![]()
1
The Emergence of Slow Travel
Our treatise is a simple one. From its roots in the slow food movement of the 1980s, with concern for locality, ecology and quality of life, slow travel has gained momentum over the past decade. It will continue to grow as the need to reduce our carbon footprint becomes central to our lifestyles. Characterized by shorter distances, low-carbon consumption and a greater emphasis on the travel experience, slow travel heralds a fundamentally different approach to tourism. We contend that it will become more widespread in future decades. The aim of this book is to define slow travel and to discuss how some of its underlying values are likely to pervade new forms of sustainable tourism development. The book also aims to provide insights into the travel experience; these are explored in several chapters that bring new knowledge about sustainable tourism transport from across the world.
In recent years slow travel has emerged as a topic of discussion in a number of academic, tourism sector and media contexts. In academia, slow travel, and associated terms such as slow tourism, slow mobility and soft mobility, have increasingly been associated with low-carbon travel (Hall, 2007a). For example, Matos-Wasem (cited in Ceron and Dubois, 2007) refers to âle tourisme lentâ, and Dubois and Ceron (2006a) have referred to rail tourism as âslow tourismâ. Dickinson et al (2010a) have defined slow travel as follows:
Slow travel is an emerging conceptual framework which offers an alternative to air and car travel, where people travel to destinations more slowly overland, stay longer and travel less.
The idea also encompasses more experiential elements such as:
the importance of the travel experience to, and within, a destination, engagement with the mode(s) of transport, associations with slow food and beverages, exploration of localities in relation to patrimony and culture at a slower pace and, what might best be described as, support for the environment. (Dickinson et al, 2010b)
The implicit conceptual framework on which the discussion focuses is that of slow consumption, a counter-cultural wave against the plethora of products and services that emphasize speed and convenience over quality of experience (HonorĂŠ, 2004). The rationale underpinning this emerging work is that slow ways of doing things bring more meaning, understanding and pleasure to any given form of activity, whether it be food or travel. It is a conceptual alternative to speed as one of the driving forces in the lives of people living in western cultures (Germann Molz, 2009). It takes forward the notion that Peters (2006, p1) refers to when he comments:
⌠I will challenge the basic assumption underlying this line of thinking, the idea that time spent travelling can be reduced to a neutral and measured unity which can be saved if we speed up. The core of my argument is that travel not only takes time, but it also makes time.
To a lesser extent the discussion has also extended to the role of the supply sectors. Several commentators, for example, have turned their attention to a critique of food supply. In particular, they discuss the ecological justice or otherwise of global food production systems. They ask how it can be ethically right to produce 50 per cent of crops in order to feed animals and 10 per cent to fuel vehicles, while starvation exists in many parts of the developing world (Fonte, 2006; Pollan, 2007). Is there not a parallel with tourism? How can we move towards more equitable and sustainable forms of travel? How might such new forms of tourism flourish in a world that is changing to meet the strictures of the ecological limits to growth? These are fundamental issues which tourism scholars need to address; this book seeks to offer a contribution to the discussion.
Slow travel has many parallels with slow food. Nilsson et al (2007) discuss the development of slow food and the interfaces with slow cities (CittĂĄslow) in terms of improving quality of life, principally for residents, but also coincidentally for the tourist. The authors refer to the emergence of slow food as a response to âglobalised homogenisationâ and CittĂĄslow as a reaction to the âglobalization of our townscapesâ (Nilsson et al, 2007, p2). The threads of the argument are similar. There is a resistance to an economic domain which prioritizes globalization, standardization and rationality. Instead, the focus, it is argued, should be on the vernacular, local distinctiveness and place-based knowledge. Individuality and diversity are essential for the health of towns and for tourism.
