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Defining tourists

Rong Huang
The HELP CETL was part of a national network of 74 CETLs funded by HEFCE to reward
excellence in learning and teaching and to promote educational research. The HELP CETL was
funded [2005-2010] to support higher education (HE) in further education (FE) development. It
built on the existing excellence of the UPC partnership within the South West region and
sought to work with individuals, groups and institutions in the development of HE in FE
practice.

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delivering higher education to students in their local area. Provision has grown to more than
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progress to the University of Plymouth where they can progress to an Honours Degree.

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UPC, funding projects ranging from short studies with a small number of participants to large
scale work stretching over more than one academic year. This resource was developed for this
strand.
The University of Plymouth Colleges (UPC)

Higher Education Learning Partnerships (HELP)
Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL)


Defining Tourists
Dr. Rong Huang

These learning materials have been prepared with the following in mind:

1 Links to Subject Benchmarks
The nature and characteristics of tourists
Explain and challenge theories and concepts which are used to understand
tourism
Explain and challenge the definitions, nature and operations of tourism

2 Links to modules
Level 1 Introduction to Tourism;
Level 2 Regional Tourism


LEARNING OUTCOMES

After reading these learning materials and answering the questions, students should
be able to:

Understand the domestic and international nature of tourists
Explain and challenge typologies which are used to understand tourists.

OVERVIEW
These materials attempt to define tourists. However, the task of defining tourists is not as
easy as it may appear. Within most tourism books, articles now assume either a standard
definition or interpretation of the concept of tourism, which is usually influenced by the
social scientists perspective (i.e. geographical, anthropological, sociological approach or
other disciplines). They are not only from the micro approach which concentrates on the
tourist as an individual, but also from the macro approach which considers the extent which
tourist types are socially constructed.

These materials firstly define tourists from both technical and also conceptual aspects. Then
they summarise some of the main contributions about defining tourists from the social
scientists perspective. A summary for these materials is also followed.


TOURISTS DEFINED:
Many authors (Cooper, et al., 2005; Ritchie et al., 2003; etc) have pointed out that one of the
problems that students of tourism studies face is that there is no commonly accepted
definition of the tourist and tourism. Van Harssel sets a useful context with the following:

It is difficult, and perhaps misleading, to generalise about tourism and tourists. We
lack a commonly accepted definition of tourism partially because of the complexity
of tourist activity and partially because different interests are concerned with
different aspects of tourist activity. (1994:3)

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first appearance of the term tourist in the
English language was in the late eighteenth century, and it was used as a synonym for
traveller. Thus, the meaning of tourist during this early period of time was neutral. Yet
while this neutral meaning is still current, by the middle of the nineteenth century, tourist
had acquired a negative connotation, as against the term traveller that contains the
positive meaning. The tourist, as opposed to the traveller, not only became associated with
mass forms of travel but also with a particular mentality or approach to the travel
experience. In effect, high culture, the culture of the traveller, saw itself as the polar
opposite of low culture, the culture attributed to the tourist (Rojek, 1993), a distinction
immortalised, perhaps, by Henry James description of tourists as vulgar, vulgar, vulgar (cited
from Sharply, 2003). While he may have despised tourists and the tourist industry in general,
this aversion never stopped James from visiting foreign countries. In fact, by the time of his
death in 1916, he had published numerous travel books--Portrait of Places (1883), A Little
Tour in France (1884), English Hours (1905), Italian Hours (1909)--which chronicled his trips
throughout Europe and America. James's disgust with "vulgar" tourists, combined with his
own touristic forays, suggests a seemingly contradictory position. That is, James often took
on the identity of the tourist which he so despised, while concurrently attempting to
distinguish himself from the mob of his fellow travellers. The boundary that James
attempted to construct separating himself (as travel writer) from other tourists was
employed by numerous authors.

However, such distinctions are normally self-imposed labels (Sharpley, 2003); nevertheless,
the discussion of the definition of the tourist below will take a neutral meaning. That is, it is
used in a totally neutral sense to describe a person who was touring for the purpose of
pleasure or leisure.

