Title
Author(s)
Citation
Issued Date
URL
Rights
A postmodern poetics of the group package tour
Leung, Sai-chung, Arthur.; 梁世聰 Leung, S. A. [梁世聰]. (2002). A postmodern poetics of the group package tour. (Thesis). University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong SAR. Retrieved from http://dx.doi.org/10.5353/th_b4257633 2002
http://hdl.handle.net/10722/55636
The author retains all proprietary rights, (such as patent rights) and the right to use in future works.
A Postmodern Poetics of the Group Package Tour
Arthur Leung Sai Chung Department of Comparative Literature The University of Hong Kong September 2002
A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in Literary and Cultural Studies
Declaration
I hereby declare that this dissertation represents my own work undertaken after my registration as a candidate for the Degree of Master of Arts in Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of Hong Kong.
Arthur Leung Sai Chung September, 2002
i
Preface
I would like to express my very sincere thanks to my supervisor, Professor Ackbar Abbas, who has given me invaluable advice on every aspect of this dissertation. My gratitude also goes to other teaching staff of the M.A. course, including Dr. Wimal Dissanayake and Dr. Marie-Paule Ha - and especially Professor Jeremy Tambling whose inspiring critical ideas have widened not only my academic horizon, but also my vision of life.
11
CONTENTS
Declaration
i
Preface
ii
Table of contents
iii
Introduction
iv - v
Chapter 1: The Group Package Tour and Its Cultural Context
1-15
Chapter 2: A Site of Consumption
16 - 24
Chapter 3: Spectacles and Schizophrenic Experience
25-35
Chapter 4: Cultural Encounters and Hyperreality
36 - 45
Chapter 5: Conclusion: The Group Package Tour and Everyday Life
46 - 50
Notes
51 - 54
Selected Bibliography
55 - 57
iii
INTRODUCTION
Tourism has received much academic attention in the last two decades, yet there seems to be a lack of specific research on the group package tour as a distinct cultural product. It has so far been seen as a form of organized mass tourism, and tends to be imprecisely characterized by two features: traveling in mass, and, all events being pre-packaged for the travelers. Crude analyses have also led to negatively misleading remarks like "diluted experience", "limited advances in cross-cultural understanding" and "an awful sense of monotony", which fail to account for the continuously high popularity of the group package tour.
Indeed, the group package tour is more than just a mass tour with a series of pre-packaged events. It more importantly represents a subtle regulation of time and space that shapes the minutiae of experience in the trip. This dissertation is to analyze the traveler's experience, as well as to examine how meanings are organized in time and space, in the unique context of the group package tour. To begin with, the first chapter will discuss the features and cultural context of the group package tour, and its relationship with the idea of "leisure". This will be followed by an analysis of the conditions under which the group package tour is considered as a postmodern product. While it reveals modernist features including rationality and routinization, the rest of the dissertation will show that it is these very features that facilitate an intensification of experiences which are regarded postmodern.
iv
Seeing the group package tour as a postmodern product, the following three chapters will analyze the traveler's experience in light of the ideas of some postmodern thinkers like Jean Baudrillard, Guy Debord and Fredric Jameson. Chapter 2 will discuss the group package tour as a site of consumption. The next chapter will analyze the conditions in which events in the tour are perceived as spectacles and representing a schizophrenic experience. Chapter 4 will examine the hyperreal nature of the events as related to the issue of globalization in the context of tour destinations. The final chapter will conclude the discussion with some comments on the relationship between the group package tour and everyday life.
v
CHAPTER 1 The Group Package Tour and Its Cultural Context
While the tourism literature argues that the Grand Tour1 of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is the predecessor of modern travel, the origin of group package tour is traced back to the 1840's when Thomas Cook began to organize series of mass excursions by trains in Britain.
International tourism gradually grew
in popularity in the 1950's, with the advent of commercial aircraft.
Foreign travel in
group package tour is established as one of the dominant economic and social activities of the late twentieth century.
The package tour is a pleasure travel programme for a certain number of days, with a set number of features and at a fixed price.
Such tours are arranged by
tour wholesalers2 through working with public tourism institutions and various industries including airline, hotel and catering. through travel agents.
They are then sold to the travelers
There are two types of package tour: independent package
tour and group package tour.
The former normally includes a return flight ticket for
1
the destination country, other major transportation such as bus service between airport and hotel, accommodation (breakfast sometimes included) and possibly one (or more) half-day sightseeing trip.
The group package tour is, however, an all-inclusive
programme, including transportation, meals, sightseeing trips and other entertainment events.
These disparate entities are linked up by the tour wholesaler into a totality
known as the itinerary.
In the tour, we travel in a group of fifteen or more, together
with a group leader provided by the travel agent, and a tour guide who joins us when we reach the destination.
The group leader assists us in getting through customs and
handles details like tipping and reconfirmation of services, while the tour guide provides information on tourist attractions as well as the social and cultural contexts of the destination country.
The programme is supposed to proceed according to the
itinerary as "promised" in the promotional travel brochure when we purchased the package.
As a mass product, everything in the group package tour is standardized and homogenized, so that everyone in the same trip or joining the same package lives the same life.
Even different packages display very similar patterns and provide
similar activities: this is also reflected by the fact that different destinations are presented in more or less the same way in travel brochures, both in terms of design
2
and discourse.
All experiences in the tour are predictable and controlled.
When we
purchase the package, we are actually purchasing a good time, or a good experience, which is represented by a convincing itinerary.
Our time and experience in the trip is
systematically rationalized, as the itinerary is made up of series of events fitting into the precisely differentiated units of time.
Some people choose to travel with a group
package tour because of the advantages associated with such rationalization.
With
an integrated itinerary "promised", the group package tour gives them a sense of certainty, effectiveness and psychological safety - notwithstanding its limited flexibility.
Massification of the product also makes it less expensive.
These people
also consider such a tour economically simple, more convenient as they do not need to spend time on scheduling and arranging the travel details, and able to offer more things to see in a constrained vacation period.
There are a number of critical issues related to the cultural aspect of the group package tour.
Boorstin compares ancient traveling and mass tourism and
notes the differences between the two. The original art of travel lies on the motive to see the unfamiliar, in contrast to the predictable events given by the group package tour.
The ancient traveler sought adventures in a foreign country, while contact with
the natives tends to be minimized for a mass tourist.
3
Boorstin thus remarks that the
democratizing of travel and increased organization have "helped dilute the experience"3.
However, ancient traveling and modern tourism have to be evaluated
in respect of their individual cultural conditions.
The meaning of "travel" in group
package tour is also totally transformed: it is no longer a means to appreciate a new place but has become entertainment.
Such tours nowadays are commercially
promoted as entertainment events. The advertisements and television programme which promote a particular group package focus much more on the luxuriousness of hotels, deliciousness of food, and excitement of the entertainment programmes involved, rather than the scenery of the destination.
Since the kind of adventurous
traveling described by Boorstin and group package touring are activities of different nature, the experiences that they represent can hardly be compared with each other.
Although sociologists often regard modern tourism as a form of leisure, the idea of leisure is problematic in the context of group package tour. conventionally linked to freedom and opposed to work. time to use in freely chosen ways.
Leisure is
It is viewed as discretionary
As a leisure activity, tourism is essentially a
reversal of everyday activities; it provides relaxation and serves as an escape from work.
This is supported by Wang who says that "holiday-making is freedom from
the modernized mode of existence that is associated with rigid schedules, deadening
4
routines, and stressful deadlines"4. Such a point of view is totally contradictory for group package travelers. Once we join a group package tour, we are immediately committed to a rigid structure in which there is no exit. The series of events we are going to experience - where to go, what to see, what for the meals and what to buy follow the order of the deadened itinerary executed by the group leader and tour guide. The timing of any basic human activity - when to eat, when to play, when to take rest and even when to go to the washroom - is completely determined by the structure. In such a situation where everything is packaged and predetermined, any sense of freedom is lost. Our life in the group package tour is even "tougher" than work. The tour no longer represents a relaxed alternative to the everyday activities, but is another disciplined routine itself.
