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signification, not the least in tourism, is actively involved in coconstructing
that which is re-presented. Tourism does not exist apart from
our naming, defining, or classifying “it”. The name is not the thing named.
It is through words and concepts that we construct our knowledge claims
about tourism, and therefore it is important to systematically pay close
attention to them.
One central message of the chapter has thus been about the issue of
representation, and it deserves to be repeated here. The naïve or simplified
taken-for-granted notions of representation, as mirroring or objectively
corresponding to a separate reality “out there”, are not adequate or valid.
This does not mean, however, that there is no such thing as “tourism”
outside of our internal significations in language, nor does it imply that we
are forever locked up in a closed idealist realm of signs and words. Tourist
destination images are always packaged around a series of selected real
and imagined features, and they are being constructed and manufactured
for specific touristic purposes by marketers and researchers alike. A way
of capturing this duality is to follow Kirschenblatt-Gimblett (1998, p. 9)
stating that:
Tourists travel to actual destinations to experience virtual places.
What we refer to as “tourism and tourist imaginationings” involve,
and are highly dependent upon, processes of signification that translate the
physical matters of travelling, locations, and whatever material resources
that humans meet as bodies with senses, into various touristic meanings
and values. It is, in other words, the art of bringing meaning and matter
together for particular tourism and tourist purposes. This process of
translating and transforming is necessary in order for goods, services and
sights on the Earth to be appropriated for tourism purposes and become
tourism commodities.
And by these final remarks we are already on the move to the next
chapter where we will open the door to tourism theory.
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