Backpackers: The next generation? - Scholarly Commons Home

Backpackers: The next generation?
backpackers’ accommodations here in New Zealand are different than anywhere
else in the world and, as such, are not well understood in Europe or North
America.
One owner, however, for whom older guests already comprise 40% of his total,
has a different perspective. He doesn’t believe that “backpackers” had a stigma.
Or rather, that,
It has a stigma to that type of older guest who we don’t want anyway.
[They’d want] ‘my TV, my fridge’. Their expectations might be too high.
So to actively start promoting a different word might not be a good idea.
You’d alienate your core market – [they’d be saying], ‘This place is full of
old farts, we’re not going to come here’ (108).
For those owners who are comfortable with the status quo, the term backpacker
may indeed not be a problem. However, the research suggests that “backpacker”
and its related lexicon, indeed, do carry a stigma internationally. If financial
resilience is important to the industry as they enter a changing economic climate,
it may be time to consider updating the nomenclature to entice a new generation
of travellers.
Similarly, the term backpacker has also potentially affected academic
perceptions of this market “phenomenon”. “Tourism is a fuzzy concept”, Cohen
first noted in 1974 (Cohen, 2004c, p. 34). This study supports that notion,
contending that today’s hybrid backpacker fits neither within clear boundaries
of travel roles nor of touristic experiences. There is a growing body of evidence
that older travellers using backpackers’ accommodations fit neither Cohen’s
adventurer (the sub genus of his earlier drifter), nor his explorer, but rather choose
to live in moments of each. Likewise, these travellers do not fit comfortably
within specific touristic experiences, choosing to change their levels of
interaction and connection with local hosts and cultures on an almost daily
basis.
It is time, as Uriely (2005, p. 200) notes, to “shift from homogenizing portrayals
of the tourist as a general type to pluralizing depictions that capture the
multiplicity of the experience”. The hybrid consumers interviewed for this thesis
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