Are we there yet? How would we know?

Travellers set out to discover new worlds and the decision to travel is not one taken lightly. Travel is fun and engaging but it is also arduous and expensive. In a real sense, the act of travelling, in itself, is not pleasurable. At the end of it, the bleary-eyed, jet-lagged visitor arrives at this new vista full of expectation and desire for new and fulfilling experiences. When the traveller does arrive, what do they find? Is it what they expected? What is different and why?

The answers to the questions about 'truth in travel' are big and complex, ultimately there is no simple answer.

Tourism products are not airplane seats, hotel room occupancy rates or restaurant meals. These things are the things being sold or measured — tourism products are the experiences being delivered. We can measure things like numbers of positive experiences but the experience itself is very personal and more difficult to quantify.

A big component of the delivery of experiences, if not the biggest, is the interaction with the people that are in the destination - both good and not so good. The memories of these interactions are what most travellers will bring home. People carry these memories for a long time and talk about them. In fact, negative memories will have a knock-on effect that is difficult to overcome. Tour and travel companies tend to downplay this aspect of the travel experience.

In reality, the place will never be represented 100% accurately, so what is the difference and what does this mean in terms of traveller expectations?

To deliver 'authenticity' requires that suppliers and individuals be true to the advertised message that brought the visitors and also be accurate with the description and portrayal.

It is critical to know that: IF the experience is not fully delivered in a manner consistent with the advertising, the chances for a return visit are very slim. Even if the experiences are fully delivered, the chances are still slim - but they are greatly improved. So, the destination must do whatever it is able to do to make sure the delivery is the best possible.

Regardless of whether the experience is close to the representation, the best experiences must be positive, upbeat and fulfilling. Visitors will probably be willing to overlook slight inaccuracies as long as the overall experience is considered to be proportional to the money spent.

Ultimately, the delivery is the experience, not a tangible product, as such. It is in the person-to-person, the face-to-face, the essence, the passion, the soul of the place. It is also the way the place is engaged to deliver experiences - through activities, sites and methods. The responsibility is on the community, the people in the destination to deliver.

How does the visitor share their day-to-day experience with other travellers, or their friends and family back home?

When the traveller returns home, how does s/he reflect on their experiences and share them? Has the experience changed the person and/or their point of view? How is person different from before their travel experience?

Very much of these last two points are bound to impact the future potential for tourism in this place. What the visitor has to say, about their experiences, the people they meet, the cuisine will directly impact the motivation and attitudes of these friends and family. In this context it is very easy to see why attitudes and experiences are critical to perceptions and the tone or cadence of sharing methods. While dramatic scenery, exciting attractions or exotic wildlife may have been a part of the initial draw to visit a place, it is the people experiences that will overtake and ultimately shape the expressions that visitors will share.

Getting @ The Truth

Tht 'truth' is often what people 'want' to hear and most people will accept what is told to them as the' truth' even though there may be no way to verify what is said. In reality, a weakness in human's ability to process information known as 'confirmation bias' means what is said may often be accepted as the 'truth', no questions asked.

So, what is the 'truth'? The word 'truth' has many inflections, including: veracity, sincerity, candour, genuineness, accuracy, correctness, validity, factualness, verity, certainty, reality, even authenticity and sometimes 'what is actually happening'. In the context of tourism, truth can be seen as the most reasonable mixture that fairly represents all interests of all stakeholders without trampling any of them unfairly or at the expense of some other interest. Truth needs balance and may be found at, or close to, the intersection between many legitimate interests.

Generally, the idea is to present issues about tourism within the meanings stated above - as much as can be done - along with debunking popular misconceptions and revealing their inner truth. The truth is, this is not always possible so kudos to anyone who knows how to do it consistently in most cases.

The economic value of tourists is quite high and therefore much sought after by destinations. As a consequence, tourism promotion, along with delivery, aspires to present the brighter side of destinations, cultures, economic conditions and peoples. So, while adhering to the loose definition of 'truth', this may not be entirely 'truthful'. However, this can also be the case with any other representation of the place. In addition to portraying 'truth' about a place, the portrayal must also be 'truthful'.