Therefore, traveling in a group package tour is not a leisure activity in its original sense. It becomes a form of de-centred leisure - a leisure activity in which the meaning of "leisure" is deconstructed and is no longer based on the firm association with freedom and opposition to work. From this perspective, the group package tour is an ambivalent mode of travel which displays subtle relationships with - instead of representing a strict reversal of - everyday life. Yet at the same time it is expected to exhibit some positive difference from everyday life so as to
5
justify the lots of money spent on pursuing such a leisure activity.
However, in the
tour, we seldom have the opportunity to see the wildlife and are rarely arranged to stay in rural parts of the destination where the environments show a contrast to those in our daily lives. There is a lack of surprise, not to say cultural shock.
Instead, the
tour lingers around those "environment bubbles" which consist of a more or less standard set of facilities like shopping malls, parks, hotels and leisure centres.
They
resemble our living environments; so when we do shopping there, we find that many commodities are actually available in our society, and the food and forms of amusement are also obtainable from our society.
In addition, even the group package tour includes sightseeing trips to those "unique" attractions and restored historical areas which seem to reveal some cultural characteristics, these sights are actually available in our society through the mass media.
Television, film, advertisement and magazine visually familiarize us
with the world's geography. see these things.
It appears that there is no need for us to travel afar to
Lash and Urry argue that the contemporary condition is represented
by "end of tourism", because "what is consumed in tourism are visual signs and this is what is consumed when we are supposedly not acting as tourists at all" .
Moreover,
through everyday experience with food, music, entertainment, etc., we are already
6
able to experience different cultures.
All these lead back to an original question:
why do we travel, and specifically, with the group package tour?
It is the difference of location that chiefly forms our motivation. Although we can experience different cultures in our daily lives, the profound sense of "placeness" that is represented by a particular culture cannot be experienced if we do not visit the place.
The idea of "be there" anticipates an experience to us that
approximates "the real".
Also, the images of places that we see in television,
magazine, etc. paradoxically do not fulfill our cultural desire since they are "unreal", but on the contrary arouse our curiosity towards experiencing those places "in real" for the loss of the real only leads to "a fascination with and desperate search for real people, real values"6.
It is "placeness" that is being sold in group package tour: the
unique name of the destination is highlighted at the expense of all other elements on the advertisement and travel brochure.
We purchase the package because we
imagine it contains the destination's "realities", in contrast to the images presented to us in our mundane everyday life.
In other words, the group package tour is imagined
to represent an enclave that separates "the real" from "the unreal".
In Understanding Leisure, Haywood [et al.] comments that the
7
de-centred leisure is paradigmatic of the postmodern7.
Although the group package
tour is viewed as a de-centred leisure activity, its relationship with postmodernism is a complex one.
The postmodern culture is viewed by Baudrillard as technological
determinism.
One argument of international tourism as a postmodern activity is its
close relationship with the issue of globalization, which is the result of time-space compression enhanced by advanced technology.
With the advent of international
communication and aviation technology, the tourism industry can make beneficial use of computerized booking system and rapid transportation.
Under such conditions,
people are able to travel to any parts of the world with ease and in short periods of time.
The group package tour is considered postmodern from this perspective
because it shares all the above features.
Nevertheless, there are two main features in the group package tour that typify the modernist.
The first one is massification, which operates at two levels:
massification of the package and massification of travelers. The same package is distributed to various travel agents; at the same time each tour is composed of travelers seen as a homogeneous mass. Not only the travelers of the tour, but all travelers who purchase the same package, are treated in the same manner. second modernist feature is rationality.
The
We have said that the group package tour is
8
operated through the itinerary which gathers disparate elements into a totality, and is rationalized as events fitting into the precisely differentiated units of time.
As a
result the tour is characterized by inflexibility, an insistence on structure and routine.
The presence of these two modernist features in the group package tour might caution some critics not to regard it as a postmodern product.
However, the
modernist and postmodern attributes of the tour do not necessarily contradict each other.
Postmodemity should not be seen as a total break from modernity, since such
a view would lead to periodization which postmodernism itself would reject.
Many
postmodern thinkers, including Baumen, Lyotard, Best and Kellner, consider postmodemity as a continuation of modernity8.
Discussing on tourism, Meethan
says in his Tourism in Global Society: Place, Culture, Consumption: "Rather than signifying a new conceptual break with the past, postmodemity may instead form part of a continuous modernist tradition."9
The postmodern is seen as the development of
modernist features to such an extent that it generates a radically new social condition - "genuine discontinuities and novelties from the modem world", using the phrase of Best and Kellner10.
The group package tour represents this paradigm:
developed from Thomas Cook's organized tours in the nineteenth century, it inevitably inherits some elements of earlier times, including massification.
9
Yet the
degree of massification is so extreme that it becomes a postmodern phenomenon - our travel experience becoming simulacra of experience.
The package is conceived to
be composed of a homogeneous system of signs, so that the logically perfect package is infinitely reproduced.
What we purchase from the package is the model of travel
that gives us simulated experience.
Therefore, the group package tour's relationships with postmodernism are subtle.
It is seen as a postmodern product that reveals a modernist tradition.
Apart from the elements of "de-centring" and "simulation", it also displays the following postmodern features common to contemporary tourism:
Consumerism: Tourism is a highly commodified activity. tour,
transportation
accommodation,
(both
entertainment
international programmes,
and
During the
local),
sights
of
hotel tourist
attractions, souvenirs and other "native" products are consumed. Images: Traveling is very much a visual practice.
Even before the
tour, we read images regarding the destination from the travel brochure and other forms of media.
During the tour, we do sightseeing; and
after the tour, we see the photos taken there.
10
Hyperreality: It can be argued that authenticity is a nonentity in contemporary tourism.
Tourist attractions are hyperreal artifacts, for
they are "contrived" attractions staged for touristic purposes which Boorstin calls "pseudo-events".
In spite of these, the group package tour seems to defy the postmodern celebration of individuality, which is expressed by a demand for choices and a refusal to be seen as a mass.
Wahab and Copper comment that the rigidly packaged tours
"are not in line with trends towards individual expression"".
In the tourism market,
the independent package tour has become well accepted, and the more flexible "tailor-made" tours are available.
There are the more "trendy" sustainable or eco
tours, and the combination of tourism and education gives rise to study tours and sport tours.
Moreover, Lash's and Urry's notion of "end of tourism" also implies the
taking over of "real" tourism by virtual tours, so that one can stay indoor to see foreign places.
All these seem to undermine the significance of the group package
tour, and one may even doubt - can it still be seen as postmodern?
In fact, the postmodern is not necessarily something in line with the latest trends.
Its prime significance rests on the radical sense of novelties
11
distinguished from modernity.
This is associated with features like consumerism,
simulation, hyperreality and globalization, which have been shown to be intrinsic to the group package tour.
Virtual tour may possess no less postmodern features than
group package tour, but can hardly replace the latter since it fails to provide exactly the same kind of experience as a "real" tour.
Facing the market's demand for more
choices, travel wholesalers are recently flexible enough to devise a wider variety of packages for a particular destination.
The group package tour still remains
significant in the tourism market, notwithstanding the appearance of new forms of tours.
It, among others, provides a particular kind of travel experience, represents a
particular preference type of travel (especially for those who enjoy interacting with other fellow tourists) and a particular leisure taste.
Its popularity has not declined,
for Ritzer and Lista remark that "many people appear to want vacations that are highly predictable, highly efficient, highly calculable, and highly controlled"12 which only the group package tour can satisfy.
Joining a group package tour is like entering a game.
In this game we
are subject to a double-confinement: both to the "group" and to the "package". We confine ourselves as ones belonging to the group.
