Academica Turistica
Tourism & Innovation Journal – Revija za turizem in inovativnost
Year 11, No. 2, December 2018, issn 2335-4194
https://doi.org/10.26493/2335-4194.11(2)
99 Resonance of Cultural Tourism: Introduction to the Special Issue
Irena Weber
101 Cultural Tourism from an Academic Perspective
Tina Orel Frank and Zorana Medarić
111 Looking for a Relationship with the Sea: Urban-Scape and Cosmopolitan Memories
in Contemporary Odessa
Emilio Cocco
117 Jewish Tourism in Berlin and Germany’s Public Repentance for the Holocaust
Anne M. Blankenship
127 The Influence of an International Festival on Visitors’ Attitudes
toward Diverse Cultures
Yao-Yi Fu, Suosheng Wang, Carina King, and Yung-Tsen Chu
143 Tea for Tourists: Cultural Capital, Representation, and Borrowing in the Tea Culture
of Mainland China and Taiwan
Irena Weber
155 Anthropological Portrait of a Home Turned Into a Tourist Resource
Helena Tolić
161 The Interplay between the Verbal and Visual in Outdoor Interpretive Panels
Šarolta Godnič Vičič, Nina Lovec, and Ljudmila Sinkovič
171 Abstracts in Slovene – Povzetki v slovenščini
175 Instructions for Authors
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98 | Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018
Resonance of Cultural Tourism:
Introduction to the Special Issue
IrenaWeber
Guest Editor
University of Primorska, Faculty of Tourism Studies – Turistica, Slovenia
irena.weber@fts.upr.si
https://doi.org/10.26493/2335-4194.11.99-100
Tourism education and the industry havemuch
to offer each other, but education’s contribution
must ultimately be rooted in cultivating stu-
dents’ capacities to question, to critique, to re-
late, and to engage with the tourismworld from
a standpoint of values and convictions honed
through thoughtful consideration and exposure
to the perspectives of others. The development
of practical vocational competencies must be
pursued in dialogue with, rather than ahead or
in place of, humanistic capacities. Otherwise,
wemay find ourselves to be very efficiently pro-
ducing a world that is not of the shape we want
at all. (Caton, 2014)
At one of the regular meetings of the Department
of Cultural Tourism at the Faculty of Tourism Stud-
ies – Turistica, the idea was floated that a special issue
of Academica Turistica could produce a body of work
that could be used, among others, to support teaching
in the newly established undergraduate programme of
Cultural tourism.
Several preliminary discussions of the various top-
ics researched by the members of the Department in-
dicated that to produce a comprehensive work on the
subject of cultural tourism as a rounded teaching ma-
terial would be a tall order indeed. However, tying up
individual researchers’ interests in a meaningful dia-
logue that may hopefully resonate among the mem-
bers of the Department, the students and the network
of colleagues at other education and research institu-
tions working in the same or similar areas appeared
more feasible. Eventually, on a rather short notice, the
call for papers was extended through personal net-
works inviting foreign colleagues to contribute their
research to this special issue of Academica Turistica on
‘Resonance of Cultural Tourism,’ expanding thus local
resonance to multiple localities with good vibrations.
At its core, resonance is a quality of evoking re-
sponse. This pertains to both material and symbolic
aspects of embodiment, communication, spatial ori-
entation and relational practices. In a phenomeno-
logical sense, resonance refers to everyday cultural
tourism encounters that vibrate within the timespace
of material and symbolic exchange, of ‘Being-in-the-
world’ and the co-production of sense and meaning.
The widest framework for the special issue was the
understanding that cultural tourism should not be
treated as merely one of the adjective tourisms. Cul-
ture in cultural tourism was understood holistically as
a complexity of knowledge, beliefs, arts, morals, law,
customs, capabilities and habits found from Tyler on
in numerous permutations of a definition. The other
framework was a clear notion of an existing split in
tourism studies between business oriented and social
science and humanities oriented research and teach-
ing, with the business side occupying a much larger
portion of the field which renders the empowerment
of humanities approach rather imperative in order to
address the immense disparity. The present slim vol-
ume represents a small attempt in this direction with
seven papers that are predominantly based on original
fieldwork and supported by qualitative methodology.
