Tourist's Catch 22

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Staged Authenticity: Arrangements of Social Space in Tourist Settings does a good job of demonstrating that society itself creates in essence a semi-fake stage and tries to hide the back stage. However, I take offense to the quotation, “The term 'tourist' is increasingly used as a derisive label for someone who seems content with his obviously inauthentic experiences.” I do not plan to contradict the claim that the label “tourist” is used as Dean MacCannell describes, but rather give insight into why and how this label has come to arise and give examples on how I have or have not fallen into that trap. I consider myself a tourist, and therefore, I feel free to use myself as an example of what a tourist does and does not do.

First of all, the term has become so negative because it seems, as MacCannell describes, tourists seem content with the false experiences they, being tourists, receive. I do not agree that tourists are content with false experiences, but rather that they do not know they are receiving one. I know that when I feel I received a “touristy” experience, I feel swindled. I also know that I try and eat at non-touristy places because its cheaper and a more authentic experience. The problem is inevitably that the tourist never knows what is real and what is fake, but can only try and figure it out. Of, course sometimes the tourist will be successful in this respect and sometimes not.

Now to do something authentic is in some respects a catch-22 because if the tourist is doing it, then by definition it is not authentic. This catch-22 I feel is one of the reasons the perception of tourists liking inauthentic experiences is generated. This is because while the tourist is doing an activity, he thinks he is doing something authentic. At the same time, someone observing the tourist knows that it is not authentic and also thinks that the tourist knows that because of the inevitable truth that the tourist can only do something touristy. Therefore, I think it is not that tourists are happy to do inauthentic things, but rather simply have a different vantage point then the local as to what is authentic. An easy way to avoid this catch-22 is to only observe authentic behavior, however this would be contradictory to the point of traveling in the first place and therefore, I cannot offer this course of action to resolve the tourist's catch-22.