in tourism studies as a whole and for tourism geographical works in particular. The group of papers addresses a diverse set of themes around greening and tourism, business tourism, Visiting Friends and Relatives (VFR) travel, second homes tourism and tourism development issues. Two sections of material are offered. First, a brief context is provided of directions in international tourism geography. Second, a review is offered on the directions and contributions which have been made by geographers to tourism studies in South Africa. In particular, the starting point is the benchmark paper which appeared in 2002 in this journal by Magi and Nzama [2002. Perspectives on recreation and tourism geographies in South Africa, South African Geographical Journal, 84, 67-76] outlining the relative novelty of tourism geography research in Southern Africa as well as its possibilities for future development. With the publication of over 100 articles by local tourism geographers, a decade later this paper reflects on the growing maturity of South African tourism geography scholarship.
In the age of European exploration, terra incognita referred to lands that were largely unknown to Europeans. In the world of contemporary tourism, tourism incognita refers to the lands and experiences that are largely unknown to the global mass tourism industry (tourism cognita). Tourism incognita includes specialty niche tourisms that operate on the edge and beyond of mass tourism, as well as the entire world of non-tourism places. Examples of tourism cognita and tourism incognita that are discussed include: Dubai and Oman’s Musandam Peninsula, Cambodia’s Angkor Wat and the Tonle Sap, and the scuba diving destination of Manado on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi. Tourism incognita is shown to be vital to the success of the tourism economy because the places and experiences of tourism incognita are part of the imagination that drives the decision and desire to travel to a distant land.
The growing role of social media in tourism has been increasingly an emerging research topic. Social media plays a significant role in many aspects of tourism, especially in information search and decision-making behaviours, tourism promotion and in focusing on best practices for interacting with consumers. Leveraging off social media to market tourism products has proven to be an excellent strategy. This study reviews and analyses the research publications focusing on social media in tourism. Through a comprehensive literature review, this paper identifies what we know about social media in tourism, and recommends a future research agenda on the phenomenon. The paper suggests that research on social media in tourism is still in its infancy. It is critical to encourage comprehensive investigation into the influence and impact of social media (as part of tourism management/marketing strategy) on all aspects of the tourism industry including local communities, and to demonstrate the economic contribution of social media to the industry.
Growth in tourism during the past 20 years means more people are using physical spaces away from home for vacation. Yet research on vacation spaces is noticeably absent. Focusing on a cruise ship, the primary purpose of this article is to draw attention to how social interaction in a group vacation context intersects with vacation experiences. A secondary purpose is to introduce space and how it can extend thinking about the role that tourism spaces play in the development of social interaction. The results indicate that individuals use cruise ships to feel at ease and comfortable with themselves, as well as in control and liberated. They also develop social interactions during a cruise and make “playful” spaces on the cruise ship. Using these themes, the authors highlight limitations in current conceptualizations of tourism behavior. The authors also suggest how cruise lines might use the study to create more meaningful passenger experiences.
The cruise industry is a highly concentrated business in terms of players and markets. Vessel deployment strategies and itinerary design by cruise operators are primordial and are affected by market and operational considerations. This paper focuses on capacity deployment and itineraries in two major cruise markets: the Caribbean and the Mediterranean. We argue that the cruise industry sells itineraries, not destinations, implying a level of flexibility in the selection of ports of call, but still bound to important operational considerations. The paper also reveals that the two cruise markets are not functioning independently but are interconnected in an operational manner, particularly through the repositioning of vessel units to cope with variations in seasonal demand among the regional markets.
Innovation has become a buzzword, regularly cited to convey any improvement made to an existing offer, regardless of the extent of newness. Tourism innovation has historically been viewed as either incremental or radical in nature, a binary developed within manufacturing. However, given that incremental improvements are the norm in the tourism sector and that radical innovation is an abnormality, the binary is not representative of tourism innovation. We suggest a three-level typology, based on field research in Europe and Australia, and informed by Rogers’ innovation diffusion model; the anthropological concept of liminality and its role in the search for tacit knowledge through weak network ties; and the need to ask ultimate (‘why’) rather than proximate (‘what’, ‘how’) questions. Since the term innovation is overused and the role of innovator therefore misunderstood, we introduce three alternate concepts: the ‘artist’, who is comparable to the innovator; the ‘artisan’, who represents early innovation adopters; and the ‘painter’, who epitomizes the early and late majority.
