Mediating the Tourist Experience: From Brochures to Virtual Encounters (Current Developments in the Geographies of Leisure and Tourism)

Traditionally, tourism media has referred to the image of destinations constructed through media texts such as brochures and postcards, with increasing attention towards other mediascapes such as films and television. Yet, with prolific advancements in technologies of media communication, such traditional formats have experienced a shift in the productive and consumptive practices through which they come into being. The possibilities of production and subsequent consumption are unequivocally changing the ways in which tourists imagine, understand and engage with destinations. This book therefore explores the role of tourism media and mediating practices in the development of non-linear processes of communication and understanding as both producers and consumers come together to negotiate the tourist experience. In varying ways it examines the emergent relationships and connections between media practices and tourism practices, everyday experiences and encounters of place. Collectively, the authors in this book address a range of media and technologies from brochures, television, video and film to mediated virtual spaces, such as e-brochures, Internet cultures, social networks, and Google Earth. In doing so, the book highlights the continued significance of media in tourism contexts; recognising both traditional and newer technologies, and the non-linear, continuous cycle of mediated representations and experiences. Cover 1 Haft Title 2 Title Page 4 Copyright Page 5 Table of Contents 6 List of Figures 8 List of Tables 10 Notes on Contributors 12 Acknowledgements 18 1 Mediating the Tourist Experience: From Brochures to Virtual Encounters 20 2 Media-Related Tourism Phenomena: A Review of the Key Issues 32 3 From the Landscape to the White Female Body: Representations of Postcolonial Luxury in Contemporary Tourism Visual Texts 52 4 A Necessary Glamorisation? Resident Perspectives on Promotional Literature and Images on Great Barrier Island, New Zealand 76 5 The Effect of British Natural History Television Programmes: Animal Representations and Wildlife Tourism 94 6 Internet Cultures and Tourist Expectations in the Context of the Public Media Discourse 110 7 A Comparative Analysis of the Projected and Perceived Images of Gloucester 124 8 Individualising the Tourist Brochure: Reconfiguring Tourism Experiences and Transforming the Classic I mage-maker 142 9 The Mediatisation of Culture: Japanese Contents Tourism and Pop Culture 158 10 Developing the E-Mediated Gaze 174 11 Souvenir or Reconstruir? Editing Experience and Mediating Memories of Learning to Dive 190 12 The Mediation and Fetishisation of the Travel Experience 208 13 Being a Tourist or a Performer? Tourists’ Negotiation with Mediated Destination Image in Popular Film 228 14 The Hollowed or Hallowed Ground of Orange County, California 242 15 Maps, Mapping and Materiality: Navigating London 256 16 Mediating Tourism: Future Directions? 274 Index 290 Edited By Jo-anne Lester And Caroline Scarles. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.