The first review paper on ‘Cultural Tourism from
an Academic Perspective’ by Tina Orel Frank and Zo-
rana Medarić aptly demonstates the complexity of
Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018 | 99
Irena Weber Resonance of Cultural Tourism
contemporary dilemmas in defining both culture and
tourism that ultimately calls for more epistemological
work on cultural tourism in the future. The notion of
a resonance is directly addressed in the research note
by Emilio Cocco who specializes inter alia in mar-
itime sociology and the Mediterranean. His prelimi-
nary take on his new research in Odessa is grounded
in the concept of contemporary interpretations of
cosmopolitanism and his innovative approaches to
sea/land relationships in various tourism destinations
with an emphasis on port cities. Looking at the trau-
matic relationship between Germany and the Jewish
diaspora, Anne M. Blankenship roots her research in
anthropological frames of secular pilgrimage and the
concept of repentance to show how Jewish tourists ex-
perience Berlin and howBerlin is addressing theHolo-
caust through various memorials and topical guided
tours. Switching to another city across the sea, Indi-
anapolis, our colleagues Yao-Yi Fu, Suosheng Wang,
Carina King, and Yung-Tsen Chu tackled ‘The Influ-
ence of an International Festival on Visitors’ Attitudes
toward Diverse Cultures’ by measuring visitation fre-
quency, stay-time at the event, similar event partic-
ipation, cultural interest, and overseas travel experi-
ence contributing to any observed differences in visi-
tors’ attitudes. Their work represents an effort towards
a potential longitudinal study that addresses cultural
diversity in a productive, quantifiable way. Bourdieu’s
cultural capital underlines a field study of the art of tea
by Irena Weber in the mainland China and Taiwan in
the form of tea houses, specialized tea museums, tea
trails, guided tours, and tea tastings. A research note
by a young researcher Helena Tolić, ‘Anthropological
Portrait of a Home Turned Into a Tourist Resource,’
testifies to the sound Croatian tradition of anthropo-
logical research and teaching in providing an example
of doing anthropology at home with the aim to tackle
the comparatively valuable case of transformative and
contested contemporary tourism processes. Home in
a sense of the location is also the topic of the linguis-
tic analysis ‘The Interplay between the Verbal and Vi-
sual in Outdoor Interpretive Panels’ by Šarolta Godnič
Vičič, Nina Lovec and Ljudmila Sinkovič that employs
the Barthesian semiotic approach of the relationship
between the textual and the visual within the context
of cultural heritage from the perspective of contem-
porary linguistics.
Last but not least the cover photograph depicts a
detail of a mobile shown at the first Ars Turistica ex-
hibition that took place in 2017 in front of the Faculty
of Tourism Studies – Turistica. It was the results of the
Art and Tourism class, where Slovenian and Erasmus
exchange students were engaged in a creative dialogue
involving land art, kinetic sculpture, contemporary
tourism, mobility and sustainability. Walt Whitman’s
stance from his Song of the Open Road forms a spiral
in the middle.Whitman, after being done with indoor
complaints, libraries, querulous criticisms, took to the
open road not to get rid of everyone, on the contrary,
to meet the less fortunate, the marginal, the forgot-
ten, to extend the hand to another traveler, much in
the same way as the great Slovenian poet of the open
road and marginality, Frane Milčinski Ježek, who saw
that all roads, however crisscrossed, ultimately lead to
another human being that should not be overlooked
or forgotten.Without the open road and the stretched
hand, what shape is our (tourist) world after all?
References
Caton, K. (2014). Underdisciplinarity: Where are the hu-
manities in tourism education? Journal of Hospitality,
Leisure, Sport & Tourism Education, 15, 24–33.
This paper is published under the terms of the
Attribution- NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0
International (cc by-nc-nd 4.0) License.