While an all-embracing definition of a tourist is desirable, in practice tourists present a
heterogeneous, not a homogeneous, group with different personalities, demographics and
experiences. In an historical context, Medlik (2003) identified the historical development of
the term tourism, noting the distinction between the endeavours of researchers to
differentiate between the technical and conceptual definitions of a tourist. So the following
section critically discusses tourists from both aspects of definitions.

Technical Definitions of Tourists
From a technical point of view, attempts to define tourist have been led by the need to
isolate tourism trips from other forms of travel. They have evolved through time as
researchers modify and develop appropriate measures for statistical, legislative and
operational reasons implying that there may be various technical definitions to meet
particular purposes. The following is a typical example of the World Tourism Organisation
(WTO) definition as amended in 1993 which is now widely accepted:

The temporary visitors staying in a place outside their usual place of residence,
for a continuous period of at least 24 hours but less than one year, for leisure,
business or other purposes
(World Tourism Organisation, 1993)





International
tourist
A visitor who travels to a country other than that in which
he/she has his/her usual residence for at least one night
but not more than one year, and whose main purpose of
visit is other than the exercise of activity remunerated
from within the country visited
International
excursionist
A visitor residing in a country who travels the same day to
a country other than that in which he/she has his/her
usual environment for less than 24 hours without
spending the night in the country visited and whose main
purpose of visit is other than the exercise of an activity
remunerated from within the country visited
Domestic tourist Any person, regardless of nationality, resident in a country
and who travels to a place in the same country for not
more than one year and whose main purpose of visit is
other than following an occupation remunerated from
within the place visited. Such a definition includes
domestic tourists where an overnight stay is involved and
domestic excursionists who visit an area for less than 24
hours and do not stay overnight
Table 1: Based on the above definition of tourists, the WTO develops a series of relevant
definitions Source: WTO, 1991

These technical definitions demand a person has to pass certain tests before they count as
tourists. Such tests include the following:


Minimum length of stay one night (visitors who do not stay overnight are
termed day visitors or excursionists)
Maximum length of stay one year
Purpose of visit categories
A distance consideration is sometimes included on the grounds of delineating
the term usual environment

However, such technical definitions are all-encompassing, more or less counting everyone
who travels (with the exception of paid workers, migrants etc.), and often dismissed by some
academics of tourism studies as not catching the essential features of the tourist.


As Rojek and Urry (1997) say:
One response to those who point to the problematic nature of tourism as a theoretical
category is to seek to operationalise it but the problem with this is that it ignores whether
these stays have in any sense the same significance to visitors. Another response to the
problematic character of tourism is deliberately to abstract most of the important issues of
social and cultural practice and only considers tourism as a set of economic activities.
(Rojek and Urry, 1997: 2)

Conceptual Definitions of Tourists
According Medlik (2003), the conceptual definition of tourism refers to the broad notional
framework, which identifies the essential characteristics, and which distinguishes tourism
from similar, often related, but different phenomena. As this kind of definitions is usually
influenced by the social scientists perspective, therefore next, these materials critically
summarise some of the main contributions about defining tourists from the social scientists
perspective.

KEY LITERATURE FOR UNDERSTANDING TOURISTS
John Urry (2002) argues that making theoretical sense of fun, pleasure and entertainment
has proved a difficult task for social scientists. But many scholars have made contributions to
the understanding of tourists not only from the micro approach (Cohen, 1974, 1979a,
1979b; Plog, 1977; Urry, 1995, 2002; Coleman and Crang, 2002; Crouch, 1999, 2002), but
also from the macro approach (MacCannell, 1999, 2001; Poon, 1993; Urry, 1995, 2002). This
section summarises some of the main contributions to the understanding of tourists.

One of the earliest attempts to distinguish between different types of tourists was made by
Gray (1970) who coined the terms sunlust and wanderlust tourists. Sunlust tourists are
resort based and motivated by the desire for rest, relaxation and the 3Ss, whereas
wanderlust tourists are based on a desire to travel and to experience different peoples and
cultures. As the two terms imply, sunlust and wanderlust are essentially categorisations
based upon the purpose of the trip. Since then a number of typologies, concentrating on the
tourists themselves, have been developed. Some of these concentrate on tourists behaviour
whilst others adopt a more socio-psychological approach.