One methodology recently introduced in the consumer research literature is that of netnography, an interpretive method devised specifically to investigate the consumer behavior of cultures and communities present on the Internet. Netnography can be defined as a written account resulting from fieldwork studying the cultures and communities that emerge from on-line, computer mediated, or Internet-based communications, where both the field work and the textual account are methodologically informed by the traditions and techniques of cultural anthropology. Judging from the wide-ranging interest in mainstream publications (e.g., Armstrong and Hagel 1996) from conference presentations and papers (e.g., Fischer, Bristor and Gainer 1995; Muniz 1997), and from the content of burgeoning electronic mailing lists, a wide number of the methodological tools that arm consumer and marketing researchers are currently in the process of being adapted and applied to understanding consumer behavior as it occurs over and is affected by the Internet. Netnography investigates the specific instance in which community is produced through computer-mediated communications (CMC). Groups of people numbering in the tens of millions –and rapidly growing—are now utilizing CMC mediated by electronic mail and specializednetworks, usually linked through Internet, Bitnet and Usenet connections, to build community
research technique for providing consumer insight. “Netnography ” is ethnography adapted to the study of online communities. As a method, “netnography ” is faster, simpler, and less expensive than traditional ethnography, and more naturalistic and unobtrusive than focus groups or interviews. It provides information on the symbolism, meanings, and consumption patterns of online consumer groups. The author provides guidelines that acknowledge the online environment, respect the inherent flexibility and openness of ethnography, and provide rigor and ethics in the conduct of marketing research. As an illustrative example, the author provides a netnography of an online coffee newsgroup and discusses its marketing implications.
A critical overview of the state of the art of research on urban tourism in South Africa is undertaken. Conceptually, the investigation is framed by the contention that calls for growing theorization of urban tourism in the developed North are not tenable without reference to the empirical and policy realities of Southern urban tourism systems. It is demonstrated urban tourism figures strongly in the South African tourism landscape. An overview of urban tourism niches and associated research literature is presented. It is shown that while historically urban tourism was largely ignored by urban scholars, since the early 1990s a range of urban tourism products has developed, many of them parallels of urban tourism products found in advanced postindustrial economies. The conclusion suggests that urban tourism in South Africa offers fertile ground for future empirical, theoretical, and policy research.
Metaphorically, tourists can be considered to enact a range of performances on distinct stages. Their enactions are distinguished according to various factors, including their competence, reflexivity, the extent to which they are directed and regulated, or participate in group or solo performances. Providing examples from research carried out at the Taj Mahal in India, particular attention is directed to the characteristics of the stages upon which tourists perform, with a distinction being drawn between “enclavic” and “heterogeneous” spaces. The paper exlores particular modes of walking to convey the diversity of tourist performances and how they are formed.RésuméLa mise en scène du tourisme: le touriste comme interprète. Métaphoriquement, on peut dire que les touristes jouent de nombreux rôles sur diverses estrades. Leurs interprétations se distinguent selon différents facteurs, y compris leur compétence, leur réflexivité et le degré auquel ils sont dirigés ou réglés ou qu’ils participent aux interprétations de groupe ou en solitaire. En citant des exemples de recherches réalisés au Täj Majal en Inde, on fait tout particulièrement attention aux caractéristiques des estrades sur lesquelles jouent les touristes, en faisant une distinction entre les espaces d’enclave et les espaces hétérogènes. L’article examine les différentes manières de marcher afin de communiquer la diversité d’interprétations touristiques et en quoi elles consistent.
