| As travel has evolved and as
most newspaper travel sections and travel magazines represent
it, travel tends to mean tourism with its control by airlines,
chain hotels, rental car agencies and their consolidated power
to influence. Although travel writing, influenced by conservation
and preservation, has diversified, travel advertising creates
a dominant context of brand names and centralized influence,
of what's standard, predictable and safe.
Yet most travel writing as well remains focused on attractions,
theme parks, new hotels, changes in transportation services
- on places as sources of things to see and do. Significant
dates and personalities drive history.
In the same way that history is the record of winners, places
tend to be represented by dominant forces, tourism chief among
them.
Irreverently, "place" in the first instance suggests that
people don't have to travel at all to enjoy what traditionally
has made leisure travel important. "Place" represents an orientation
to wherever we find ourselves. This can be as close to home
as a neighborhood we haven't come to know well -- perhaps even
our own with whose history and, except for its most routine
patterns, with even its day-to-day life we are unfamiliar.
In terms of quick getaways, "place" might mean overnighting
where we live but elsewhere than under our own roof. "Place"
suggests visitors who are willingly drawn in, defining where
we find ourselves by first hand experience that results from
a good degree of exploration, rather than transactionally moved
about by prescribed options.
Historically, leisure travel and its bundled effect as tourism
has been driven by forces largely extraneous to the place traveled.
These forces include travel agents, tour operators and travel
advertisers that in turn include carriers and lodgings. Destinations
have represented themselves chiefly through travel marketing
that aligns with these interests. Mostly travel industry figures
represent the world's places and they speak of places as destinations.
How might things be different and why should they be?
Looked at from within, places seethe with their own dynamics we
call politics. Groups vie to re-define the past of their places
and direct its future. Three main interests tend to represent
the integrity of place: interests of conservation, preservation
and culture. These represent the natural environment, the built
environment and how people define themselves with regard to each
other apart from outsiders as well as interactively with them.
All three interests concern themselves with heritage. All work
to balance out economic determinism, which in most of the world's
places finds mainstream tourism a significant partner if not a
driving force.
At least in the United States, these three forces operate
separately. All concern place but don't come together around
this concept. Yet for the average citizen, place is what most
often is in issue. People tend to respond the same way when
an historic building gets torn down as when a stream or lake
becomes polluted and no longer fully available for recreation.
It's the loss of the familiar that people react to. Culture
figures in the same way. People tend to be welcoming but suspicious
of outsiders who seek to impose change. Visitors may be welcomed
by the ones and tens but not by the thousands and tens of thousands.
Over time, places tend to work out their ethnic differences.
In time, immigrant neighborhoods, once maybe shunned, become
integrated with the mainstream and valued for their integrity.
People don't like to see traditional neighborhoods disrupted
by new highways or by other forced dislocations.
These forces of conservation, preservation and culture represent
a significant bulwark against how mainstream tourism tends to
objectify places by narrow touristic value. But their effectiveness
is diluted when they operate independently of each other. Each
has its local partisans who tend to get involved with environmental
causes, with saving landmark structures from demolition, with
conserving historical artifacts and art.
At a time when homogenizing influences ascend with great power,
place represents a counterforce. And, as already indicated,
place also represents an important way of viewing travel.
Therefore, place as a concept joins what is local and long
term in contrast to what is outside and short term as invoked
by leisure travel. When locals address place instead of only
its separate aspects, the values of place strengthen. When travelers
become more aware of place rather than simply as destination,
they become more respectful of where they find themselves.
Indeed, travelers might easily be seen as people who respect
their own places while visiting places elsewhere, sensitized
at home by values they bring to the places they visit and that
they share with people resident there.
Locals everywhere, then, might well strengthen their capacity
to slow the impacts of change that mainstream tourism represents
by emphasizing their qualities of place. Of course, for this
to work, mainstream tourism will have to entertain these qualities
more willingly. One way to consider what might happen is to
look analogously at how organic foods and other natural products
increasingly show up on supermarket shelves. Market forces are
driving markets to expand what they have historically either
not supplied at all or in too small regard.