100 | Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018
Review Article
Cultural Tourism from an Academic Perspective
Tina Orel Frank
University of Primorska, Faculty of Tourism Studies – Turistica, Slovenia
tina.orel@fts.upr.si
ZoranaMedarić
University of Primorska, Faculty of Tourism Studies – Turistica, Slovenia
zorana.medaric@fts.upr.si
Cultural tourism is a rather new term that has been much discussed in recent years.
Despite many empirical surveys dealing with the notion of cultural tourism, its defi-
nition remains elusive. The objective of this research is to investigate the presumably
abundant differentiating experts’ views on how to define cultural tourism aswell as to
spot the appearing ‘subgroups’ that the theory classifies as being subtypes of cultural
tourism. To reach this objective, recently published scientific papers will be explored
in terms of extracting experts’ perspective on defining cultural tourism. The paper
aims at finding similarities as well as discrepancies among the obtained definitions.
It also focuses on extracting authors’ views on what subgroup types could still be
defined as a part of cultural tourism.
Keywords: cultural tourism, definition analysis, subtypes of cultural tourism
https://doi.org/10.26493/2335-4194.11.101-110
Introduction
With its rapid development and growth, tourism has
specialised and spread into numerous subfields. Cul-
tural tourism is just one of them, yet one of the most
discussed and analysed, particularly since the 1990s.
Even though the term started to be used only in recent
years the idea of cultural tourism is not in anyway new.
According to Richards (2018), in the post-World War
ii period, cultural tourism began to emerge as a so-
cial phenomenon and as a relevant issue in academic
studies.
Starting with the dilemma of objectively defining
tourism, as well as culture as such, the interpretations
of cultural tourism vary. A vast number of perspec-
tives and ways exist to define the two main concepts,
tourism and culture, inside the compound cultural
tourism, which underlines the problem of providing
one tangible all-purpose definition of cultural tourism.
‘There are almost as many definitions and variations
of definitions of cultural tourism as there are cultural
tourists’, McKercher and Du Cros (2002, p. 3) claim.
The purpose of this work is to review the current def-
initions of cultural tourism appearing in academic
work.
The theoretical part views cultural tourism from
two angles. Firstly, it considers the definitions of the
two concepts inside cultural tourism separately; sec-
ondly, it discusses the two appearing perspectives in
defining cultural tourism as a lexical unit. Neverthe-
less, it should be noted that the definitions of tourism
and culture separately do not just simply combine in
defining cultural tourism. This is a much more com-
plex concept inwhich tourism and culture interact and
overlap.
The understanding and conceptualising of tourism,
culture, and cultural tourism have undoubtedly un-
dergone many major and minor changes in recent
years, especially in ‘the extent of cultural tourism con-
Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018 | 101
Tina Orel Frank and Zorana Medari Cultural Tourism from an Academic Perspective
sumption, and the forms of culture being consumed
by cultural tourists’ (Richards, 1996). Defining cultural
tourism is therefore also a time-bound task. Hence,
this paper examines the recent definitions of cultural
tourism appearing in 2018 in academic texts with the
purpose of exploring the recent perspectives on cul-
tural tourism in the academic sphere.
TwoMain Concepts: Tourism and Culture
If we base the definition of cultural tourism on the two
key concepts – culture and tourism – we can define
cultural tourism from the perspective of the definition
of tourism or from the perspective of the definition of
culture. This part of the paper examines the definitions
of tourism and culture from the two separate perspec-
tives.Nevertheless, it should bementioned that certain
authors do not make a clear distinction between the
two. As for MacCannell (1993) and Jamal and Robin-
son (2009, p. 3), all tourism is a cultural experience, or
even further, for Urry (1990) ‘tourism is culture’. This
aspect makes the definition of cultural tourism even
more demanding as tourism as a whole is treated as an
element of culture. This additionally blurs the under-
standing of the concept of cultural tourism and hin-
ders the path of investigating its specific features, its
unique types of expeditions, typical destinations, and
the typology of cultural tourists (Rohrscheidt, 2008).