Cohens typology of tourists (1974, 1979)
One of the earliest and best known is Erik Cohens (1974) tourist typology which was the first
to propose a typology of tourists based upon sociological theory (Sharpley, 2003). This is
showed in Table 2.

Organise
d mass
tourist
Highly dependent on an environmental bubble created, supplied and
maintained by the international tourism industry. Characterised by all-
inclusive, fully package holidays. Familiarity dominates; novelty non-existent
or highly controlled.
Individual
mass
tourist
These will use the institutional facilities of the tourism system (scheduled
flights, centralised bookings, transfers) to arrange as much as possible before
leaving home; perhaps visiting the same sights as mass tourists but going
under their own steam
Explorer The key phrase here is off the beaten track perhaps following a destination
lead given by a travel article rather than simply choosing from a brochure.
They will move into the bubble of comfort and familiarity if the going gets too
tough
Drifter This type of tourist will seek novelty at all costs; even discomfort and danger.
They will try to avoid all contact with tourists. Novelty will be their total
goal; spending patterns tend to benefit immediate locale rather than large
companies
Table 2: Cohens tourist typology (1974) Source: adapted from Sharpley (2003)

Cohen develops his typology of tourists on the basis of their relationship to both the tourist
business establishment and the host country. All tourists can be located along a familiarity-
strangerhood continuum, they travel in an environmental bubble; importantly, however not
all tourists are equally constrained by this bubble (Sharpley, 2003; Urry, 2002). Progressing
from the familiarity to the strangerhood position, four different types of tourist are
identified.


Image 1: These tourists are on an excursion on the Amazon River. Source: photo by Howdy
Howard, published in Saved by Bedbugs (2004
What type of tourist are they, using Cohens classification?

However, Cohens typology does not allow for variable tourist behaviour over time; the
implication is once an explorer, always an explorer; whereas tourists frequently take
different types of holiday from one year to the next or even within a year (see coming
learning materials on factor affecting tourism demand). Also, his categorisation is based on
observable tourist behaviour but gives no indication of the reason for that behaviour.

Building upon his earlier work in distinguishing between different types of tourist, Cohen
addresses some of the inherent weaknesses of his typology in his phenomenology of tourist
experiences (Cohen, 1979). Recognising that tourism is a multi-dimensional phenomenon,
Cohen proposed that a micro approach is equally valid in developing an understanding of
different tourist types and roles (see Table 3 below), concentrating not on observed
behaviour but on different desired tourist experiences.


Recreational Whose centre is located in the home society seeks recreational experiences
and has little or no interest in learning about or experiencing the society and
culture in which the recreational experience is taking place
Diversionary Although alienated to an extent from his or her own society, the individual
does not seek authentic experiences elsewhere. In a sense, the purpose of a
holiday or trip is to temporarily forget about home
Experiential The modern, alienated individual who seeks authentic experiences
elsewhere. Although seeking to experience alternative cultures and societies,
they neither identify with them nor reject his or her own society. The trip
thus compensates for the lack of authenticity in the home life to which the
tourist inevitably returns.
Experimental Seeking to relocate his or her centre but lies midway between the centre at
home and an identified centre elsewhere. Authenticity is essential but they
does not become totally immersed in any one culture
Existential Alienated from their home society, their centre is firmly located elsewhere,
and becomes fully immersed in the local, foreign culture and society, finding
meaning and belonging in the new chosen centre
Table 3; Cohens typology of tourist (1979)

His starting point is to ascertain where the spiritual centre of the individual tourist is
located; different individuals identify with and accept (to a greater or lesser extent) their
home culture and society. Based upon this, Cohen identifies the above five categories of
tourist experience. But Cohens typology still does not allow for the different needs or
requirements of an individual tourist. Nor is it based on any empirical research. It is a
theoretical categorisation within which different tourists may be located but, as with other
typologies, it considers tourists per se rather than in their broader social context.