On the 24th of August 2014 the state of Kerala announced that alcohol will be progressively banned through different phases, with a plan of implementing a complete ban by 2025. The ban was eased in July 2017; yet, it sparked heated debates about its impacts on the tourism industry, which highlighted the strong nexus between alcohol and tourism. Despite animated discussions continued online for months after the announcement of the ban, there have not been studies assessing the impact of the ban on tourism/tourists. Through a thematic analysis of online texts published on TripAdvisor, this paper explores tourists' perceptions and opinions of the implementation of the 'Dry Law' in Kerala. Moreover, this work also investigates whether the ban discouraged potential tourists to visit Kerala. Overall, our analysis reveals that the ban did not discourage potential tourists to visit Kerala, although many regarded the possibility of having moderate amounts of alcohol on holiday as pleasant. Importantly, our study also contends that the narratives about the 'Dry Law' produced and propagated online were often representative of political structures of power, which linked tourism to alcohol irrespective of the real impact of the ban on tourism.
The insularity of super-sized cruise ships is simultaneously part of their appeal and a problem. Seagoing tourism enclaves offer a world of fantasy, consumption, familiarity, and diversion. However, problems encountered by passengers with respect to seasickness, boredom, and a sense of entrapment are noted within a range of publications. Selling the desirable aspects of cruise-ship enclosure co-exists with attempts to address the unease, discomfort, and uncertainty associated with bounded domains. These two currents, to use a nautical metaphor, characterize – or steer – the way in which shipboard experiences are sold to passengers. The concept of place marketing can be related to the thrust of the currents. Place marketing has been widely addressed in relation to urban and rural areas but not tourism enclaves such as cruise ships. The insular cruise-ship environment – a contained, consumption-driven place – is sold to (prospective) passengers in different ways. Those who study place marketing have yet to address dissimilar, but complementary, promotional messages (or currents) that are used to sell resort-style environments. Commercial imperatives explain the actions of cruise-ship companies with respect to selling the enclosed nature of their vessels, especially to North American consumers. The way in which place marketers manage place-based images – a response to intensified intercity or inter-town competition – mirrors the careful management of the promotion of shipboard spaces, often a response to intense competition within the cruise industry and part of initiatives designed to attract first-time passengers. This study addresses a research question: How are different but congruous promotional messages deployed as part of efforts to sell shipboard spaces?
Research on cruise tourism and the cruise industry is relatively recent given the "newness" of the cruise industry-it has been only 35 years since Carnival Corporation introduced its first purposebuilt cruise ship. The number of publications has been until recently relatively small and has fallen into two distinct categories. The overwhelming majority of published work is "performative" (technical or practical) in nature; only a small number are "emancipatory." The article looks at the state of cruise research and considers factors that have influenced the growth in, and nature of, cruise research, including the two streams. Looking to the future, it foresees cruise research emerging as a distinct discipline within the academy, and makes recommendations that facilitate this.
While the impact of aeromobility on the growth of tourism and its destinations is well documented, the role of aeromobility in the process of experiencing and shaping place with specific regard to tourist destinations has received little attention from scholars. With the growth of commercial aviation and the increasingly mundane nature of the experience within mass tourism, I draw attention to the touristic experience of flying as the activity beyond its role in arriving at the destination. After a brief review of the genealogy of aeromobility and tourism, I reflect on examples of tourist aeromobility in Cape Town, South Africa in order to theorise the aeromobile tourist gaze. This paper analyses mobile testimonies from online travel reviews from airborne tourists performing helicopter ‘flips’ over Cape Town. Results highlight the need to focus on flying as tourism itself while they illustrate the role it plays in the aeromobile tourist gaze, a unique perspective and experience of the tourism destination as ‘tourism from above’ that emerges from the touristic dimensions of flight including the destination, the flying device and flight route. The findings underscore the role of flying-as-tourism. The aeromobile tourist gaze thus spectacularises the destination and disrupts the relationship between tourists and place.
