vrijdag 11 september 2015

The City of Stone

Even though our schedule of the last days was packed, the Friday would prove to be more intense. We would go to Petra, the most famous place of Jordan. The Nabataean city, which goes back to the 4th century BC, is also a UNESCO heritage site. We left ACOR at 7AM, so we had more time to spend inside Petra.

The sun was high in the sky by the time we came there and I decided to walk with a group to ad-Deir, the Monastery, at the end of the city. This meant walking a trail of about 5km, and climbing lots of steps up a mountain. Because of our limited time, we marched our way there at a quick pace.
Figure 1: Looking back at the path leading up to the Monastery


It was very clear that not many people bothered to go up to the Monastery, as there were only very few tourists there. But why did we decide to go there? For me it was curiosity, and hiking in the hot weather was a new experience for me. Does the extra effort we made mean that we had the better tourist experience?

Figure 2: The Monastery. Observe the large crowd of tourists in front of it

Scott McCabe notices that people make a distinction between travellers and tourists.[1] The first group view themselves as getting a deeper and better tourist experience by going off the beaten track.
"To me being a tourist means that you only go sightseeing, without experiencing the people or the flair of the place/country you are visiting."[1]

But who defines the tourist experience? Since everyone views their experiences in a different light, can we not just say that there is not 'the experience', but rather that the creation of such a tourist experience gets shaped by the person itself, being it a traveller or a tourist. With that I would like to conclude that therefore the distinction between travellers and tourists is made by the travellers trying to define their seperate, in their eyes better, identity. So our hiking trip to the Monastery made our experience different than those who did not go up, but we did not have 'the better experience'.

[1] Scott McCabe, Who is a tourist?; a critical review, Tourist studies, 2005

2 opmerkingen:

  1. It was worth it though, going up those bloody steps in the bloody burning sun. But seriously, good topic. Are we tourists or travelers? But do you think the distinction is only in 'the eye of the beholder'? Or a bit in the activities and behavior as well?

    Cheers, Eva

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    1. Good question. Having only so few words to explain the whole argument makes things difficult. I did mention that we got a different experience because we did go to the Monastery, whereas others did not. Our identities are formed by comparing ourselves to the 'other', in Foucault's terms. People self-identifying as either tourist or traveller might then also explain the same activity differently, thus creating a different tourist experience. So I do think the distinction is in 'the eye of the beholder'.

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