We walk together, share the same
food in our meals, and view all attractions in everyone's presence.
12
Also, we bound
ourselves to the itinerary represented by the package.
During that period, we must
do what is prescribed for us and there is no exit until the end.
Such a kind of leisure
activity in a confined environment is reminiscent of the theme park, e.g., Disneyland. In either case, the events within the boundary persistently exhibit a fascination, providing enjoyments for the participants.
The context of a group package tour is also comparable to that of a traditional carnival, in which there are displays of exotic and strange commodities, and performances that stimulate desire and excitement.
Bakhtin has commented on
the dissolution of institutionalized inequality in traditional carnival, where the participants "were considered equal" and hence "free, familiar contacts were deeply felt and formed an essential element of the carnival spirit"13.
In the group package
tour, there is also a similar dissolution of class relationships among the travelers.
As
soon as we join in the trip, all are considered equal, regardless of social status, profession and age.
We gather as one joyous group; interpersonal contacts are
free and genuine, and adults can laugh like children.
The carnivalesque laughter is
in fact taken as an icon of the group package tour typically seen in television advertisement.
The contexts of the carnival and group package tour are similar,
except that the latter is constantly traveling, no matter on land, sea or air.
13
In this way,
the group package tour may be viewed as a "mobile carnival".
The unique space that the group package tour represents thus tends to provide the traveler with experience significantly differently from that as an independent tourist.
In the following three chapters, we shall analyze the traveler's
experience, as well as to examine how meanings are organized in time and space, in the specific context of the group package tour.
Viewing such a tour as a postmodern
product, our analysis will proceed in light of the ideas of some postmodern thinkers like Jean Baudrillard, Guy Debord and Fredric Jameson.
On the term "experience",
MacCannell speaks of it as "an original skepticism or an emptiness transformed into a specific belief or feeling through direct, firsthand involvement with some data"14.
In
our discussion, it is further meant to be the perceptual relationship between the traveler and events, defined in terms of time and space, regarding his trip.
Although
we have said that the traveler's experience in the group package tour is shaped by the itinerary - a structure signifying rationality and routinization which are features considered modernist, we shall show that it is exactly these features that facilitate an intensification of experiences which are regarded postmodern.
Lastly, our discussion will focus on the common type of group package
14
tour - the type of pleasure tour whose characteristics have been introduced in the beginning of this chapter - at the expense of other more "thematic" types available in the current market such as eco tours, study/sport tours, etc.. While group package tour is distributed internationally such that it has a more or less standard set of characteristics all over the world, the examples illustrated in our discussion will be those taken from Hong Kong, a typical postmodern society where the group package tour continues to be very popular.
15
CHAPTER 2 A Site of Consumption
The group package tour is the commodification of a standardized set of experience represented by a period of good time. evaluated in terms of their exchange value.
The experiences it gives are
When we purchase the package, what
are included are commodities not as goods but as a collection of services such as hotel and transportation services, meals, sightseeing and other touristic programmes. additional services of the group leader and tour guide are also commodified.
The Other
things we consume in the trip, which are not included in the package, are photography that registers our experiences, and the goods we buy such as souvenirs.
One of the characteristics that distinguishes a group package tour from other forms of tour is its radically intensive and rationalized consumption pattern. The following example shows the itinerary of a day in a five-day Malaysia package offered by the travel agent Hong Thai Citizens Travel Services, Ltd.:
16
Ex.1: (Malaysia) Kuala Lumpur National Monument National Museum
Sultan Palace
Handicraft Centre
Twin Tower
Lake Gardens Jame Mosque Local Product Shop
Genting Highlands
Casino
This itinerary includes only the major tourist spots and does not indicate the regular meals, the stopovers and, of course, the pass-by attractions that we gaze from the tour coach.
Yet it already implies several forms of consumption - the consumption of
sights in the visits of the Lake Gardens, National Monument, Sultan Palace and Jame Mosque; the consumption of heritage displays in the visit of the National Museum; and the consumption of entertainment in the Casino.
In a group package tour,
however, stopping at a scenic attraction necessarily implies a series of supplementary activities besides the chief consumption of sight, so that a regular pattern of multiple consumption is displayed.
When we visit Lake Gardens, for instance, there is also
an implication of buying a drink or some snacks and going to the washroom (we often need these after long-time travels in the coach tour), taking pictures and purchasing some souvenirs.
17
Economic activities are stimulated in the visit of Twin Tower, which is described in the travel brochure as a huge shopping mall with "an abundance of commercial products" hence "an ideal site for crazy shopping"; the Handicraft Centre promotes native artifacts including pewter products and batik textiles; and the Local Product Shop which sells other kinds of souvenirs.
The tour brings us to such
economically seductive places because the travel wholesaler and the tour guide can get commission for everything we buy there, and we buy those souvenirs because we imagine they are "native" products even though they are mass produced.
We are
actively encouraged to buy these goods, and sometimes the tour guide even serves as agent for certain products. Nevertheless, what we purchase in the destination are not always "native" products.
Even for something which is available in the market of
our society, we buy it because it was manufactured in the destination, hence is cheaper. Tourists in a group package tour tend to make more purchases since this is systematically facilitated.
The tour coach is arranged to stop regularly at factory
outlets and other souvenir shops which are contracted points with the tour, so that we are exposed to a wide variety of commercial goods.
Purchase of goods becomes a
routine as well as a highly intensive activity in the trip.
Moreover, as schedule is
tight, we are only allowed a limited period of time for purchasing at each shopping site.
Limitation of time would imply an experience of great speed in commodity
18
exchange.
Commodity exchange constitutes a very significant part of the traveler's experience.
Although the group package tour is an all-inclusive travel programme
so that we principally do not have to buy anything in the trip, we turn out to spend much on shopping with goods that we do not actually need. However, according to Baudrillard, "consumption is not founded upon the realm of needs but a lack"1. Based on a profound sense of lack, consumption is an endless process and the group package tour provides a condition in which our interminable desire for commodities is effectively aroused.
Brought to various places where exotic and novel goods are
exhibited, we think we are offered an appreciable range of consumptive choices which we regard as freedom.
Such pseudo-freedom represents an illusion of the
postmodern culture, for Baudrillard argues: "The consumer experiences his distinctive behaviours as freedom, as aspiration, as choice"2.
Even though our consumption
experience is prefabricated by the itinerary so that we are restricted to face these "choices", we still believe that the group package tour maximizes our opportunity for commodity exchange at the best sites. limits our abilities not to consume.
In fact, it is no choice at all, for the tour only
Very often, bearing in mind that we will hardly
visit the destination again in the near future, we consume just in order to avoid the
19
loss of such a chance.
In this case, our consumption is based on a "sense of loss" as
much as Baudrillard's notion of "sense of lack".
It is seen that once we are in the group package tour, consumption is forced upon us.
The systematized and intensive consumption pattern that we
experience attributes to the structure of the tour.
However, in Baudrillard's theory,
consumption in this context would not only refer materialistically to the souvenirs we buy, the food we eat, the entertainment we enjoy, the tourist attractions we view and the photos we take.
It is profoundly the manipulation of the signs embodied in all
those objects, sights and services, so as to establish social relationships3. their use value or exchange value, their sign value is as much emphasized.
Besides Traveling
is regarded as a social signifier as much as a form of recreation or personal experience. We travel because - on top of the reasons discussed in the last chapter - traveling is a marker of status and hence socially "a must".
Our adoption of a group package tour
implies a consumption preference and leisure taste that have a certain signification on our social position (usually considered not the richest ones who would have avoided mass tourism, but at least have some savings for travel, i.e., the middle-class).
The
particular countries we visit, the hotels we stay and the programmes included in our packages also come up with a system of social differences among our acquaintances
20
who have group package traveling experiences.
In the trip, photography and purchase of souvenirs are the means by which we commodify our own experiences.