Tourism
In the previous six years, tourism has played a leading
role in the global economy (World Travel & Tourism
Council, 2017) and, as such, it has surpassed the oil,
food and auto industries (unwto, 2017). In 2017
alone, the number of international arrivals grew by 7
to 1,322 million, which surpassed the previous trend
of 4 annual growth, started in 2010 (unwto, 2018).
These data show tourism to be a key developmental
and research topic, but tourism ismuchmore than sta-
tistical data on economic growth. It is the lens through
which to look and give meaning to modern and post-
modern reality (Bin Salim, Ibrahim, & Hassan. 2012,
p. 137). Viewed as such, the definition of tourism re-
mains problematic for those who analyse it (Lickorish
& Jenkins, 1997, p. 1). Because tourism has shownmas-
sive development and growth in recent years, there are
many players dealing with it from many different per-
spectives, which leads to a vast number of possible
definitions that nevertheless also vary in time. Its def-
inition thus varies on the perspective from which it is
studied (Mason, 2015).
In general, tourism definitions are separated into
conceptual and statistical (technical or operational)
definitions (Lickorish & Jenkins, 1997; Vanhove, 2005;
Gilbert, 1990). Statistical or technical definitions view
tourism as an economic sector and thus evaluate and
measure the value of tourism, which is particularly
variable in different countries, whereas the concep-
tual definitions see tourism as a broader activity af-
fecting many other aspects of reality and deal with
the core meaning of tourism. unwto (1993) defines
tourism as ‘the activities of persons during their travel
and stay in a place outside their usual place of resi-
dence, for a continuous period of less than one year,
for leisure, business or other purposes’. These kinds of
definitions arise from the need to statistically measure
the standards inside tourism (Mieczkowski, 1990, in
Vanhove, 2005). Conceptual definitions, on the other
hand, view tourism as a broader phenomenon. One of
the conceptual definitions, proposed by Kaspar (1996,
pp. 15–16, in Planina & Mihalič, 2002), views tourism
as the whole of relations and phenomena that are a
consequence of travelling to less known places and
communities for a shorter time with the intent to sat-
isfy certain needs.
Inside the realm of tourism-related definitions of
cultural tourism, one open difficulty is the criterion
for distinguishing cultural tourism within the overall
phenomenon of tourism (Rohrscheidt, 2008). The au-
thor places the essence of the problem in the question
of ‘what importance should be given to culture-related
goals during a touring event and/or whit what inten-
sity should culture-related contents appear during a
trip so that it may be classified as a cultural travel’ (p.
47). Further to this dilemma, the next question arises,
concerning the understanding of the types of attrac-
tions and trips. More specifically, which attractions or
trips are considered cultural and which are not?
Rohrscheidt (2008), who investigated many dif-
ferent approaches to defining the concept of cultural
tourism with a specific goal of providing a holistic
102 | Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018
Tina Orel Frank and Zorana Medari Cultural Tourism from an Academic Perspective
functional definition of cultural tourism, proposed
a definition that is based on the holistic definition
of tourism, acknowledging its superiority, by con-
ceptualising cultural tourism as one of the forms in
which tourism appears. After examining the defini-
tions, the author proposed a definition that ‘will not
only present academic approach to significant fea-
tures of cultural tourism but will also make it pos-
sible to practically distinguish its catalogue of prod-
ucts from options on offer from other branches of
tourism’ (Rohrscheidt, 2008). His definition takes into
account cultural tourism from phenomenological and
economics aspects and defines cultural tourism in the
following way (Rohrscheidt, 2008, p. 58):
The term ‘cultural tourism’ may relate to all
tourist expeditions taken by groups or individ-
uals, where encounters with sites, events and
other assets of high culture or popular culture,
or effort aimed at improving one’s knowledge
of the surrounding world organized by man
are the essential part/aspect of the traveller’s
itinerary or are a clinching argument for in-
dividuals’ decision on whether or not take up
such a journey/participate in such a trip.