It is interesting to note that in a series of in-depth interviews with participants from CittĂĄslow towns in Italy, Nilsson and his colleagues discerned a cautionary approach to tourism. The concern was about exploitation. Encouragement of the tourism sector might overwhelm the small-scale nature of development in their localities, especially in relation to their heritage and gastronomy. Nevertheless, authors argue that there is a place for tourism in CittĂĄslow towns; there are linkages that can be progressed to good effect. The authors translate a paragraph of the work of Frykman to capture the essence of time and spatial distance, central to what he termed slow tourism, as being:
An indicator of a wider process â a reaction in that time and space is compressed in the fast society. The hunting of seconds tends to wipe out the peculiarities of place and persons ⌠Therefore, places in contemporary Europe have put their continuity and history to the front. Slowness has become one of the many ways to express such peculiarity. (Frykman, 2000, p37)
The word âfastâ is recurrent in the tourism and hospitality literature. The analysis of the fast food concept by Ritzer (1993) explains why the quest for rationality, efficiency, control and predictability in the hospitality sector may not necessarily be beneficial for society. Ritzerâs book, more importantly, offers a reflection on the cultural drift towards fast as the dominant way of life in North American society. The approach, exemplified by the McDonaldâs organization, is symbolic of several wider dehumanizing processes pervading society:
McDonaldization refers to the process by which the principles of the fast-food restaurant are coming to dominate more and more sectors of American society as well as the rest of the world. (Ritzer, 1993, p3)
This influential work has spawned a literature on the word âfastâ that focuses on the cultural processes which ensue in tourism (Bryman, 1999; Weaver, 2005). It presents a vision of tourism which is increasingly disengaged from its roots in education, religion and exploration (Walton, 2009). It is symptomatic, it is argued, of a tourism that is âsucking the difference out of the differenceâ (MacCannell, 1989). In the context of travel, Høyer (2009) argues that conference tourism is a classic example; in his view, it is a corridor of nothingness that results in little meaning and heavy environmental impact. The outcome, he notes, is part of the process of âgrobalizationâ, a term first introduced by Ritzer (2004). This refers to the organizational need to increase sales and profits without recourse to factors such as local culture in production and environmental externalities in costing structures. It has an affiliation with the concept of McDonaldization:
Grobalization leads to an increasing dominance of nothing in the form of non-places, non-things, non-people, and non-service, all at the expense of something on a nothing-something continuum ⌠Non-places of late-modernity are, for example, major highway crossings, highway motels and international airports. (Høyer, 2009, p65)
The guiding philosophy of slow then is partly an antithesis to fast, but there is also a connectedness with ecology and sustainable development which comes from an interest in locality and place as well as from strands of green travel. This is not articulated in any way as a school of thought to which we might refer. The ideas have been unfolded by an eclectic mix of writers, advocates and scholars during the past two decades. Nevertheless, there are several recurrent themes and values present in the literature that can be summarized as:
1 slow equates to quality time
2 it is about physically slowing down to enjoy what is on offer
3 a quality experience
4 meaning and engagement
5 in tune with ecology and diversity.
Other characteristics relating to slow travel include the avoidance of staged authenticity, if that is ever possible, for some would argue that tourism is about performance and contestation of space (Mordue, 2005). In the moving space, slow travel is also about a critical appreciation of the journey and with an underlying value that travel need not impact heavily on the environment. Some of these elements have been codified as a set of guiding principles for the tourist, such as one provided by Jenner and Smith (2008). This is an example of several books which exhort the tourist to adopt green travel modes, but also encourage the reader to enjoy a place by taking on the mindset of the slow traveller: it is a perception about how to engage with both the travel element and the destination. For example, tourists are encouraged to choose destinations nearer to home, to travel by environmentally sensitive modes and select accommodation that has minimal environmental impact.
MacCannell (1989), in his seminal work, The Tourist, recollects that all tourists seek much the same, regardless of the form of tourism, although he makes little reference to environmental consciousness. But do they? Segmentation is more prevalent than hitherto; there is a multitude of values in the market and this renders it more difficult to portray the tourist in a set of neat typologies. Even the slow traveller cannot be categorized as one discrete market segment; there are shades of green (Dickinson et al, 2010a). Some tourists look for more than others, and with an intensity of experience that is widely different to the most casual holiday participant. Those seeking slowness in their holidays have been described as a niche market, prevalent in Europe (especially in Italy), and North America, but it is far more widespread than this.
As discussed before, the concept of slow has been considered more widely in the context of gastronomy and cultural heritage than in relation to the act of travel per se. The early work was pioneered in the 1980s by Petrini, the founder of the Slow Food movement located in Italy, but the concept has now expanded across Europe and to a lesser extent in North America (Pietryowski, 2004). There are numerous examples of food and beverage production as an important element of destination development where local provenance and authenticity fit well. Many ecotourism companies have taken advantage of this; they offer exploration holidays (experiential in nature and also often marketed as being pro-poor) that embrace the culinary arts of different communities with which they engage (Bessiere, 1998). Thus, whilst there is a strong European strand of thought, the art of slow food and locality retains a presence at destinations across the globe, in spite of the globalization of agro-food and much of the hospitality sector. This is a diversity which facilitates differentiation, as much a hallmark of slow food as is enjoyment of locality and the commonplace in slow travel (Halager and Richards, 2002).
There is also emerging a literature base that explores the relationship between transport and tourism (Lumsdon and Page, 2004). Much of the work relates to transport as a means of destination development and as an enabler of tourism where speed, access and travel cost are key elements (Prideaux, 2000). However, there is a conspicuous lack of research on slow travel or, for that matter, green travel (Page, 1999). There is a distinction. Green travel focuses on the transport element only, especially in terms of resource use and carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions per capita per trip, whereas the journey to and around the destination is an important concept within slow travel, and slow travel refers to the whole tourist experience. However, in the discussion of the components of tourism, a relative lack of attention is given to the actual travel element. Some writers have questioned whether there are differences between travel and tourism, but these have focused, for the most part, on the world of the travel writer in defining the roles of the traveller and tourist (Dann, 1998). There is also the concept of transport as tourism, which Lumsdon and Page (2004, p6) explain as:
designed or in use mainly for the visitor market only, is often indirect as it seeks to offer a different perspective of a destination, and is rarely fast. The travel cost model does not apply in this context. The expenditure of time or duration of travel is the prime purpose of the trip and is the main benefit.