Plogs psychocentrics and allocentrics
Stanley Plog (1977) coins the terms allocentric travellers (referring to those who actively
seek out the exotic or untouched destinations) and psychocentric types (who are not risk-
takers and tend to go to well-established tourist destinations). In between the two extremes
lie the categories of near-psychocentric, mid-centric and near-allocentric. Mid-centrics, the
most used category, take their holidays in places, which offer the experience of a new yet
sufficiently similar culture. This whole approach comes under the framework of
psychographics, where people are categorised according to life-style, self-image, attitudes
towards life and social institutions etc. However the problem with attempting to link tourist
type with destination in this way is that it is a static model.



Image 2: : This image contains a "Field Guide" for New Yorkers to spot the different
types of tourists they're likely to spot roaming the streets of Manhattan this
summer.From left to right: The German Free Spirit, The Midwestern Dad, The
Upscale Italian Tourist, The Japanese Hipster Chick, and the Lesbian Thrill seeker. So
what kind of categories does New York belong to according to Plogs typology?
Source: Time Out New Yorks Tourist Issue

On the other hand, the parameters of each category of tourist may also change or become
vague. For instance, as technology develops rapidly, and long haul flights become more
available and more destinations are packaged, then psychocentrics

might be found travelling to destinations that, according to Plogs model, would normally
attract allocentrics. Thus, there is a real problem for Plogs model in practice (Sharpley,
2003). Indeed, Smith (1990) tests the model against a number of different countries and
finds that the results do not support Plogs contention that destination choice could be
predicted according to personality types.

Urrys tourist gaze (1990, 2002)
In the history of Western societies, sight has long been regarded as the noblest of the
senses. According to Jay (1993) sight has been viewed as the most discriminating and
reliable of the sensual mediators between people and their physical environment. There can
be little doubt that the visual component of tourism, sightseeing, is a major element in
tourist consumption. In 1976, MacCannell wrote: sightseeing is a ritual performed to the
differentiations of society (1976:3); a formulation which was later developed in Urrys
(1990) metaphor of the tourist gaze. In Urrys The Tourist Gaze, the fundamentally visual
nature of the tourism experience was analysed (Urry, 1990). Gazes organise the encounters
of visitors with the other, providing some sense of competence, pleasure and structure to
those experiences. The gaze demarcates an array of pleasurable qualities to be generated
within particular times and spaces. In The Tourist Gaze, Urry (1990) draws out the
distinctions between tourists in terms of desired experiences as romantic and collective,
and generates the forms shown in the following Table 4

Categories Characteristics
Romantic Solitary; Sustained immersion; Gaze involving vision, awe,
aura
Collective Communal activity; Series of shared encounters; Gazing at
the familiar
Spectatorial Communal activity; Series of brief encounters; Glancing at
and collecting of different signs
Environmental Collective organisation; Sustained and didactic; Scanning
to survey and inspect
Anthropological Solitary; Sustained immersion; Scanning and active
interpretation
Table 4: Forms of the tourist gaze

However, the existence of these dominant gazes is problematic. It is the split of a complex
phenomenon into another either/or binary distinction (Meethan, 2001). Whereas in the past
it could be argued that, as tourism was a pre-dominantly western phenomenon, one
exported as it were to the rest of the world, then these gazes may have some form of
historically contingent universality. However, in terms of the global system, this no longer
holds true. The newly industrialised countries of Asia are themselves becoming net
exporters of tourists. There is no evidence or reason to suppose that, for example, the
gaze of other cultures is intrinsically the same as that anywhere else. There is more than
enough ethnographic evidence to make a convincing case otherwise (e.g. Martinez, 1998).
Even if we allow for the fact that there are different gazes situated in different cultures, the
interesting questions, then, are what the basis is on which they are formed, and in a
globalised world, how do they interact?

Furthermore, most holiday experiences of tourists are said to be physical and are not merely
visual. Jay (1993) argues that it is necessary to acknowledge vision in the wake of an over
concentration on the purely mental processes of knowledge. We would not want to
undermine the significance of the visual or of the tourist gaze itself, but this is not enough,
tourism is not confined to visual repertoires of consumption. In addition, MacCannell (2001)
argues that although the idea of the tourist gaze is illuminating in some respects, it fails to
identify a kind of second gaze, one that knows that looks can deceive, that there are things
unseen and unsaid, and that each gaze generates its own beyond.

