Not all of Foster’s respondents were actually travelling by themselves.
The establishment of insights about oneself can be derived from both solo travelling and of interpersonal experiences developed with one’s travel-ling companions. The opportunity to study the psychological and inter-personal consequences in the relationship of ‘travelling with oneself’
should be developed as a research topic to enrich our understanding of tourism’s meaning in postmodern societies.
Jackson and Wong, 1982; Ruddell and Gramman, 1994; Gibbons and Ruddell, 1995; Rathmun, 1995). For example, in one of the earlier studies Shelby (1981) reported that paddling canoeists disliked motor boaters, but this negative perception was not reciprocated in the attitudes of the motor boating respondents. The structure of this finding, that is the mechanised and more recent users appearing to be less bothered by the passive, appre-ciative users, is consistent in studies in the recreation area in mountain and snow use settings, on beaches and along rivers, and in landscape touring and appreciation.
Additional insights concerning the important dimensions of user–user conflict are to be found in the work of Rathmun (1995). He questioned the empirical value of all of Jacob and Shreyer’s categories, viewing them as somewhat overlapping and hence at times redundant. In his own studies he placed emphasis on an additional underlying dimension—the identi-fication of being a member of an in-group or an out-group. This approach is in accordance with fundamental social psychological research on group identity and response reported in detail in the work of Tajfel (1981). This explanatory dimension will be explored further later.
A third perspective in the analysis of conflict between users was iden-tified by Schneider and Hammitt (1995). They argued that conflict is best understood by viewing it as a process, often a series of events and per-ceptions leading to stressed participants and possibly a defining point of annoyance. Vaske and colleagues (1995) further observed that these defin-ing points of annoyance do not have to be actual physical contacts involv-ing the presence of the other group, but instead, can be social value conflicts where the idea of other people sharing the disputed space is the prime concern of the stressed group.
The role of relationships in the tourist experience 107
Figure 6.1: The social players in tourist experience.
Although this work on recreation user–user conflict has been conducted for some years and would seem, at least initially, to be relevant to tourist–tourist encounters, there are some limitations and assumptions that warrant examination. First, the guiding principle in these predomi-nantly North American–based studies is that larger numbers of users are not appreciated. Glasson, Godfrey, and Goodey (1995) provide a set of graphical appraisals that indicate the importance of questioning the broad applicability of the wilderness and national park–based work. They depict the relationship between user satisfaction and use levels in a number of contexts (Figure 6.2).
108 Global Tourism
Figure 6.2: User satisfaction and use levels (number of people).
Source: Glasson, Godfrey, and Goodey, 1995.
An important implication to be drawn from Figure 6.2 is that most of the studies discussed have actually been drawn from the first quadrant of the figure. Tourists use all of the environments depicted in Figure 6.2 so an initial caution on the applicability of the recreation literature and its findings must be exercised. Secondly, even in the first quadrant of Figure 6.2 the findings are drawn from studies of North American users. There is a mounting argument from cross-national studies of social behaviour that other cultural groups, such as Chinese, Indonesians, Koreans, and Japanese, prefer or at least tolerate group-based and high-density natural settings (Kim, 1997; Ward, Bochner, and Furnham, 2001).
A third point of commentary on the recreation findings relates to the subtly different purpose of travel associated with tourist activities. Recre-ational conflict appears to be particularly acute when the specific, focussed purposes of a group of people are thwarted by the actions of another group. Tourists, in many situations, are sharing the one set of goals—to see, experience, and enjoy the same setting. In this kind of sce-nario tolerance of the sheer presence of other people might be high. One version of this argument has been developed in some detail by Urry (1990). He used the expression ‘the tourist gaze’ to describe the com-monality of tourists’ goals in many settings. Further, he identified a romantic gaze, rich in historical Western tradition and precedent, which emphasises the value for individuals in experiencing an environment by themselves or in very small numbers of like-minded companions. Work in the recreational conflict literature may be squarely located as explicat-ing the dimensions of user contact within the romantic gaze framework.