Both photographs and souvenirs, on the
one hand, transform our experiences into objects of possession.
For Baudrillard,
such objects "together make up the system through which the subject strives to construct a world, a private totality"4.
The photos come up as a form of our
autobiography regarding the tour, and the souvenirs register our experiences into a symbolic totality.
On the other hand, both entities are social signifiers which serve
as tangible evidences of travel.
Photographs signify the completion of traveling over
the destination, while souvenirs can additionally serve as gifts or as displays that symbolize social status and personal taste. The significance of a souvenir lies on its sign value rather than its use value: we do not materialistically need it but only consider its symbolic property.
By purchasing a group package tour, our experiences are commodified by the package; and after the trip, our experiences as commodity are transferred to photos and souvenirs.
Owing to the tightly scheduled itinerary in which sights are
systematically presented, photography becomes a frequent and regular ritual during
21
the trip.
Also, unlike other kinds of tour which may involve just one or a few areas
of the destination country, the group package tour usually implies, at least symbolically, a travel over the whole country. expected to show -
more souvenirs.
We incline to purchase - and are
Our practice is to buy some souvenirs
whenever the tour takes us to a new area, so that after the trip the souvenirs would accumulate to represent the whole country - an attempt to construct a symbolic totality.
As the group package tour is a form of mass leisure, experiences of the travelers are commodified in the same way.
In other words, the tour treats us in the
same manner by making us consume the same things.
We are arranged to travel in
the same coach, stay at the same hotels, gaze at the same sights, enjoy the same programmes, and share the same food at the same table.
So although commodities
establish social differentiation, we are not differentiated in terms of class and status in the tour where what we consume are the same.
It does not mean that these
commodities have lost their sign value; rather, they signify social equality among the travelers, resulting in a sense of solidarity.
This contributes to explain the fact that
once we join the trip, we are considered equal: social status, profession and age become irrelevant, as mentioned in the last chapter.
22
It is this very sameness in consumption among the travelers that helps the formation of group identity "ducklings tour"".
that creates the image which people call
Once the sense of solidarity is established, we not only consume
the same commodities included in the package, but also do other things joyfully together.
We have drinks at the stopovers, taking pictures and holding cameras for
our tour-mates, and buying souvenirs at the same shops.
These consumption
activities become signs of intimacy, in which we are open to the influential of each other; for example, we follow the others in choosing backgrounds for taking pictures when arriving at a scenic spot, and we influence and are influenced by the others in selecting souvenirs in a local product shop.
In the group package tour, besides
enjoyment of the prescribed events per se, we also enjoy the intimate sharing with our tour-mates - even though this intimacy is mediated by consumption.
To summarize, the group package tour is a site of consumption.
It
represents a cycle of commodification of travel experiences: first as a commercial package and finally as a totality of photos and souvenirs.
By consuming the same
commodities among all travelers, social equality and a sense of solidarity are established in this "mobile carnival".
The radically intensive consumption activities,
which are systematically facilitated by the structure of the tour, provide us with a
23
postmodern experience.
Being brought to numerous economically seductive places
full of commercial products, we have the illusion of choices and freedom that overcomes the awareness of our actual role as passive consumers.
24
CHAPTER 3 Spectacles and Schizophrenic Experience
Sightseeing forms a significant part in a group package tour programme. It is essentially about images and gazing; Meethan comments that the tourist gaze "is conceptualized as being evidence of the shift from modernity to postmodernity"1. Before actually traveling in the tour, we usually have already consumed some images about the destination country and its attractions.
When we purchase the package, we
may have seen the photos in the advertisements or the promotional travel brochure, or even the promotional programme shown on television.
These images anticipate the
"realities" that we are to experience in the tour.
Our activities in the group package tour, including the sightseeing trips, follow the rather inflexible itinerary which is a time schedule under careful control by the tour guide.
Time needs to be rationalized this way because a "good time" is what
we are paying for: it is an important aspect in - as well as the value of- the group package tour.
The tour goes with the clock (there must be one in the tour coach);
whenever we stop at an attraction, the tour guide announces the exact duration we are
25
allowed to stay.
However, it is such rationalization of time that accounts for our
visual experience of the attractions being not very much different from our experience given by the mass media. gaze of every attraction.
The condensed itinerary implies time constraint in the
When we stop at a tourist spot, we are often allowed to stay
for only a very short period of time - fifteen minutes is considered a normal case. It is the regular practice to spend some time on purchasing at the kiosk and visiting the washroom, and the remaining time is just enough for taking a picture and holding cameras for other tour-mates.
In such a condition, the attraction can serve no more
than a surface background for photography.
Other tourist spots which less deserve a
stop are perceived as series of images during the fleeting movement of the tour coach. In this way, the tourist sights that we see in a group package tour appear as spectacles.
The following example shows the itinerary of the last day of a five-day Malaysia/Singapore package offered by another travel agent, China Travel Service (H.K.)Ltd.:
Ex. 2: (Malaysia) Malacca (Singapore)
Merlion
Sentosa Island
Johor Clarke Quay China Town 26
Johor Bahru National Monument (Hong Kong)
This is a typically tight schedule in a group package tour.
We depart from Malacca
after breakfast and arrive at Singapore for lunch, traveling across two states (Melaka and Johor) in about four hours' time.
As a result, most of the tourist attractions in
the Johor state and Johor Bahru city are viewed as fleeting images from the tour coach. We also have to go through several tourist spots before taking the return flight back to Hong Kong in the evening.
China Town is recommended for extensive shopping,
while Sentosa Island is an extended resort which also offers sights of thousands of living creatures at Butterfly Park, and Coralarium and Nature Ramble; elegant gardens at Orchid Fantasy; and rituals and performances at The Asian Village, and Village Theatre.
Thus very little time is left for the remaining attractions.
The
Merlion, Clarke Quay and National Monument, like other tourist attractions, appear before us as spectacles.
We can only perceive them as such and there is no time for
any deeper apprehension.
What we do is to take a photo and depart without
performing any form of cerebral activity.
Although it is argued that tourist attractions have their own logic and display a profound relationship with the social structure of the place2, they can only be perceived as series of isolated images in the group package tour.
During the tour,
we seem to have transformed the spectacles of the advertising media to personal
27
experiences, and then we transform these experiences back to spectacles as represented by the photos that we take.
But paradoxically these "personal
experiences" are no more than another set of spectacles themselves.
The tourist
attractions, of course, are not the same as the reproductive images of the mass media in physical terms; however, they have the same function as spectacles in two aspects. Firstly, influenced by our prior spectacular experience from the advertising media, we do not expect the tourist attractions appear much differently, but are contented to see that these attractions "in real" confirm what we previously saw in the media.
Even
the contextual details presented by the tour guide when arriving at an attraction do not give us as much satisfaction as we see it per se, fitting into the very image presented by the media.
In the group package tour, an attraction appears self-sufficient since
any discursive information about it is not of prime importance to us.
It becomes a
spectacle, for Debord asserts in his Comments on the Society of the Spectacles, "[A spectacle] isolates all it shows from its context, its past, its intentions and its consequences."3
Moreover, one major argument of the spectacle is its emphasis on quantity and banality4, rather than quality and depth. attractions covered in a group package tour.
28
This is relevant for the
The commercial value of the tour
depends on the number of sightseeing trips included: the more attractions it covers, the more popular it becomes.
But the availability of more attractions obviously
means less time for any individual viewing.
As a result, the tourist attractions are
reduced to an abundance of images which deprives the viewers of any opportunity for reflection.
Reflection is impossible since this would need time which has already
dissolved in the series of spectacles. these attractions.
This implies a total passivity in the gazing of
They become a flow of images that forces upon us, and is "entirely
independent of what [we] might understand or think of it", as Debord has said5.
In
this way, direct experience in sightseeing trips is replaced by passive viewing of spectacles so that freedom is equated with freedom in consumption of a plurality of images.