Tourism as an embodied practice
Cloke and Perkins (1998) acknowledge the general lack of attention to practice and body-
practice in tourism discourse. More recently, some academics from geographical
perspectives address tourism as engaged through discussions emerging from notions of
performance (Coleman and Crang, 2002). Being a tourist is to practice, as Crouch (2002)
argues that the tourist is considered in terms of mental and physical reflexive practices,
where the individual participates as a multi-dimensional human being, the individual
emerges as a subject, as an active (but not free) agent doing tourism. He goes further to
emphasise that tourism is considered in terms of the tensions between holding on and
going further in terms of the self. For a start, it does not reduce tourism to images that
cover or obscure, but allows us to be sensitive to the practices through which tourism
occurs.

According to Crouch (2002) tourism as an embodied practice emphasises a collective,
combined way in which space is practised: touching, smelling, hearing, tasting and seeing.
This is a very informative and a welcome enlargement of analysis beyond the familiar two-
dimensional detachment of the gaze onto scripted surfaces by a non-involved bystander.
Vision is not sensed and made sense of separately from other senses but in interrelation and
tension with them. Even vision becomes more complex than the gaze would suggest. Gazing
at particular sights is inflected by all sorts of other visual as well as multi-sensual
awareness. However, although tourism as an embodied practice has a profound influence
in the tourism field, and is very informative and a welcome enlargement of analysis, it also
seems to make less clear who tourists are.

The above tourist typologies or arguments are from the micro approach. But from a
sociological point of view, a typology of tourists should be based upon both a microanalysis
of tourists themselves, and a macro structural approach which locates actual tourist
behaviour and experiences with a broader social context. Therefore, it is necessary to
consider some socially determined tourist typologies.

Sharpley (2003) argued that when a structural perspective is applied to the analysis of
tourists, it becomes evident that categories of tourists emerged which have more to do with
the values of society as a whole towards to tourists, rather than with the behaviour or
lifestyle of individual tourists. There are several following contributions:


MacCannells authentic experience searching tourists
The first comprehensive attempt to approach tourism from the perspective of the social
sciences was provided by Dean MacCannells book The Tourist (1976). This book effectively
opened up tourism to a more generalised and theoretically informed analysis than had
previously been the case. He disagrees with Boorstins account who describes tourists have
become passive onlookers who travel in organised groups, enjoy contrived, pseudo-events.
He regards Boorstins arguments as reflecting a characteristically upper-class view that
other people are tourists, while I am a traveller (MacCannell, 1999).

All tourists for MacCannell embody a quest for authenticity, and this quest is a modern
version of the universal human concern with sacred places. The tourist is a kind of
contemporary pilgrim, seeking authenticity in other times and other places away from the
persons everyday life. Of central importance to the consideration of the authenticity of
tourist experiences is the notion of staged authenticity (MacCannell, 1999). In other words,
he argues that although tourists may believe they are witnessing authenticity, in fact,
tourists experiencing only what local people or the tourism industry are allowing him to see.
MacCannells concept of staged authenticity is based upon the work of Goffman (1959) who
divides the structure of social establishments into what he terms as the front region (where
the social interaction takes place, where hosts meet guests or where servers attend to
customers) and back region (where members of the home team retire between
performances to relax and to prepare).

In adapting Goffmans work to tourist setting, MacCannell (1989:101) proposes that there
are six different stages on from the front to the end as follows:

Stage one (Goffmans front region): the setting which tourists attempt to penetrate or get
behind; Stage two: although it is still in a front region, this stage has been given the
superficial appearance of the back region by, for example, having wine racks on display in a
restaurant; Stage three: this stage is still firmly embedded in the front region but it is totally
organised to resemble a back region; Stage four: moving into the back region, tourists are
permitted to see this stage. For example, tourists may be taken into the workshops to see
the production process of local goods; Stage five: this is a back region to which tourists are
occasionally permitted entry such as the flight deck on an aeroplane; Stage six: this is
Goffmans back region, the ultimate goal of the tourist but one which is rarely, if ever,
reached.