By way of contrast Urry also identified a collective gaze. In this style of environmental and social experience, users enjoy and indeed require the presence of others in the setting in order for it to be seen and experienced as popular, lively, successful, and socially enriching. In Figure 6.2 the third and fourth quadrants depict this kind of setting.
A final and further elaboration pertaining to the tourist–tourist encoun-ters lies in the identification of the in-group and out-group (see Rathmun, 1995). One can raise the question of who constitutes the in-group and the out-group in a specific tourism context. For example, consider a package group of tourists from the United States walking along the Great Wall of China north of Beijing. In this context there are multiple possible out-groups present in the setting; these include North American tourists on other package tours, European tourists travelling in group arrangements, young independent Western travellers doing their own thing in seeing China, and, of course, large numbers of domestic Chinese tourists also walking the Wall. It would appear that the attitudes toward other tourists and the kinds of relationships developed may need more than one simple in-group and out-group classification to understand the developing relationships.
The role of relationships in the tourist experience 109
One such distinctive concept developed to understand tourist–tourist relationships is that of the familiar stranger (Simmel, 1950; Pearce, 1981;
Yagi, 2002). In many tourism settings, and particularly in extended travel journeys, individuals repeatedly see the same other travellers. This can be illustrated by considering an international flight from Shanghai to Sydney.
On checking in at the airport travellers have to wait in line with other pas-sengers, they are then likely to see these same faces in the airport waiting lounge, and in adjacent or nearby seats during the flight. On arriving at the destination the same faces will be in the customs hall and baggage collection area. It is functional for travellers to pay some attention to these familiar strangers. They provide some guidance as to where to go, they may be people to engage in time-passing conversation, and in times of stress they may be sources of help.
Simmel (1950) reported familiar strangers in everyday urban life not-ing such contexts as fellow commuters, shop assistants, and patrons of favoured restaurants. Pearce (1980) noted in a quasiexperiment field study of Greyhound bus travellers in the United States that these familiar strangers were reliably more helpful on a range of small tasks to fellow travellers than were total strangers. It can be suggested that the familiar stranger is a distinctive and often frozen form of social relationship asso-ciated with but not exclusively confined to the travel experience. It is an additional mechanism, beyond those noted in the recreation literature, for understanding distinctive tourist–tourist relationships.
Yagi (2002) has noted a particular extension of the familiar stranger concept by paying attention to the obvious physical characteristics of the travellers. She observes that it is an inescapable fact of perception that such physical characteristics as race, gender, age, and dress style are readily observable by all travellers, and of course by tourist service per-sonnel. In cross-national tourism encounters, such as when there are numerous visitors of varied nationalities in popular settings, it is likely that travellers of the same age, appearance, and nationality constitute a special kind of familiar stranger. Thus, Japanese travellers admiring the Eiffel Tower will note the presence of familiar Japanese, Germans in Australia’s outback desert setting will quickly identify other Germans, and North American tourists in Egypt will be likely to hear and identify Canadian and U.S. citizens.
In a substantial program of research dealing with the relationships tourists have with other tourists, Yagi (2002) asked the question, will tourists prefer to mix with the familiar strangers of their own nationality?
The studies were conducted with multiple methods. Travellers’ own accounts of their experiences were accessed from Internet diaries, tourists were shown digitally altered photographs of visitors from various nation-ality mixes in environmental settings and focus groups were conducted to explain such preferences. The particular nationality contrasts pursued 110 Global Tourism
in her work were the preferences of Japanese and Western (largely Australian and U.S.) travellers toward mixing with their own and other nationalities in natural environment settings.
From the spontaneously generated travelogues provided on a range of Internet sites, Yagi concluded, using a sample of both Japanese and North American stories, that the Japanese showed consistently greater aware-ness of the presence of other Japanese. Sometimes a positive attitude toward these fellow travellers was expressed, but at the same time a desire to escape the confines of their own compatriots’ expectations emerged.
