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592 tourist trap
literature emphasises the covertly staged nature of
such space as a manifestation of staged authenticity.
A covert tourist space is made to appear as
part of the normal lives of destination people,
although it is in fact fabricated for tourists, such as
the performance of a `real' tribal ritual. An overt
tourist space is explicitly marked off from the host's
everyday reality, as for example in an environmental
museum.
tourist trap
ERIK COHEN, ISRAEL
Tourist traps conjure up the negative stereotypes
associated with tourism. They infer neon signs,
cheap souvenirs, crowds, traffic and lots of
advertising. These locations or destinations have a
bright and shiny surface but little substance and a
less beneficial price±value relationship for tourists.
Usually the term implies deceit, cheat, crime
or theft. Tourist traps often result from little or no
community planning and/or standards.
trade show
ROBERT M. O'HALLORAN, USA
An exposition is a temporary marketplace intended
to promote or sell products directly to the buyer. A
trade show is an exposition open to attendees from
a particular trade or profession. Consumer shows
are expositions open to the public. Trade shows
and expositions are used extensively for tourism
marketing. They also generate money into local
tourism firms and economies.
trading area
PATTIJ.SHOCK,USA
The trading area is a geographically defined
region from which a service firm draws its
customers. Trading areas are often subdivided into
primary and secondary zones and may contain
demand generators which draw people into the
areas from further afield. Such areas vary substan-
tially in size for different kinds of firms. A highly
reputed fine dining restaurant may draw its
customers from a radius of fifty miles or more,
while quick service restaurants often have trading
areas less then one mile in diameter.
tradition
JOACHIM BARTH, CANADA
The variety of related meanings associated with the
word tradition is the cluster around notions of
delivering instructions and handing down ideas
and sayings. Religious and/or cultural traditions
are normally thought to be those customs and
practices which are not only long-established but
also in some way definitive of this or that religion
and/or culture. In more general contemporary
usage tradition carries with it connotations of
authority and the legitimacy of that which is passed
down from one generation to another. It is in its
associations with authority and the authoritative
that tradition enters the tourism field ± for carrying
this aura the idea of tradition is a powerful
mobiliser. Tour operators, for example, will readily
maintain that to `see a bit of tradition' �a bull fight
in Spain, a Life Guard in England) is to catch a
glimpse of an essential part of Spanish or British
culture. This is the point at which the term gives
rise to a cornucopia of questionable assumptions
about the nature of human groups and collectivities.
Thus, it is seldom the case that a given people
�or nation as in the example above) have a single
set of traditions. In the case of contemporary Spain
or Britain, there are clearly many different
traditions at work, few of which are fixed, many
of which contradict one another, and many of
which are in the process of being disputed,
renegotiated or invented �Hobsbawm and Ranger
1983). Yet how many picture postcards there are
which confidently announce to the tourist that this
group of old women weaving on the balcony and
that old fisherman mending his nets are at the
heart of the traditional culture of the destination?
In the end, therefore, like many other terms found
in the tourist lexicon the term tradition draws its
potency to mobilise and excite precisely from the
fact that it is poised between the supposedly