The emphasis appears to be on transport as a form of tourism at the destination, or as Bull (1991, p32) refers to it: âmore properly a form of attraction than transportâ. This narrows the interpretation somewhat. Transport to the destination is also part of slow travel, and equally it can have high intrinsic value (Walton, 2009).
Fast travel is often associated with the journey to the destination, and involves intensive energy consumption leading to high levels of CO2 emissions.Thus, our interpretation of slow travel is that it is a counter-balance to this fundamental and negative factor; the mindset of the slow traveller therefore includes not only an experiential element, but it is also interlaced with a degree of environmental consciousness that leads to an avoidance of heavy environmental impacts. It is the difference between travelling as transit and travelling as a journey (Peters, 2006).
Thus, we exclude from slow travel the three main transport modes associated with contemporary tourism development: the car, the cruise liner and the aeroplane, as they are the major users of finite resources and generate CO2 emissions and other pollutants in an unsustainable manner.
The Tourism System
The slow travel approach signifies a different model to mainstream tourism development as advanced in most tourism textbooks (see, for example, Duval, 2007). Mainstream tourism is based on the principles of the supply chain, and supply-led consumer demand, maximizing the flow of tourists in relation to transport, accommodation and destination capacity. The aim of the tourism system is, therefore, to provide an adequate throughput of visitors (and their expenditure) in any given country or destination so as to meet the needs of the suppliers who put the elements together for profitable gain (Mill and Morrison, 1985). This is commonly referred to as mass tourism, as there is a need for substantial flows of demand, and it has been the main thrust of development since the middle decades of the 20th century.
Krippendorf (1984, pxv) explains the social stimulus for the tourism system as a form of ephemeral escapism from urban life:
All this falls into a kind of cycle, which may be termed recreation cycle of man in industrial society: we travel in order to recharge the batteries, to restore our physical and mental strength. On our trip we consume climate, nature and landscapes, the culture and people in the places we visit, which become âtherapy zonesâ for the purpose. We then return home, more or less fit to defy everyday life until next time ⌠but the wish to leave again and even more often is soon with us again âŚ
In order for the system to work efficiently there is a need for fast, price-sensitive and direct travel to the destination from originating markets. Despite the decline in the popularity of the heavily packaged holiday and the rise of the internet as a main distribution intermediary, the structural elements of the supply chain have not changed radically. The process remains an essentially industrial one based on batch production of air travel, intense utilization of perishable accommodation stock at the destination and the creation of large-scale infrastructure, such as highways, car parking and hospitality outlets, to support the tourist flows stimulated through the marketing efforts of suppliers in a world of cascading substitutes (Lumsdon, 1997).
Krippendorfâs work, however, points to the flaws in the system, especially in terms of learned cultural values that the system perpetuates. He suggests that values such as owning possessions, egoism, wealth and consumption have been propagated over community, moderation and honesty, and that the former are reflected in tourism consumption. He also points to the widespread increase in the globalization of supply over the multitude of local small business sectors and the increasing encroachment of government in the provision of services and infrastructure to meet the needs of mass tourism. Finally, he expresses a concern that resources for tourism are being used as if they were inexhaustible and that, somehow, the side effects of economic growth can be readily fixed by technology. Thus, for Krippendorf, the tourism system and mass tourism have many flaws; tourism as an escape from everyday life contains the seeds of its own destruction.
Trends and the Environmental Impact of Tourism
Domestic tourism (overnight stays, rather than day visits) remains the most important element of demand in most countries. Despite this, there are relatively few studies which focus on this aspect (Cooper et al, 2008). Bigano et al (2004), however, have undertaken a comparison of domestic and international tourism. This illuminating work indicates that for most countries, domestic tourism accounts for the majority of tourist trips. For example, in the mature USA market there are an estimated total number of 1059 million tourist trips per annum, of which 999 million are domestic (i.e. some 94 per cent of all trips). In emergent markets such as China, India and Brazil, some 98â99 per cent of all tourist trips are domestic.
In most countries the number of domestic trips per annum remains less than the total population, indicating that people are taking less than one holiday trip per year. However, in 22 affluent countries, residents take more holiday trips than this. For example, in Sweden the average holiday trip ratio is 4.8 trips per person per annum. In the USA, the average is 3.7 trips per person per annum. It is, however, essential to note that domestic tourism is far more prevalent than international tourism; the estimate by Bigano et al (2004) is that it is five times larger. They also note that developing economies such as Brazil, China, India and Indonesia have important tourist markets whi...