Yet it is this very sense of plurality in the group package tour that makes us
consider it substantial, offering a quantitatively rich life.
Our experience in sightseeing becomes a plain collection of images. The flow of images is so intense that any temporal sense is undermined, for Baudrillard argues: "The organization of the collection itself replaces time."6 Therefore, in order to successfully accomplish the tightly scheduled itinerary, tourist attractions are made to appear before us as spectacles which proliferate in a timeless space.
Rationalization of time in the group package tour paradoxically results in
29
dissolution of time in our experience.
Time is carefully manipulated by the tour
operator, yet we are given an experience in which it is irrelevant.
The consumption of a plurality of images is typically our visual practice when we go to shopping malls or souvenir shops.
Commercial goods, which are
densely displayed there, are being gazed at simultaneously as groups instead of one by one, especially under the pressure of time constraint in the group package tour.
They
become series of multiplying images that can hardly be resisted, yet we embrace such passively intensive consumption. brings us to a museum.
This also applies to the situation when the tour
The cultural artifacts there appear as series of spectacles,
proliferating before us as we proceed our way.
We are not allowed the time for
examining the description attached to each of the artifacts, so that they are perceived as plain images isolated from any discursive context.
Thus, what we achieve from
the visit to a museum is intensive sensational experience rather than cultural appreciation, since the artifacts are seen to have dis-appeared from themselves.
In the group package tour, what we are offered to see - whether they are tourist attractions during our excursions, commodities in shopping centres or local product shops, artifacts in cultural villages or museums - are eclectic displays of
30
spectacles.
Different series of images come upon us at different moments; each of
them are so condensed that it preoccupies us with an absolute proximity.
In other
words, our experience with these spectacles is schizophrenic in nature.
Jameson
considers schizophrenia as a failure of unifying the past, present, and future of the psychic life, hence reducing biographical experiences to a series of unrelated presents in time that come before the subject with heightened intensity.7
As we have said,
since the abundance of images that appear to us do not have a temporal aspect, we experience them as series of perpetual "present".
What we experience becomes
intensities and is represented by an absolute instantaneousness.
The images are
decontextualized since they exist by themselves, and ahistorical since they are forever novel.
Therefore, the group package tour represents a temporally illogical experience.
It is schizophrenic for it displays no historical coherence and
emphasizes solely on the present. the tour is a multilevel one.
In fact, the schizophrenia that we experience in It is analytically divided into three levels: (1)
schizophrenia of event (as a single event in the daily itinerary); (2) schizophrenia of daily itinerary (as composed of a series of events); and (3) schizophrenia of the tour (as composed of a sequence of daily itineraries).
31
Firstly, an event can be a stop at an
attraction, sightseeing through the window in the tour coach, shopping in a mall, a visit to a museum, etc., in which the schizophrenic nature of our visual experience has been discussed.
Refer to Ex.2, the shopping experience in China Town is also
typically schizophrenic.
Looking at the abundance of shops and malls as spectacles
in the area already implies a schizophrenic experience.
Within two or so hours of
time, the shopping experience is very intensive; visit to any single shop tends to be short.
In a foreign place, we usually go to different shops and malls in an absolutely
eclectic pattern, and these visits are unrelated to each other.
All minutiae of the
shopping experience represent instant enjoyments of their own.
Secondly, rather than a coherent programme in terms of feature, the itinerary of any day represents a series of eclectic events. The numerous touristic events and sightseeing trips, which come to us in an eclectic manner, tend to be isolated from each other.
Again refer to Ex.2, the trip to Sentosa Island which is a
resort, is followed by urban shopping in China Town while preceded by a visit to the National Monument which is a historical attraction - are different types of activities in terms of feature. we will do.
What we are doing do not relate to what we have done or what
Since the past, present and future cannot be unified, there tends to be a
perpetual oblivion about what we have done or seen before.
32
Yet each event comes to
us with an immediate sense of maximum intensity.
The sequence of events are
characterized by their individual vividness, rather than logical coherence.
Thirdly, the general itinerary of the whole tour displays a comparable schizophrenic pattern.
The following example shows the outline of all five days of
the Malaysia/Singapore package used for illustration in Ex. 2:
Ex.3: Day 1: Hong Kong
Kuala Lumpur (Selangor state)
Day 2: Kuala Lumpur Day 3: Genting Highland Day 4: Port Dickson
Genting Highland (border of Pahang state) Port Dickson (Sembilan state) Malacca (Melaka state)
Day 5: Malacca — Johor Bahru (Johor state)
Singapore
Hong Kong
In this five-day/four-night tour, we come and go rapidly to different places. Everyday we travel to a different state and stay in a different hotel.
The main-theme
activity intended for each location is also different: Kuala Lumpur for sightseeing and shopping; Genting Highland for its casino; Port Dickson a resort; and Malacca for its historical attractions.
Each of them is aimed at providing an individual type of
intensive enjoyment, hence the daily itineraries are isolated from each other. 33
The group package tour is a site of profound schizophrenic experience. It is a multilevel experience of incoherence and ahistoricity, an experience which emphasizes on the present.
When we are on the trip, we forget about the past, and
we care nothing about the future; for it is always the present that gives us the strongest sense of intensity.
The operation is therefore twofold: the tour represents an
experience of schizophrenia, yet at the same time a schizophrenic consciousness is necessary to enjoy the trip.
This argument would further justify the postmodern
character of the group package tour, for MacCannell says: "The postmodern belongs to persons who are immune to incoherence, who can accept, even enjoy, discontinuity and schizophrenia at the level of culture."8
To summarize, the rationalization of time in the group package tour results in a trip full of spectacular experiences.
Since spectacles deny temporality,
all temporal sense is lost in our experiences.
Besides our consumption of the
infinitely proliferating images in shopping malls and museums, the tourist attractions also appear before us as series of spectacles.
Although our consumption of these
spectacles is totally passive, their abundance makes us feel substantial for they mean everything to us.
Related to the issue of spectacles is the schizophrenic character of
the group package tour itself - which in fact represents a multilevel schizophrenic
34
experience. While there is a loss of historical continuity, every moment tends to give us an immediate sense of heightened intensity.
35
CHAPTER 4 Cultural Encounters and Hyperrealitv
The cultural encounters in the group package tour represent a unique experience of traveling in the context of globalization.
Tourism is a global business,
dealing with the ways in which places are incorporated into the global capitalist system.
Several elements of the tourism industry, including hotel, transportation and
food, are involved in the globalized economy, operated by multinational corporations. So even if we join different group package tours and go to different countries, it would not be unusual that we stay in hotels of the same corporations, such as Hilton, Hyatt, Shangri-la, etc., or travel in flights of the same airlines, like Cathay Pacific, Singapore Airlines and British Airways.
Not only are we involved in these multinational service providers, the place themselves that we visit are globalized in a particular way. view of the world is represented by a hierarchy of global cities.
36
The postmodern
Most group package
tours put their concentrations on global cities of the "higher-rank" in which tourism is more sophisticatedly developed.
This is because the inclusion of places that are
popular enough to attract mass travelers regularly is an important factor in the group package holiday industry.
A package to New Zealand spends a significant portion of
time on Auckland and Christchurch, package to Taiwan on Taipei and Kaosiung, package to England on London and Manchester, so on and so forth.
Traveling in
these global cities, we somehow find ourselves in an environment which is not much different from our own society: the hotels that we stay provide us with familiar living environment and leisure activities, and we can see similar shopping malls selling similar commodities - the kind of "environment bubbles" that have been discussed in Chapter 1. Such an environment, however, guarantees comfort and convenience since we are accustomed to it.
In this way, the scope of places is standardized and the travel pattern represents a routine in group package tours.
We travel through a series of
standardized places in a compact manner facilitated by rapid transportation.