The economic value of a tourist is also highly perishable. Once the trip is taken, no other trip can be taken in its place. It happens only once. Overall, tourism is extremely competitive and also very sensitive to the quickly changing needs and attitudes of the tourist. For these reasons, it is essential for all stakeholders to be on-board, with a similar concept of what the truth is about a place, in order to capture a fair share of these visits.

In the complex world of travel, we are being handed more, not less, things that we need to be thinking about. A new era of travel is evolving, one with much greater awareness of the impacts and trade-off contained within tourism. Travel to far-away places is exposing people to a wide range of expected, and unexpected experiences. Some of them good, some not so good.

Selling tourism vs promoting tourism

Marketers, that is, sellers of the tourist product need to be separated from promoters. They are different, even though the objectives may appear similar. The methods used by travel suppliers to "sell" a product are different from the methods and practices destinations use to "promote" themselves and to attract visitors. The objective, to generate profit or to generate revenues are similar, but the recipient or the benefactor are different entities. To make matters more complicated, sometimes these two separate activities become intertwined together.

So, whereas a seller generates income by adding a mark-up to the costs of a product - which delivers a profit to them, a destination government might generate revenue by license fees, taxes, landing fees, income taxes on employment, and so on.

Advertising is employed by both to achieve the desired results. The sellers may also employ sales people that sell on a commission basis which is the usual method and governments almost never do this. Governments would be more interested in establishing a tourist product or licensing a tourist product and letting private enterprise take care of the actual selling process.

The Cynic's View

Major hotels and resorts are "tourist factories" set up in remote locations, usually by investors or corporations from rich countries. Then these rich corporations supply well-heeled visitors from metropolitan populations to visit the "tourist factories". Major travel reseller companies capture most of the profit from trips and vacations sold in home countries. Then the rich corporations repatriate most of the cash flow and profit from these wealthy visitors within their own business clusters.

Major airlines from the same home countries capture virtually all of the airfare paid.

Most of the money spent by visitors is inside the hotel, resort and sponsored vendors is done using credit financing provided by banks in the home countries. Virtually all of the money spent in host countries does not stay there longer than the time it takes for the transaction and the currency exchange to take place. As a consequence, there is very little that ends up in local hands.

The only difference from hotels or resorts in the metropolitan countries is the location. Instead of importing visitors to home sites, these factories export their facilities to distant locations. Most of the visitors along with the profit, tax base, high-value labour, and so on are supplied from the home country. A large proportion of the food and other day-to-day requirements are also supplied from the home country. The low-priced, low-skilled labour is supplied locally. Infrastructure to support the hotel or resort is provided by the local government, at their expense. This includes airports, roads as well as local tourist policing, all paid for by local peoples. Many concessions are also given to corporations who are often wealthier than the host country.

Small island states must literally import everything, including the tourists who carry the foreign exchange mechanism with them, in their wallets. The location where they end up is really incidental, it could be almost anywhere. Many destinations are literally sideswiped by tourist visits, along with tourist money. Apart from the initial blessing to permit visitors to be present, these places have very little say in how these business transactions are conducted except that they are obligated to provide infrastructure and services.

The most conspicuous examples would include cruise companies and large hotel chains that supply the bulk of products/services to their clients. This is the stark reality of tourism. Anybody wonder why host populations have a problem with tourism?

So, while the 'visitor' sets foot in a foreign country, for monetary or financial purposes, this visitor never left home. If the travel suppliers could find a way to mail-order beach weather to their clients' home they might do it, if there would be profit in it.

There are many questions that need to be answered in order to get at the truth about tourism. Its hard to know where to start.

This project is an attempt to raise the questions, and to find at least partial answers to some of them.