Image 3; What characterises this image as an example of staged authenticity?
Source: www.northamptonshire.co.uk

As far as MacCannells tourist is concerned, he/she embodies a quest for authenticity, and
this quest is a modern version of the universal human concern with the sacred. The tourist is
a kind of contemporary pilgrim, seeking authenticity in other times and other places away
from the persons everyday life.

But the logic of MacCannells argument is that, increasingly, the back regions are put on
show and staged. In this sense, tourism is a genre error where one group is staged for the
entertainment of another (Coleman and Crang, 2002). Such transformation from the back to
the front may change and perhaps threaten the very authenticity sought in the first place. So
we might say that MacCannells idea of the tourist as a modern figure questing for authentic
knowledge fits academic opinion rather better than empirical evidence of tourists
behaviour, including examples from international student life experience.

Old tourists & new tourists
There is a type of tourist that has emerged from the present concern for the five key forces
of change which created mass tourism in the first place: this is the so-called new tourist
(Poon, 1993). He summarised the differences between old and new tourists as shown below
in Table 5:

Old tourists New tourists
Search for the sun Experience something different
Follow the masses Want to be in charge
Here today, gone tomorrow See and enjoy but do not destroy
Just to show that you had been Just for the fun of it
Having Being
Superiority Understanding
Like attractions Like sports
Precautious Adventurous
Eat in hotel dining room Try out local fare
Homogeneous Hybrid
Table 5: Old and new tourists compared

This kind of new tourists recognises that the solution to the undoubted problems caused by
tourism lies not only in new approaches in the development, planning and management of
tourism, but also in the adoption of more appropriate behaviour on the part of tourists
themselves. These new tourists are conversely asked to work at tourism: and thus to adopt
fundamentally different approaches and interpretations of the tourism experiences as mass
tourists.

However, this typology still does not allow variable tourist behaviour over time. Possibly,
over a short period of time, tourists can change between old tourists and new tourists. So it
is not surprising Wheeler (1992) argued old and new tourist differentiation is nothing but an
attempt to attach an explorer/drifter image to certain tourism products and to develop a
niche market for aware tourists. It is no more than a marketing ploy, a green mantle
(Wheeler, 1992).


The Post Tourists
Lash and Urry (1994) argue that capitalism moved through a series of historical stages:
liberal, organised and disorganised. Each of these appears to be associated with a particular
dominant configuration of travel and tourism. These are set out below, together with the
patterns identifiable in pre-capitalist to disorganised capitalist societies, in Table 6.

Stage Configuration
Pre-capitalism Organised exploration
Liberal capitalism Individual travel be the rich
Organised capitalism Organised mass tourism
Disorganised capitalism The end of tourism
Table 6: Capitalism, tourism and travel

According to the above connection, it may be argued that tourism and tourists have come of
age. In other words, the distinction between the traveller and the tourist is, in fact, no more
than a manifestation of the first two stages in the evolution of travel and we have now
reached the third stage, the era of the post tourist (Feifer, 1985). Firstly, the post-tourist
finds it less and less necessary to leave home; technologies now allow people to gaze on
tourist sites without leaving home. Secondly, tourism has become highly eclectic; a pastiche
of different interests visiting sacred, informative, broadening, beautiful, uplifting, or simply
different sites. The post-tourist simply has a lot more choices. Thirdly, the post-tourist
recognises and understands the fundamental change that has occurred in the nature of
tourism. Armed with a mass of information and images, the post-tourist knows that it is no
longer possible to experience authenticity because nothing is new. Tourism has become a
kind of game, or rather a whole series of games with multiple texts and no single, authentic
tourist experience (Urry, 1990) and the post-tourist understands the role he or she plays in
that game. Sometimes they choose to be a mass tourist, sometimes an independent
traveller and sometimes not to be a tourist at all; and accept the conditions and constraints
of each role. Above all, the post-tourist is aware of being a tourist, of being an outsider, not
a time traveller when he goes somewhere historic; not an instant noble savage when he
stays on a tropical beach; not an invisible observer when he visits a native compound (Feifer,
1985).

For the post-tourist then, the traveller/tourist dichotomy is irrelevant. The traveller has
matured and evolved into an individual who experiences and enjoys all kinds of tourism,
who takes each at face value and who is in control at all times. In effect, the post-tourist
renders tourist typologies meaningless.