Consumer Behaviour in Tourism takes a broad view of tourism and looks at consumer behaviour in a number of sectors including: tour operation. tourist destinations. hospitality. visitor attractions. retail travel. transport. Now fully revised and updated, the second edition of this bestselling text looks provides an international perspective on consumer behaviour in tourism through the use of numerous examples and case studies drawn from a range of different regions of the world; an exploration of national differences in consumer culture; the dissemination of research findings and concepts from a number of different regions of the world. This second edition includes new chapters on ecotourists, destination image and choice, terrorism and the tourism market, the internet and tourist behaviour and the rise of the no frills markets. It also includes new material on health concerns and government travel advice, events and festivals, business travel, national and cultural differences and more. Each chapter features conclusions, discussion points and essay questions, and exercises, at the end, to help tutors direct student-centred learning and to allow the reader to check their understanding of what they have read. Cases include: Las Vegas, Nevada, USA; Currency exchange rates as a determinant of tourist behaviour; The adventure tourism market in the USA and New Zealand; The Chinese tourism market; The Islamic tourism market; The impact of terrorism on tourist behaviour; The health tourism market including cosmetic surgery tourism; The UK outbound market; The international conference market; Travellers experience websites; The international theme park market; The festivals and events market around the world 'Dark' tourism.
The Internet is emerging as a valuable fieldwork site for researching tourist experiences. This article argues that netnography, a web-based research technique developed by Robert Kozinets, could become more useful in tourism research as the Internet is increasingly normalized as part of everyday lifestyle. However, so far, in the field of tourism research, very few researchers have embraced netnographic techniques as alternatives or complements to traditional fieldwork methods such as faceto- face interviews and surveys. The article also considers the merits, opportunities, and challenges of netnographic tourism research, and provides suggestions for further study.
•Netnography remains underutilised.•Increasing publication of netnographic work.•Netnography commonly triangulated with other methods.•Lurker format is most popular.•Data are typically User-Generated-Content.
Social media are increasingly relevant as part of tourism practices affecting destinations and businesses. Based on a destination-specific survey, this study charts and explores summer holidaymakers' motivations for social media contributions and their willingness to share content through various social media. The findings in relation to the much-visited destination of Mallorca offer an understanding of the adoption of tourist social media in technologically-advanced markets with high levels of ICT use. The results provide insights into such motivational factors as personal and community-related benefits as well as the social capital that influences a sharing of user-generated content. The study reveals a dominance of visual content, along with the relevance of altruistic and community-related motivations and motivational differences between types of content creators. Sharing practices through social media appear as valuable articulations of sociability and emotional support, while having lesser relevance as information sources for holiday decision-making. The paper additionally shows the extent to which old and new technologies overlap and complement each other.
This article focuses on party tourism as a kind of hedonism enjoyed on a massive scale in which the citizen is transformed into a ‘party animal’, a reduction which is experienced as a liberation from the daily routine of the ‘city’ or civilization, and in which the pursuit of unlimited enjoyment creates an exceptional zone where the body as an object of desire and as abject become indistinguishable. In this process, sociality tends to be reformed in the image of a ‘mass’ rather than ‘society’ and transgression/enjoyment paradoxically becomes the law. The article elaborates on this paradoxical notion of ‘forced enjoyment’ by reading Kant and Sade together: Sade (re)formulates Kant’s categorical imperative by universalizing transgression while, on the other hand, Kant illuminates Sade by stressing that the universal maxim and the particular tendencies always conflict.
The British premarital stag tour to Central and Eastern European destinations is commonly associated with drunk and unruly behaviour. This link frequently focuses on the inappropriate use of public spaces by stag tour groups. Drawing on participant observation with British stag tourists Krakow, Poland, it is suggested that the meanings attributed to stag tour destinations are collectively defined within the group. A distinction is made between place, which is how the destination is anticipated and imagined, and space, which is how the city is engaged with physically and socially on the ground. Within this the definition of place and space created by stag tour participants is antagonistic and both directly and indirectly contested by other actors within the spatial setting.
