What Type Of Tourist Are You?

Happy 2012! As we kick off the new year and make travel plans I ask you to consider what type of tourist you are.

When you see tourists walking down the street or getting out of their car or off a tour bus it’s easy to think they’re all the same.

They’re not, of course.

Geotourism was proposed and coined in 1997 by National Geographic senior editor Jonathan B. Tourtellot as a strategy to sustain or enhance the geographical character of a place – it’s environment, heritage, aesthetics, culture, and the well-being of its residents. Tourtellot describes three different types of tourism:

Touring Style– is where the word “tourism” comes from: traveling to tour, to see and experience a place. It’s typical of geotourists.

It involves all aspects of character of place—scenery, history, culture, nature, people.
Its effect is to spread tourists and their economic benefits broadly through the local economy, with minimal harm to the character of the place.

R and R Style– for Rest and Recreation – is resort oriented tourism

It involves only physical character of place—beaches, sun, whitewater—not necessarily culture, history, or nature.
Its effect is to concentrate tourism in the resort area, especially profitable overnight tourism. The problem is that much of the profit often leaks out of the community. When badly managed, R and R Style resorts and vacation homes can take over seacoasts and scenic areas. Prices often rise until local people must move out. If well planned and restricted, though, R&R can fit nicely with the existing community.

Entertainment Style – is self-contained—theme parks, convention centers, sports arenas, amusement parks, casinos, duty-free shopping malls, and the like.

It involves no character of place at all. It can happen anywhere, even on a ship out at sea.
Its effect is to concentrate large numbers of tourists in or around the attraction. Its tourist crowds come for the attraction, not the locale and typically leave knowing little about the host community. It needs major airports, roads, and utilities. It is often very energy intensive. It involves large companies and provides a lot of jobs, although employees and profits may not come from or stay in the local economy.

If a place doesn’t plan properly, Touring Style tends to drift towards Entertainment style. As Touring Style geotourists discover a place and talk about it, more and more tourists arrive then developers buy up all the best land to build resorts and houses, transforming the place into an R&R style destination. Larger hotels move in, selling lots of cheap rooms. Other companies now add Entertainment Style facilities – discos, casinos, tacky souvenir shops.

By now the place has become repulsive to affluent Touring Style geotourists. Even though the numbers of tourists have gone up, the benefit per tourist has gone down. Tourists in high quantity tend to drive away the tourists of high benefit.

It is important that tourism success be measured, not by counting heads, but by counting the economic, environmental, and social benefits to the region.

What type of tourist are you? Do you visit Appalachia for its unique qualities? Do your travel experiences connect you to the character of this region? This type of connection helps to sustain the unique character of place and keeps money that is spent in the region.

Will your travels allow you to see and experience a place in 2012?

See you on the trail.

This entry was posted on Monday, January 16th, 2012 at 9:31 am and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

3 Responses to “What Type Of Tourist Are You?”

Peter

says:

January 16, 2012 at 4:14 pm

At Berea Cillege, the Entrepreneurship for the Public Good program (summer students) cor five years has focused on tourism in Central Appalachia. I can offer one set of summarized experiential/entertainment tourism trips via the blog (impactof5.wordpress.com) as seen through the eyes of liberal arts undergraduates. Their experiences in small rural Appalachian towns and tourism destination are well worth a read.

dougarbogast