place branding, authenticity, value co-creation, tourism
Tourism ‘involves the symbolic transmutation of many ordinary objects, places and experiences into sacred ones’(Watson and Kopachevsky, 1994: 648). Nevertheless, the realisation of the tourist visit involves a degree of commodification of places (which become ‘destinations’) as access is managed and an array of services are provided to make the visit possible (Williams and Shaw, 1992). Consequently, the tourism phenomenon is marked by a paradox: tourism is seen as both sacred and frivolous (Crick, 1996). On the one hand, consumption of tourism is marked by a religious aspect, and is likened to ritual performance and pilgrimage (MacCannell, 1999 [1976]; Graburn, 1983; Seaton, 2002). On the other, tourism, as a frivolous activity, is regarded as a corruptor of authenticity (Boorstin, 1962; Crick, 1996). This is captured in notions of places as ‘tourist bubbles’ or ‘enclaves’, which are created and curated for tourism consumption by the tourist industry (MacCannell, 1973; Edensor, 2006). Commodification is the process by which things and activities come to be evaluated primarily in terms of their exchange value in a context of trade, thereby becoming goods and services (Cohen, 1988). Marketers of tourism places are often caught in this paradox: the simultaneous perception of tourism as a quest for authenticity and its effects as a commoditising process. This is essentially the burden of authenticity. In unravelling this conundrum, we consider how applications of marketing management thinking to tourism have exacerbated commodification processes, by homogenising places. We then explore how more recent thinking opens up new …
Medway, Dominic; Warnaby, Garry; Byrom, John