This article takes the proliferation of user-reviews on travel-planning websites as its empirical lens to explore some relations between mobility, affect and testimony. The aim of this article is twofold. First, the article considers what travel reviews have the capacity to do and how they perform in multiple ways. By moving beyond understandings that prioritize the representational status of travel reviews, the article considers how these narratives have an even greater capacity to intervene within the affective realm of life. With this in mind, the article moves forward to consider how these reviews might be imbricated within, and redraw assemblages of politico-economic power that are contingent on these affective relations. Second, the article considers how these reviews might also reveal something about the body’s capacity to affect and be affected by the physical event of travel. The final part of the article addresses this issue by considering the relationship between affect and testimony.
Until recently, most Caribbean countries suffered from incomplete and unreliable tourism data focusing on simplistic measures (e.g. numbers of tourists) gathered over a short time‐span, questionable analysis at a descriptive level, unrealistic predictions based on these data, and faulty assumptions — all leading to misinformed policy and planning decisions. One of the most striking aspects of this has been the preoccupation with increasing the numbers of cruise tourists. Yet, the benefits of the apparent growth in that sector have rarely been examined as to whether they are real or delusion. Indeed, is the growth an illusion? There are also questions about delusion and illusion related to the visitor's experience. Adequate data now exist to examine cruise tourism in a more informed light. Here, I examine data from the Bahamas and suggest ways in which researchers can portray more accurate pictures of tourism and its impacts. When the negative environmental and social impacts of cruise tourism are added to this statistical information, the rationale for Caribbean governments' encouragement of cruise tourism is questioned.
This paper explores the notion that cruise ships can be conceptualized as spaces of containment. The cruise ships that perhaps best exemplify containment are ‘super-sized’ cruise ships. In this paper, super-sized cruise ships are defined as vessels that can accommodate more than 2,000 tourists. These ships are built for the purpose of revenue capture. In fact, they could be viewed as travel destinations since they have become places where many tourists are inclined to spend their time and money. Tourists on board a super-sized cruise ship may also have the opportunity to spend time and money at a private island or beach operated by the cruise-ship company. There are several cruise-ship companies that have rented or purchased private islands and beaches in the Caribbean that serve as port destinations for cruise ships. These islands and beaches, similar to super-sized cruise ships, are spaces of containment. Tourists, it should be noted, are not the only individuals who experience containment. There are also cruise-ship employees to consider; cruise ships and private islands are contained and confined workplaces that operate in accordance with strict rules and restrictions. Perhaps the ultimate contained environment that is seaborne and built for pleasure travel is The World of ResidenSea, a recently constructed condominium cruise ship. That this ship represents an extreme mode of containment is discussed in this paper.
The need to predict and regulate outside interferences is a powerful everyday motivation which is further enhanced in Other culture situations. This paper explores the spatial and behavioural aspects of control as a result of cumulative learning in intercultural adaptation in tourism. An important geographical dimension of control management is the tactic of escape to the metaworlds: the ways tourists travel between the secluded metaspaces of tourism and the Other public space in order to regulate their exposure to cultural difference. In the case discussed – today's institutionalized backpacking in India – the perception of control is achieved by an interesting variety of spatiotemporal and behavioural decisions which together create the metaspatial dimension of tourism. The search for predictability and cultural dominance and the consequent segregation, rather than limitless individual exploration, construct the culture of today's international tourism.
Metaphorically, tourists can be considered to enact a range of performances on distinct stages. Their enactions are distinguished according to various factors, including their competence, reflexivity, the extent to which they are directed and regulated, or participate in group or solo performances. Providing examples from research carried out at the Taj Mahal in India, particular attention is directed to the characteristics of the stages upon which tourists perform, with a distinction being drawn between “enclavic” and “heterogeneous” spaces. The paper exlores particular modes of walking to convey the diversity of tourist performances and how they are formed.