SUMMARY
These learning materials have introduced the conceptual issues associated with the study of
tourists, highlighting some of difficulties which students and researchers need to be aware
of when attempting to define tourists. Different attempts which have been made by tourism
scholars to create typologies of tourists from both micro and macro approaches. From the
discussion above, it appears that developing a tourist typology that incorporates a multi-
dimensional approach might be proved to be impossible. However, given the limitations of
existing typologies, locating tourists in a social context seems to provide a clearer picture
and better explanation of tourist roles, contributing to a better understanding of the
demand for tourism. It also provides the foundation for a more detailed analysis of tourist
behaviour.



MULTIPLE CHOICE:

1. According to Medlik (2003) observation, definitions of tourists provided by different
researchers can be differentiate between:

(A) technical and conceptual definitions
(B) theoretical and practical definitions
(C) scientific and non-scientific definitions
(D) eastern and western definitions

2. According to the WTO (1993), the following requirement does not need to be
considered for a person to be called a tourist:

(A) Minimum length of stay one night
(B) Maximum length of stay one year
(C) Purpose of visit categories
(D) A distance consideration

3. According to Erik Cohens (1974) tourist typology based upon sociological theory,
which choice does not belong to his typology?

(A) Organised mass tourists
(B) Individual mass tourists
(C) Explorer
(D) New tourists

4. According to Plog (1977), allocentric travellers refer to

(A) Those who actively seek out untouched destinations
(B) Those who go to well-established tourist destinations
(C) Those who go to Las Vegas
(D) Those who enjoy man-made parks such as Disneyland

5. According to John Urry (1990), what characteristics does romantic gaze have?

(A) Communal activity; series of brief encounters; glancing at and collecting of
different signs
(B) Solitary; sustained immersion; gaze involving vision, awe, aura
(C) Solitary; sustained immersion; scanning and active interpretation
(D) Communal activity; series of shared encounters; gazing at the familiar

6. In adapting Goffmans work to tourist setting, MacCannell (1989) proposes that there
are different stages from the front to the end. How many stages did he propose?

(A) 4
(B) 6
(C) 7
(D) 8

7. According to Poon (1993), tourists can be differentiated as

(A) Mass tourists and independent tourists
(B) Explorers and backpackers
(C) Old tourists and new tourists
(D) International tourists and domestic tourists

8. In the following statements, which statement does not relate to new tourists?

(A) Experience something different
(B) Want to be in charge
(C) See and enjoy but do not destroy
(D) Search for the sun

9. According to Lash and Urry (1994), which type of tourists does fit in organised
capitalistic societies?

(A) Organised explorers
(B) Individual travellers
(C) Organised mass tourists
(D) Post-tourists

10. Whose tourist typology is from a macro approach to defining tourists?

(A) Plog
(B) Cohen
(C) Poon
(D) World Tourism Organisation


















Answers: (1) A (2) D (3) D (4) A (5) B (6) B (7) C (8) D (9) C (10) C

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

1. Demonstrate your understanding of the domestic and international nature of tourists
with examples
2. What are drawbacks to use technical definitions of tourists?
3. What are advantages and disadvantages of using tourist typologies?
4. What are key researchers and research which contribute to the understanding of
tourists?
5. Present your understanding of post-tourists with examples from your own country


FURTHER READING

Sharpley, R (2003) Tourism, Tourists & Society, 3
rd
edition, Huntingdon: ELM Publications



REFERENCES
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Target Audience
This resource was developed for HE and HE in FE professionals and students engaged in
tourism and hospitality.

The content has four key audiences:
HE and HE in FE academic and support service practitioners engaged in level 1 and 2
modules in tourism and hospitality;
HE and HE in FE academic staff involved in curriculum design;
Students and staff looking for learning materials linked to QAA subject benchmarks for
hospitality and tourism.



Contact
University of Plymouth Colleges
University of Plymouth
Drake Circus
Plymouth
PL4 8AA

tel: +44 (0) 1752 587500

email: upc@plymouth.ac.uk

web: www.plymouth.ac.uk/upc




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