In the studies using digitally altered photographs of different mixes of tourist appearance and density Yagi and Pearce (2002) found that Japanese travellers compared with Western travellers consistently pre-ferred larger rather than smaller numbers of visitors in rainforest environ-mental settings. Perhaps surprisingly, Japanese travellers also preferred the digitally altered photographs depicting more Caucasian faces as opposed to those depicting more Asian faces in the photographs. The sur-prising element in this finding derives from an apparent contradiction of the preferences for one’s own nationality predicted by in-group and out-group theory. For the Western travellers there were no differences in the preferences for Caucasian or Asian faces in the photographs. One expla-nation of these findings is that the Japanese travellers have ‘Akogare’
(respect, enthusiasm, and admiration) for the Western world and the greater numbers of Western faces enhances the international atmosphere of the site. This finding is congruent with Urry’s analysis of the collective gaze, but extends Urry’s perspective by incorporating a cross-national addition where the symbolic value of the personnel making up the crowd is important. The number of ways in which tourists may respond to other tourists is depicted in Figure 6.3.
One kind of emotional state and sequence of behaviours can be identi-fied as noteworthy in influencing the range of responses in Figure 6.3.
Armstrong (2003) observes that in time of emotional and physical stress, individuals are particularly appreciative of small acts of kindness and ten-derness from others. He terms this feeling and process ‘katabasis’ and emphasises that it represents a vulnerability where people are confronted with loneliness and disappointment, and thus have a heightened appre-ciation for assistance from others. The stress of travelling has been recorded by a number of writers and Armstrong’s argument that kataba-sis operates in tandem with positive, even ecstatic emotional episodes, is a valuable additional insight into the genesis of companionship-based tourism (see Herold, Garcia, and DeMoya, 2001).
Our understanding of stranger-based tourist relationships can be sum-marised by integrating the work done in the recreation settings and these more recent cross-national studies using the familiar stranger dimension.
In Western countries there are strong historical and sociological forces The role of relationships in the tourist experience 111
predisposing travellers to experience settings, particularly natural set-tings, in isolation or at least small, like-minded groups. In this kind of sce-nario relationships with most other travellers are limited and are viewed as unwelcome intrusions because they restrict the achievement of the trav-ellers’ goals. In more purpose-built tourist attraction settings there are findings from North American studies that suggest familiar strangers may be tolerated and be useful companions. Indeed larger crowd numbers enhance the atmosphere of certain settings. For travellers of more group-oriented or collectivist cultures, the relationships with other travellers is less problematic in natural environmental settings and may be seen to enhance the appeal of the location because of the symbolic value of con-112 Global Tourism
Tourists seen as Behaviours Potential close
friend
Friendly contact - intimacy Learn about and from them Learn about other culture
Familiar strangers Travel
companion
Partner for activities
Socialise, someone to be with Helper
Source of information Share costs
Lend a hand
Security Guard Look after possessions Prevent unwanted contacts Positive
views
Stimulation
Improve atmosphere of destination
Excitement
“Marker” of good times Neutral
perspective Background scenery
Just there No impact
Stranger Minor discomfort Something unfamiliar
Disturber
Noise source Adds to crowd Invades privacy
Causes conflict – contributes to culture shock
Negative views
Competitor
Competitor for accommodation, tickets, space, access to people and setting
Total strangers
Figure 6.3: The multiple perspectives tourists may have of other tourists.
noting a noteworthy site (see Kagitcibasi and Berry, 1989; Triandis, Chen, and Chan, 1998; Ward, Bochner, and Furnham, 2001).
Familiar strangers are a defining category in traveller relationships and interaction with familiar fellow travellers may include such positive roles as developing friendship, providing assistance, and aiding traveller safety and security. These relationships may be developed in times of shared positive experiences or they may arise in times of stress where katabasis operates. Less positively, tourist–tourist relationships may also degener-ate into competitive and marginally hostile encounters when, as in the recreation literature, there is conflict over achieving goals and limited resources such as tickets and space. Some significant analogies between these poles of positive and negative roles for fellow travellers will be reit-erated in considering traveller relationships with the members of the local community.