1. The Classification of Rites2. The Territorial Passage3. Individuals and Groups4. Pregnancy and Childbirth5. Birth and Childhood6. Initiation Rites7. Betrothal and Marriage8. Funerals9. Other Types of Rites of PassageConclusions
Places are one pervasive component of leisure and tourism. Leisure and tourism include encounters with place. Encounters with other people and material things, imagination and memory occur in places. In social science increasing attention is being given to the human individual as productive in everyday practices, as producer rather than consumer. This position is informed through a discussion of the phenomena of embodiment, the human subject and practise. In this paper these elements are outlined and attention directed to ways in which these inform thinking about place in leisure and tourism. These elements are considered in relation to the sensuous, social and poetic dimensions of embodiment. Embodiment denotes the ways in which the individual grasps the world around her/him and makes sense of it in ways that engage both mind and body. It is argued that these dimensions offer a route into a more human-oriented comprehension of leisure and tourism than has been prevalent in much recent work in leisure and tourism studies, and thus provides ground for a more inclusive approach to policy in the new millennium. It is important to note that this emphasis on the human individual in no sense draws away from recognition of other contextual concerns which are on the contrary given more affective consideration.
Studies of tourism and of alcohol consumption can be fruitfully brought together under the heading alcotourism. Alcotourism refers to the practices of travelling to drink, drinking on holiday, drinking to travel and drinking while travelling that are important but understudied aspects of both tourism studies and alcohol studies. Drawing on a selection of published studies, this paper scopes current research in order to assemble a research agenda for alcotourism. The paper includes discussions of cultural tourism, heritage tourism, party tourism, themed drinking environments, and acquisitive alcotourism. Debates about benefits and problems for both ‘hosts’ and ‘guests’ are highlighted, drawing on concepts such as cultural capital and liminality, while alcotourism is also situated in the context of contemporary debates about the regulation or deregulation of alcohol, drinking and drunkenness. It ends with a call for more sustained and systematic research, and a caution about straightforwardly reading alcotourism as a social problem; it should instead be understood as a set of context-specific practices often integral to the experience of holidays.
This paper draws on cultural studies and cultural geography in its examination of hotels as remarkable, but under-explored spaces in postmodern travel and tourism. It is argued that discourses of liminality and the carnivalesque can be read to frame the spatial construction of contemporary hotels and that these peculiar configurations of open, closed and negotiable abstracted spaces can offer a range of opportunities for transgressive behaviour and sexual adventure. The paper thus foregrounds the potential liminality of the hotel in a wider discussion of its spatiality. In other words, it argues for a more critical consideration of how hotel space and social relations are made through each other and explores the hotel as a complex, culturally contested and ideologically laden liminal place, where dominant discourses of space and wider hegemonic socio-cultural relations are resisted, contested or affirmed. The paper also attempts to contribute to the putative critical perspective in hospitality studies through this conceptualisation and through its call to augment the hospitality research agenda to encompass detailed research into issues of power, identity and sexuality in hospitality spaces—places which, whilst on one level are operational entities, can also be interpreted as liminal thresholds of transition and transgression. The paper is firmly positioned as an exploratory one since it is based on secondary sources and its contribution lies not in any presentation of empirical work, but in its conceptualisation of hotels as hybrid, multi-dimensional spaces and in its advocacy of further research into the hotel as a sociological construct.
In spite of its importance to the tourism industry, vacation cruising has been little researched. This paper describes an atypical cruise on a small ship in the South Pacific. It advances the concepts of “short-lived societies,” “cruise culture,” and the ship as “environment” to explain the behavior of passengers, and the ways in which they relate to each other. Passengers are described as an aging, upper middle class group, still physically active, flexible in relating to members of their class, yet cautious in developing social intimacies. Self-improvement is seen to be the moral rationale of many passengers in justifying a relatively expensive trip. Passenger expectations and behavior on small cruise ships, it is suggested, are quite distinct from what is found on large ships.RésuméUne croisière dans les Mers du sud: un cas d'étude d'une sociétéà la vie éphémère. En dépit de son importance à l'industrie touristique, on a fait peu de recherches sur les croisières de vacances. Cet article décrit une croisière atypique à bord d'un petit vaisseau dans le Pacifique Sud. Il avance les concepts des “sociétés à la vie éphémère”, “culture des croisières”, et le navire comme “environment afin d'expliquer le comportement des passagers et les façons dont ils établissent des rapports personnels entre eux. On décrit les passagers comme un groupe du troisième âge de la haute bourgeoisie, encore actifs physiquement, flexibles quant aux relations avec des membres de leur classe, pourtrant circonspects dans le développement des amitiés intimes. Le développement personnel se voit comme le raisonnement moral de beaucoup de passagers pour justifier un voyage qui est relativement couûteux. Les espoirs et le comportement des passagers à bord d'un petit bateau de croisière, semble-til, sont bien distincts de ce qui se trouve à bord des grands paquebots.