The
following example shows the itinerary outline of a nine-day package to Europe taken from a travel brochure of the Morning Star Travel Service Ltd.:
37
Ex. 4: Day
Route
Day 1:
Hong Kong
Amsterdam
(air/light)
Day 2:
Amsterdam
Rome
(airflight)
Day 3:
Rome
Day 4:
Florence
Day 5:
Milan
Bonn
(tour coach)
Day 6:
Bonn
Paris
(tour coach)
Day 7:
Paris
Day 8:
Paris
London
(Europe Star rail)
Day 9:
London
Transportation
Florence
(tour coach)
Milan
(tour coach)
Hong Kong
(airflight)
In this wide-covered trip that goes through five countries facilitated by different sorts of transportation vehicles but is "compressed" in an only nine-day period, most stops are those major global cities of Europe.
Although we travel over five countries, we
experience to a certain extent a kind of spatial and cultural homogeneity throughout the trip due to the mutual similarities of global cities.
By what we live, eat and see,
we encounter in some way the same commercialized global culture.
However, the reason why we go to a particular destination is because of its uniqueness.
The impact of global culture on the tourism industry paradoxically
means a destination would require more features to set it off from others so as to be
38
attractive on its own, as Harvey argues: "The less important the spatial barriers, the greater the sensitivity of capital to the variations of place within space"1.
More
attractions are made to contribute to the distinctiveness of a destination and the inclusion of which becomes a selling point for a group package tour.
The travel
wholesaler of the package in Ex. 4 strives to highlight the spatial and cultural distinctiveness of each country.
Visit to any site stated in the travel brochure is
justifiable in these terms; for example, the tour will bring us to places that deserve attention like Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence because it is credited as the world's third largest cathedral, and Colosseum in Rome as it is claimed to be the world's greatest amphitheatre; River Thames of London and Eiffel Tower of Paris which are icons of the countries; and Windmill Village in a suburb of Amsterdam which signifies cultural uniqueness.
In a destination, the spatial and cultural distinctiveness is highlighted in a conscious manner and exoticism is artificially stereotyped.
It is in this condition that
the play between the authentic and inauthentic takes place.
Some attractions in
themselves may not originally be appealing to us and are deliberately decorated with exotic elements, so that they appear "more authentic" to our eyes.
In other words,
they are constructed according to the "universal" concept of the "exotic".
39
Hence we
are in a situation where the real is the already-reproduced, and the authentic is always contrived.
The group package tour covers many contrived events because of their
overt attractiveness, especially against the background of cultural homogeneity in the global cities on which the tour focuses.
Since the authentic is inseparable from the
inauthentic, tourist attractions are hyperreal artifacts.
They lack a reference to the
real since the real is a reproduction itself. The reality of tourist spots like Windmill Village in Amsterdam must be reconstructed so as to appear "pretty as a picture". Cathedrals like Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence must be made clean and safe. They are reproduced in a certain way in order to become attractions.
They are
hyperreal because they appear to be perfect, giving us the optimum sensational pleasure.
These attractions thus manifest what Debord says: "What is false creates
taste, and reinforces itself by knowingly eliminating any possible reference to the authentic; and what is genuine is reconstructed as quickly as possible, to resemble the false."2
As group package travelers, we consume an intensive series of hyperreal images and events.
However, we do not tend to critically examine the question of
authenticity in the trip.
The first reason is that the hyperreality that we encounter
takes the form of spectacles. As we have said, the attractions come and go so rapidly
40
during our tightly scheduled trip hence what we perceive is a proliferation of spectacles.
These spectacles appear as spatial intensities so that there is no time for
us to reflect on their authenticity.
Secondly, activities in group package tour like
visiting a cultural village and going to a folklore show are not represented as culturally authentic events.
They serve as amusement programmes whose
entertainment value is emphasized.
Once an event is experienced as entertainment,
the issue of authenticity becomes irrelevant.
The following example is the
description of the "Maori Dance and Hangi" in a New Zealand package included in the promotional brochure of Charming Holidays Ltd.:
Ex. 5: "You will be able to enjoy the genuine Maori feast as dinner which is specially arranged in the hotel. There the impressive Maori folk singing and dancing performances will be staged, and you can also join in the dance with the Maori performers. " (my translation)
With the event being artificially staged in such a luxurious environment, we see that even the travel wholesaler does not pretend to provide us with an authentic experience. While the event takes the theme of a cultural performance, it functions as an 41
entertainment programme which goes along with splendid meal and in which we can amuse ourselves by "joining in the dance" with the performers.
In this carnivalesque
atmosphere, we are of little interest in the issue of authenticity of the performance.
Thirdly and most importantly, although we have said that we desire to experience the "realities" of the destination in the group package tour, what we strive to seek are the symbols of authenticity rather than authenticity itself.
We expect to
perceive the stereotyped authenticity or exoticism that is represented by the travel brochures, magazines, advertisements and other forms of mass media.
We
experience these symbols of authenticity in the destination as "realities", where everything appears on the surface and there is no need for critical examination.
In
the group package tour, we embrace hyperreality since it is reality to us, and possessing immense entertainment value.
The reality of a destination is a
commercially constructed one which prompts both our consumption and conviction. Such a practice of social make-believe is exactly referred to what Baudrillard calls the "postmodern situation"3.
As postmodern travelers, we are happy - yet passive -
to consume what appear before us regardless of the question of authenticity, since they are so entertaining and intense.
While we view the group package tour as
entertainment, we have already put ourselves in the passive condition of "being entertained". 42
The group package tour standardizes the scope of places and promotes routine traveling over sequences of global cities, at the same time it represents a condensed form of entertaining experience full of encounters with invented exoticism and hyperreal objects and events.
On the one hand, what we encounter in the
destination tends to be artificial, for we are playing with symbols of authenticity which are only the transformed signs of the place.
Place is then viewed as a
concept - a concept that embodies these transformed signs which does not refer to the genuine cultural specificity.
On the other hand, the contrived authenticity can be
argued as part of the place's culture.
It can be seen as contributing in a specific way
to the localization of the place, and represents a kind of local distinctiveness that has a subtle significance in the context of globalization.
In other words, there is an
interplay between globalization and localization: both kinds of cultures crisscross in our travel space.
Moreover, the group package tour provides a context which further complicates the space in which we are traveling.
Although we are located in a
foreign place of arrival, we are spending much of the time with our group of tour-mates who are from the same place of departure. this flock sharing the same cultural practice.
43
We eat, walk and amuse with
While in the place of arrival we are
perceiving another social environment, we are surrounded by people who speak the same native language, and eat together at one table sharing the same food. actually living with our native community in a foreign place.
We are
In the tour, we exist in
a form of transnational social space, which is described by Beck as "social contexts of life and action to which Here-and-There or Both-And applies"4.
We can be seen as
creating a third culture in this transnational social space, which is a hybrid mixture of the foreign place's culture, the global culture, and the culture represented by our tour as a community.
What is considered significant about this third culture is its
constant mobility, since we are continuously traveling.
It is always temporary, and
cultural interaction changes whenever we arrive at a different place.
In addition, there is always an undeterminability of culture in the place of arrival, resulting in our cultural encounters even more subtle.
The tour guide,
usually a Chinese instead of a native of the place, does his best in explaining the cultural life there.
However, what we are told only represents a monologic narrative
of his, and the points of view vary according to how long he has lived in the place, the socio-political status of his nationality there, etc.. have our meals in Chinese restaurants.
In many cases we are arranged to
This seems to fit our food culture, but
nevertheless the cooking style is according to "their" culture.
44
Such a kind of
glocalizing practice is experienced everywhere.
When we buy souvenirs which are
imagined as "native products", it is not surprising that we subsequently discover they are actually imported - say, from China.
In a group package tour, there exists an
ambivalence between placedness and placelessness. distinct place, that distinctness is absent.
As soon as we think we are in a
So when we arrive at a destination, instead
of expecting how local it is, we expect how glocal it is.
