Great Expectations

Imagination and Anticipation in Tourism

Jonathan Skinner, Dimitrios Theodossopoulos

• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Year: 2011
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9780857452788
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Cultural & Social Anthropology
• Index: Social Sciences

The negotiation of expectations in tourism is a complex and dynamic process – one that is central to the imagination of cultural difference. Expectations not only affect the lives and experiences of tourists, but also their hosts, and play an important part in the success or failure of the overall tourism experience. It is for this reason, the authors argue, that special attention should be given to how expectations constitute and sustain tourism. The case studies presented here explore what fuels the desires to visit particular places, to what degree expectations inform the experience of the place, and the frequent disjunctions between tourist expectations and experiences. Careful attention is paid to how the imagination of the visitor inspires the imagination of the host, and vice-versa; how tourists and host communities actively imagine, re-imagine, and shape each other's lives. This realization, has profound consequences, not solely for academic analysis, but for all those who participate in and work within the tourism industry.

Table of contents

• Great Expectations
• Contents
• Chapter 1 - Introduction: The Play of Expectation in Tourism
• Chapter 2 - Success and Access to Knowledge in the Tourist-Local Encounter: Confrontations with the Unexpected in a Turkish Community
• Chapter 3 - Emberá Indigenous Tourism and the World of Expectations
• Chapter 4 - The Paradox of Gaze and Resistance in Native American Cultural Tourism: An Alaskan Case Study
• Chapter 5 - Forward into the Past: 'Digging' the Balearic Islands
• Chapter 6 - On Difference, Desire and the Aesthetics of the Unexpected: The White Masai in Kenyan Tourism
• Chapter 7 - Displeasure on 'Pleasure Island' Tourist Expectation and Desire on and off the Cuban Dance Floor
• Chapter 8 - The Coach Fellas: Tourism Performance and Expectation in Ireland
• Chapter 9 - Going on Holiday to Imagine War: The Western Front Battlefields as Sites of Commenoration and Contestation
• Chapter 10 - Touring the Dead: Imagination, Embodiment and Affect in Gunther von Hagens' Body Worlds Exhibitions
• Chapter 11 - Afterworld: The Tour as Imagined, Lived, Experienced and Told
• Notes on Contributors
• Index