This paper considers tourism's impact on changes in alcohol consumption by men and women in a small Greek town. Successive waves of foreign and domestic tourism have altered normative drinking patterns within the constraints of local gender ideologies. More specifically, foreign tourism has helped to create the addition of beer to men's drinking regimen of locally made wine and distilled spirits. The more recent phenomenon of domestic tourism, on the other hand, has loosened social restrictions on women's drinking in the town. These findings underscore the importance of gender in the social availability of alcohol. Furthermore, they indicate that the impacts of domestic and foreign tourism may differ significantly.RésuméHommes, femmes et alcool dans un village touristique en Grèce. Cet article examine l'impact du tourisme sur la consommation de boissons alcoolisées par les hommes et les femmes dans un village grec. Des vagues successives de tourisme international et national ont changé les habitudes normatives au sujet de l'alcool dans le contexte du comportement des hommes et des femmes. Le tourisme international a contribuéà ajouter la bière à la carte masculine de vins et spiritueux locaux. Le phénomène plus récent du tourisme national, par contre, a desserré les restrictions locales sur la consommation de boissons alcoolisées par les femmes. Ceci souligne l'importance du sexe dans la disponibilité sociale de l'alcool. On trouve aussi que les impacts du tourisme international et national peuvent être très différents.
Exploring other places as a tourist or a short-term sojourner is a chance for pleasure and self-discovery, but also a confusing experience. Often, people refer to culture shock, a theoretical framework with its origin in the sojourner studies of the 50s. Since the publication of a 1984 contribution in Annals of Tourism Research, more field material has surfaced pointing out the inconclusive and partly non-valid nature of the U-curve approach, especially in the context of tourism. In the present article, a new grounded theory framework—the dynamic model of culture confusion—is proposed to overcome the existing void in the theoretical understanding of short-term transitions.RésuméConfusion culturelle:adaptation interculturelle dans le tourisme. L’exploration d’autres endroits comme touriste ou comme visiteur à court terme est une occasion de plaisir et de découverte de soi, mais c’est aussi une expérience déroutante. On parle souvent de choc culturel, un cadre théorique aux origines dans les études de visiteurs des années 50. Depuis la publication en 1984 d’un article dans Annals of Tourism Research, plus de recherches sur le terrain ont fait surface, en mettant en évidence la nature peu concluante et en partie non valable de l’approche de la courbe U, surtout dans le contexte du tourisme. Dans le présent article, un nouveau cadre théorique raisonné – le modèle dynamique de la confusion culturelle – est proposé pour combler le vide de la compréhension théorique des transitions à court terme.
Australia Cruises-to-nowhere
- Cruise Critic
The moralisation of tourism: Sun, sand… and saving the world
- J Butcher
2-night party cruises by MSC Cruises. Available at: Retrieved
- Msc Cruises
Word of mouth and satisfaction in cruise port destinations
- G Satta
- F Parola
- L Penco
- L Persico
Tourism spaces, behaviours and cultures: The metaspatialities of tourism
- P Hottola
Available at: Retrieved
- Oed Online
2-night party cruises by MSC Cruises
- Msc Cruises
Cruises-to-nowhere Basics
- Cruise Critic