(questions might be asked in slightly different ways, pertinent to context)

It might be advisable to also think about the other tourists:

What is the real reason people are travelling to certain places? IS it for personal enjoyment or other touristic reasons or ... Is it for sex? Drugs? Other illicit goods? To rob other tourists?
What percentage of travellers are involved in travel for illicit purposes?
If the traveller avoids getting involved with illegal activities, like drugs, or selling of sex, would this reduce the risk of being a victim of crime?

There's a great deal we simply don't know about tourism and tourists' motivations to travel.

rubbish by Elspeth Duncan at the pan collective

Some Fundamental Truths about Tourism by Bob McKercher, 1993

The Truth About Mexico, The Place You Thought You Knew

The Truth About Crime In South Africa | Lark Tours (archive.org, 2016)

The Truth about Tourism by John Tribe, 2008

"Tourism is more than can be told."
Tourism "research is somehow disembodied." The tourism 'product' is objectified.
"language of tourism promotion is scripted for a male, heterosexual audience."
"standardized procedures are invoked to produce a uniform, predictable product."*
"our understanding of tourism has become fetishized as a thing, a product, a behaviour ... an economic thing."
"dominant approach to sustainable tourism is technical, rational and scientific."
"ethnocentricity, departmentalism and academic tribalism all emerge as important forces at work in the tourism knowledge force-field."
"The purpose of knowledge also exerts an important influence on what truths researchers seek."
"Ends. The purpose of knowledge also exerts an important influence on what truths researchers seek. Ideas at work here include questions of demand (the “for whom?” question), funding and ends. A useful starting point here is the notion of the commodification. This describes how research is packaged just like any other commodity in response to the needs of the market so that it is produced to take advantage of its exchange value. Commodification of research may result from the increasing influence of commercialization agendas on universities where they are expected to move towards greater self-financing". [ read page 11 ]
ideological approach ie the "taken for granted way of thinking and doing ... dominant ideology is that of the dominant class."
In this context, "Desmond argues that “tourism is not just an aggregate of commercial activities; it is also an ideological framing of history, nature and tradition; a framing that has the power to reshape culture and nature to its own needs” (1999: xiv). In other words he suggests that tourism itself is an ideology."

A note about tourism experiences

Tourism Theories | Marinus C. Gisolf (linkedin)

The Reflexive Approach to Tourism by Marinus Gisolf

For long holiday tourism has been in the grip of economic thinking and sociological research. On this webpage a more balanced view is maintained on the focal centre of tourists' activities: tourists themselves and their encounter with their holiday destination. Tourists are the only one who can sense emotions; neither 'society' nor the tourism "industry" can. Tourists take what is given to them and then turn it into their own ends; it is these ends what is of our primary interest and more than 25 articles on this site are about just that: the tourists' tourism.

Trust in Tourism Locations: The role of Inhabitants and Institutions by Marinao, Enrique; Chasco, Coro; Torres, Eduardo, 2012

Abstract: The extent to which a tourist trusts a holiday destination has become an important factor when it comes to thinking about where to travel to. However, no previous studies measuring trust in a tourist destination have been found. We are proposing a multidimensional model to measure trust in a tourist destination, which proves the fundamental roles played by honesty, benevolence, and competence by both local inhabitants and institutions in developing trust. On the other hand, the image perceived works as a background factor, influenced by the familiarity and reputation of the place. The results of this study provide information for the different stakeholders from the destination on the factors influencing trust.

"From the point of view of decision making, this study provides the different interest groups involved in the destination with information about the factors affecting the building of trust, in order to establish long-term relations with tourists. To get the tourists to increase their levels of trust in a particular place, the local and regional government and institutions associated with tourism development plans should incorporate a strategy to increase tourists’ trust into the local tourism development strategies. This plan should focus on three main actors: public institutions, private institutions, and local inhabitants. The objective is for all actors to be perceived as honest, benevolent, and competent". (pg 38)
found at: Non-Profit Academic Project (www.redalyc.org)

Truth and Travel: Alternative Tourism Isn't Always Responsible Tourism, Cultural Survival, 1992