To summarize, the group package holiday industry standardizes the scope of places so that tours are routine travels over sequences of global cities. While we are to a certain extent subjected to a cultural homogeneity in these global cities, we have infinite encounters with stereotyped exoticism which signifies cultural distinctiveness of each place. hyperreal events.
The trip is constituted by an intensive series of
We embrace hyperreality because it is the source of entertainment.
The experience in the group package tour is also represented by a dynamic process of cultural exchange.
During the trip, we are creating a mobile culture signified by the
subtle cultural interactions within the transnational social space.
45
CHAPTER 5 Conclusion; The Group Package Tour and Everyday Life
Our discussion has illustrated that the group package tour represents a mosaic of intensified experiences which are regarded postmodern.
The tour is
operated significantly through the application of rationality - a feature that is arguably modernist - which also implies an insistence on structure and routine.
It is indeed
these characteristics that enhance the intensification of the traveler's experiences. The itinerary of the tour shapes consumption activities which are highly compact, as well as systematically facilitates commodity exchange at great speed.
It also gives
rise to a multilevel schizophrenic experience, in which each event comes to the traveler with an immediate sense of maximum intensity.
Rationalization of time in
the tour results in a radically spectacular experience, represented by a vision of proliferating images in a paradoxically timeless space.
Moreover, there are infinite
encounters with hyperreal objects and events, due to the routinization of traveling pattern involving global cities.
Such postmodern experiences are enhanced by the
subtle regulation of time and space of the tour.
46
The compact consumption activities, multilevel schizophrenia, infinite flow of spectacles and series of entertaining hyperreal events, all contribute towards the intensiveness of the traveler's experience in the group package tour.
This serves
as a counter-argument to Boorstin's view that the mass tourist's experience is a diluted one.
Wang also comments that a group package tour "limits advances in
cross-cultural understanding"1.
In fact, we have shown that such a tour represents a
dynamic process of cultural exchange.
Through the creation of a third culture that
travels in a kind of transnational social space, there are subtle cultural interactions during the trip.
Life in the group package tour is to a certain extent similar to our everyday experiences, so that the tour can be seen as a microcosm of our society. Like the rigid routines of the tour, our everyday lives are equally framed by various structures.
We are equally surrounded by commodities and spectacles, and
hyperreality is a prominent element that shapes our world.
Our daily experiences are
fragmentary, as schizophrenia is identified with the cultural condition of our times; our lives represent a mixture of different cultures, as portrayed by Beck's notion of "globalization of biography"2.
Postmodernism effaces the boundary between art and
life, and promotes the aestheticization of everyday life.
47
According to Featherstone,
the aesthetic life is assumed to be the "ethically good life" in contemporary society3, where we aestheticize ourselves with objects and images.
However, the problem is,
even though we fill up our lives with commercial goods and spectacles, we still feel lonely because they are alienating.
We still feel bored because they have become
ordinary: everyday life is boredom to us.
In the first chapter, we have argued that the desire for experiencing the "realities" in a foreign place forms our prime motivation to travel, and we buy a group tour package since we imagine it contains the place's "realities" as distinguished from the spectacles presented by the mass media.
When we are in the tour, what
constitute our perception of the place are, however, "symbols of realities". We indulge in the play of signs, and place is perceived as yet another set of spectacles. Although in the tour we encounter things similar to those in everyday life, the difference between them lies, in fact, on the intensity of experience.
In the trip, we
are brought to places full of commercial goods and get impressed by the choices given to us; images are infinitely proliferating before us and every moment gives us the strongest sense of intensity; there are series of hyperreal events which we find immensely entertaining. aestheticized.
We enjoy the tour because our lives there are richly
We think this is good life since it is quantitatively rich, providing us
48
with an abundance of experience.
The group package tour is not meant to offer
novelty and adventures in a foreign place, but rather to intensify our everyday experiences.
Traveling in this way becomes a highly symbolic activity.
When we
are in the trip, what lifts us from the boredom of everyday life is paradoxically the intensification of everyday life.
It is such a difference in intensity of experience that
constitutes the sense of leisure in the group package tour.
While society is imposed upon us in everyday life, events are imposed upon us in the group package tour.
In both cases we are equally passive, and are
victims under the social make-believe condition.
We experience choices in the
consumption of goods and spectacles as freedom, hyperreal objects and events as reality.
In our society, we open our lives to be shaped aesthetically, and in the tour,
we open our selves to the experiencing of those objects and events.
It appears that
all experiences are in the objects and events themselves so that subjective experience is no longer available.
Traveling in the group package tour does not seem to
represent a way out, and we tend to be doomed to live a passive life subjected to the quantitative principle.
But there is something more in the group package tour.
49
Besides the
consumption of goods and spectacles that quantitatively enriches our trip, we have discussed that there is also enjoyable intimate sharing among our group of tour-mates. Even though such solidarity is mediated by consumption of objects and events in the tour, we are indeed qualitatively enriched by the intensive social and emotional interactions.
Considered socially equal within the trip, we travel together in the
same coach, eat together at the same table, amuse ourselves with the same events, and exchange our ideas on whatever we encounter.
Certainly this valuable friendship
can continue to enrich our lives even after the tour.
While the group package tour
provides us with intensive experience of passive consumption of spectacles and hyperreal events, what should be treasured more is human intimacy - or friendship because it is perhaps the only genuine thing within and beyond the tour that can never become a spectacle.
50
NOTES
Chapter 1
(1)
The Grand Tour is a period of European travel lasting from a few months to a few years for noblemen of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to complete their education.
For details, please see Hudman, Lloyd E.: Tourism: A Shrinking World,
New York: Wiley, 1980, pp.6-7.
(2)
See Gregory, A.: The Travel Agent: Dealer in Dreams, New Jersey, 1993, p.4. The travel wholesaler and the travel agent are referred to the supplier and retailer, respectively, of the tourism industry.
(3)
Boorstin, Daniel J.: The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-events in America, New York: Vintage Books, 1992, p. 109.
(4)
Wang, Ning: Tourism and Modernity: A Sociological Analysis, Amsterdam and New York: Pergamon, 2000, p. 112.
(5)
Lash, Scott and John Urry: Economies of Signs and Space, London: Sage, 1994, p.272.
(6)
Featherstone, Mike: Consumer Culture and Postmodernism, London: Sage Publications, 1991, p.85.
(7)
Refer to Haywood, Les... [et al.]: Understanding Leisure, Cheltenham: Stanley Thornes, 1995.
"For the postmodernists, leisure is no longer a fixed entity,
characterized by freedom or control but is fragmented, dedifferentiated and de-centred." (p.258)
(8)
Refer to Bertens, Hans: The Idea of the Postmodern: A History, London: Routledge, 1995.
The author states that according to Bauman, "postmodernity may be
interpreted as fully developed modernity taking a full measure of the anticipated consequences of its historical work" (p.230).
See Rojek, Chris: Decentring
Leisure: Rethinking Leisure Theory, London: Sage Publications, 1995. The author
51
says: "Postmodernism, [Lyotard] contends, operates to expose the West's 'modern neurosis' - its schizophrenia, paranoia and so on, the source of the misfortunes we have known for two centuries." (p. 134) Also refer to Best, Steven and Douglas Kellner: The Postmodern Turn, New York: The Guilford Press, 1997, in which the authors argue that "often what is described as 'postmodern' is an intensification of the modern" (p.31).
(9)
Meethan, Kevin: Tourism in Global Society: Place, Culture, Consumption, Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001, p.33.
(10) Best, Steven and Douglas Kellner: The Postmodern Turn, New York: The Guilford Press, 1997, pp.26&31.
(11) Wahab, Salah and Chris Cooper (eds.): Tourism in the Age of Globalisation, London: Routledge, 2001, p.83.
(12) Quoted in Meethan, Kevin: Tourism in Global Society: Place, Culture, Consumption, Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001, p.75.