The question becomes, how to broaden the idea of travel by
the concept of place. The sequence for effecting change suggests
a start by demonstrating greater demand in the marketplace for
place - what the travel industry would call "product" -- that
is everywhere available. Simultaneously, the separate elements
of place need to come together. Conservation viewed as "environment"
carries pejorative baggage. Preservation viewed as elitist carries
the same. Ditto culture as Culture. Place carries no baggage.
Granted that the term at least at first appears awkward. It
wouldn't be the first that nonetheless captured popular imagination.
"Lipstick" made it. So did "tourism."
The Market for Place
Surveys increasingly show that the market for what place embraces
is greater than ever. (Request a copy from the author)
Travel editors and travel writers can be critical to popular
embrace of this new regard for place.
Although we know that travel has been contextually absorbed
by tourism, the lurch necessary to effect change may come from
how place opens the way to more profitable newspaper travel
sections. Already the most profitable sections of newspapers,
their focus on place may help them become more profitable. These
sections represent the pivot around which tourism might be redefined
as a way that influences the mindset of readers about place
and, in the first instance, about their own resident places.
Place for the first time would encourage local businesses
that traditionally have advertised only in out of town newspapers
to advertise locally as well.
For example, imagine if instead of Travel these sections
of newspapers were now called Place.
This would encourage the advertising of local bed-and-breakfasts
and every other kind of lodging because of a new emphasis on
local people "getting away" in and discovering their own cities.
Restaurants have long promoted dinners out. What if coupled
with staying overnight at a local B&B, not just for a wedding
anniversary but also at whim? What if museums and galleries
got behind the effort and packaged art opening, dinner and room
for the night? Books, and even guidebooks, about where people
live would become products for local advertising. This wouldn't
draw book advertising away from book sections. This would be
added opportunistic advertising. Neighborhood shopping districts,
antiques districts, amusement districts and other sources of
products for sale distinct in their setting would become additional
prospects. Some restaurants would want to appear in Place instead
of (or in addition to) dining sections.
As the concept takes hold, writers would be assigned articles
that treat places more fully, telling more about what makes
places tick, more about issues, more about living history that,
without choosing up political sides, talks to popular expression.
Instead of just reporting on major attractions, writing would
report on situations in process of becoming.
People to People Connections
Place, as an essential determinant of how we live, would resonate
with travelers who are already drawn to the idea of place at home.
In the same way that travelers in recent years have moved beyond
the beach as a way to spend tropical vacations, visiting museums,
historic districts and natural attractions that include trails
and preserved landscapes, so they might be drawn to visit people
in their myriad representational groups, people genuinely of their
place who, by drawing in visitors of like mind, help strengthen
local commitment to values of place.
Tourism has never effectively tapped into people-to-people
opportunities. Yet newly sensitized tourist agencies might find
enormous opportunity in diversifying the appeal of their places.
At a time when a limited number of international carriers, chain
hotels, mass tour operators and the like tend to duplicate the
travel experience endlessly, less well budgeted places, including
less commercial attractions everywhere, find themselves disadvantaged
in getting word out.
Place offers an alternative sector that's more local and authentic,
which, in a world increasingly motivated by conservation, preservation
and culture seeks authenticity, can help make local experience
more valuable. It's easy to imagine this alternative become
a powerful transnational influence in tourism. Accordingly,
work has to be directed to bring together preservation, conservation
and cultural groups in what we think of as "destinations" (which
of course today means everywhere) and work has to be done from
within travel. Both need to re-focus on place. Reoriented, travel
writing - and travel writers -- can provide a nexus.
It's an unfamiliar task for travel writers to become engaged
in something of pivotal importance. Yet we shouldn't be daunted
just because the idea is novel. Innovation makes sense at a
time when the profession is hurting from the fallout of 9/11.
At least in the short term, travel is altogether turning more
regional and local. People are looking for what's more authentic.
Most vacations remain matters of only a few days. The new emphasis
on travel nearer home is likely to capture a larger, lasting
market share.
Thoughtfully driven, this proposal to effect change might
succeed. |