(13) Bakhtin, Mikhail: Rabelais and His World, Helene Iswolsky (tran.), Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984, p. 10.
(14) MacCannell, Dean: The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999, p.23.
Chapter 2
(1)
Baudrillard, Jean: The System of Objects, James Benedict (tran.), London and New York: Verso, 1996, p.204.
(2)
Baudrillard, Jean: The Consumer Society: Myths and Structures, London: Sage Publications, 1998, p.61.
(3)
See Baudrillard, Jean: The System of Objects, James Benedict (tran.), London and New York: Verso, 1996.
The author argues that consumption is "neither a material
52
practice, nor a phenomenology of 'affluence'" (p.21) and that it is "a systematic act of the manipulation of signs" (p.22).
(4)
Ibid, p.86.
(5)
This is the literal translation of a Hong Kong colloquial phrase which refers to the group package tour.
Chapter 3
(1)
Meethan, Kevin: Tourism in Global Society: Place, Culture, Consumption, Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001, p.83.
(2)
Refer to MacCannell, Dean: The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class, Berkeley, 1999.
The author argues that "tourist attractions are not merely a
collection of random material representations.
When they appear in itineraries,
they have a moral claim on the tourist and, at the same time, they tend toward universality, incorporating natural, social, historical and cultural domains in a single representation made possible by the tour." (p.45). Later he adds that "tourist attractions in their natural, unanalyzed state may not appear to have any coherent infrastructure uniting them." (p.56)
(3)
Debord, Guy: Comments on the Society of the Spectacle, Malcolm Imrie (tran.), London and New York: Verso, 1998, p.28.
(4)
See Jappe, Anselm: Guy Debord, Donald Nicholson-Smith (tran.), Berkeley, 1999. "The spectacle can never offer a qualitatively rich life, for its very foundation is quantity and banality." (p.29)
(5)
Debord, Guy: Comments on the Society of the Spectacle, Malcolm Imrie (tran.), London and New York: Verso, 1998, p.28.
(6)
Baudrillard, Jean: The System of Objects, James Benedict (tran.), London and New York: Verso, 1996, p.95.
(7)
Jameson, Fredric: Postmodernism; or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism,
53
London and New York, 1999, pp.26-7.
(8)
MacCannell, Dean: Empty Meeting Grounds: The Tourist Papers, London: Routledge, 1992, p.220.
Chapter 4
(1)
Harvey, David: The Condition of Postmodemity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change, Oxford: Blackwell, 1989, p.296.
(2)
Debord, Guy: Comments on the Society of the Spectacle, Malcolm Imrie (tran.), London and New York: Verso, 1998, p.50.
(3)
Compare this with the discussion in G. Loewellyn Watson and Joseph P. Kopachevsky: "Interpretation of Tourism as Commodity" in Apostolopoulos, Yiorgos, Stella Leivadi and Andrew Yiannakis (eds): The Sociology of Tourism, London: Routledge, 1996. The authors relate "the element of social make-believe in what Baudrillard calls the 'postmodern situation'" to "the traditionally strong cultural obligation to purchase and possess ostensibly fake commodities" (p.291).
(4)
Beck, Ulrich: What is Globalization?, Patrick Camiller (tran.), Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000, p.28.
Chapter 5
(1)
Wang, Ning: Tourism and Modernity: A Sociological Analysis, Amsterdam and New York: Pergamon, 2000, p. 150.
(2)
See Beck, Ulrich: What is Globalization?, Patrick Camiller (tran.), Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000. "Globalization of biography means that the world's oppositions occur not only out there but also in the center of people's lives." (p.73)
(3)
Featherstone, Mike: Consumer Culture and Postmodernism, London: Sage Publications, 1991, p. 126. 54
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Abbas, Ackbar (ed.): The Provocation of Jean Baudrillard, Hong Kong: Twilight Books Co., 1990. Apostolopoulos, Yiorgos, Stella Leivadi and Andrew Yiannakis (eds): The Sociology of Tourism, London: Routledge, 1996. Bakhtin, Mikhail: Rabelais and His World, Helene Iswolsky (tran.), Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984. Baudrillard, Jean: The Consumer Society: Myths and Structures, London: Sage Publications, 1998. The System of Objects, James Benedict (tran.), London and New York: Verso, 1996. Beck, Ulrich: What is Globalization?, Patrick Camiller (tran.), Cambridge: Polity Press, 2000. Bertens, Hans: The Idea of the Postmodern: A History, London: Routledge, 1995. Best, Steven and Douglas Kellner: The Postmodern Turn, New York: The Guilford Press, 1997. Boniface, Brian G. and Chris Cooper: Worldwide Destinations: The Geography of Travel and Tourism, Oxford and Boston: Butterworth-Heinemann, 2001. Boorstin, Daniel J.: The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-events in America, New York: Vintage Books, 1992. Cohen, Erik: "Toward a Sociology of International Tourism" in Social Research, Vol.39, No.l (1972), pp. 164-83. Cohen, Robin and Paul Kennedy: Global Sociology, New York: New York University Press, 2000. 55
Debord, Guy: Comments on the Society of the Spectacle, Malcolm Imrie (tran.), London and New York: Verso, 1998. The Society of the Spectacles, Donald Nicholson-Smith (tran.), New York: Zone Books, 1995. Featherstone, Mike: Consumer Culture and Postmodernism, London: Sage Publications, 1991. Gottdiener, M.: Postmodern Semiotics: Material Culture and the Forms of Postmodern Life, Oxford: Blackwell, 1995. Gregory, Aryear: The Travel Agent: Dealer in Dreams, New Jersey: Regents/ Prentice Hall, 1993. Harvey, David: The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change, Oxford: Blackwell, 1989. Haywood, Les... [et al.]: Understanding Leisure, Cheltenham: Stanley Thornes, 1995. Hudman, Lloyd E.: Tourism: A Shrinking World, New York: Wiley, 1980. Jameson, Fredric: Postmodernism; or, The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism, London and New York: Verso, 1999. Jappe, Anselm: Guy Debord, Donald Nicholson-Smith (tran.), Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. Johnson, Peter and Barry Thomas (eds.): Choice and Demand in Tourism, London: Mansell, 1992. Kellner, Douglas (ed.): Baudrillard: A Critical Reader, Oxford: Blackwell, 1994. Jean Baudrillard: From Marxism to Postmodernism and Beyond, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989. Lash, Scott and John Urry: Economies of Signs and Space, London: Sage, 1994.
56
Lockwood, A. and S. Medlik (eds.): Tourism and Hospitality in the 21st Century, Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann, 2001. MacCannell, Dean: Empty Meeting Grounds: The Tourist Papers, London: Routledge, 1992. The Tourist: A New Theory of the Leisure Class, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. Meethan, Kevin: Tourism in Global Society: Place, Culture, Consumption, Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001. Pizam, Abraham and Yoel Mansfeld (eds.): Consumer Behavior in Travel and Tourism, New York: Haworth Hospitality Press, 1999. Ringer, Greg (ed.): Destinations: Cultural Landscapes of Tourism, London and New York: Routledge, 1998. Roberts, K.: Leisure in Contemporary Society, Wallingford and New York: Cabi Pub., 1999. Rojek, Chris: Decentring Leisure: Rethinking Leisure Theory, London: Sage Publications, 1995. Ryan, Chris: Recreational Tourism: A Social Science Perspective, London: Routledge, 1991. Theobald, William F. (ed.): Global Tourism, Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann, 1998. Urry, John: Consuming Places, London: Routledge, 1995. The Tourist Gaze: Leisure and Travel in Contemporary Societies, London: Sage Publications, 1990. Wahab, Salah and Chris Cooper (eds.): Tourism in the Age of Globalisation, London: Routledge, 2001. Wang, Ning: Tourism and Modernity: A Sociological Analysis, Amsterdam and New York: Pergamon, 2000. 57