Culture
‘Culture’ is another all-embracing term appearing in
many possible forms, thus comprising many possible
definitions. Tomlinson (1991, p. 4) notes that all these
definitions either prove that there is confusion in this
area or that the term itself is so broad that it can ac-
tually account for all the described forms. Instead of
trying to define what culture is, Tomlinson (1991) pro-
poses focusing on how the term is used. Two possi-
ble ways of perceiving culture are seen as a process
(process-based) or as a product (product-based). The
view on culture as a process is derived from anthro-
pology and sociology, ‘which regard culture mainly as
codes of conduct embedded in a specific social group’
(Richards, 1996, p. 229), whereas culture as a prod-
uct approach regards culture as the product of ‘indi-
vidual or group activities to which certain meanings
are attached’ (p. 229). Richards (1996) adds that the
two terms rarely overlap, however in tourism there ex-
ists a certain level of integration. Culture as process
is transformed through tourism (as well as through
other social mechanisms) into culture as product. Cul-
ture is the aim of tourist arrivals whereas the presence
of tourists also leads to creating cultural manifesta-
tions.
The first, classic definition of culture byTylor (1871)
is rather broad and (still)widely used among social sci-
ence researchers. He defined culture as ‘that complex
whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals,
law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits ac-
quired by man as a member of society’ (Bennett, 2015,
p. 547), although in general discourse culturewas often
understood in more narrow terms. The perception of
culture has also been changing through time. Up until
1970, the general scope of culture was often limited to
what is generally described as ‘high culture’ (literature,
arts, music, etc.). However, the 1980s proposed a new
general understanding of the culture that also touches
upon tangible artefacts (sites) and intangible compo-
nents (behaviour, customs, etc.), which were generally
described as a part of the ‘low culture’ (Richards, 1996,
p. 25), popular or daily culture. Hofstede added an
additional perspective that stresses the aspect of con-
stant contact and interaction between cultures: ‘cul-
ture refers to the cumulative deposit of knowledge,
experience, beliefs, values, attitudes, meanings, hier-
archies, religion, notions of time, roles, spatial rela-
tions, concepts of the universe, and material objects
and possessions acquired by a group of people in the
course of generations through individual and group
striving’ (Hofstede, 1997).
The definition if cultural tourism can, therefore, be
based on a broad understanding of culture, for exam-
ple, Dreyer’s definition that defines cultural tourism as
‘any journey focusing on (broadly understood) “cul-
ture.” Hence, the term refers to a specific (new) seg-
ment of tourism. Educational and study tours consti-
tute special forms within this segment’ (Dreyer, 2000,
p. 21). In this manner, cultural tourism could be any
kind of tourism involving educational or entertaining
components (Rohrscheidt, 2008). Considering this
broader comprehension of culture, it offers a limitless
list of what could be considered as cultural, compris-
ing almost all aspects of human life. An example of this
Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018 | 103
Tina Orel Frank and Zorana Medari Cultural Tourism from an Academic Perspective
view on defining cultural tourism could be found in
the additional part of Dreyer’s aforementioned defini-
tion: ‘In broadermeaning, the termof cultural tourism
contains the element of “culture in tourism.” Hence,
each form of tourism with integral cultural features is
understood as cultural tourism’ (Dreyer, 2000).
Cultural Tourism: Definitions
In 2013, The Routledge Handbook of Cultural Tourism
(Smith & Richards, 2013) was one of the first works to
offer a broader insight into many perspectives on cul-
tural tourism. The introduction explains that cultural
tourism ismore in the discourse of academics and pol-
icymakers than in theminds of thosewho visit cultural
attractions and attend cultural events (p. 1). The men-
tioned work comprises 50 chapters that shed light on
many perspectives from which to examine the idea of
cultural tourism. There are three main themes to un-
derstanding the book’s key messages. Firstly, the truth
in cultural tourism lays in contemporary events and
not from an eternally true perspective. Secondly, cul-
tural tourism should be considered a global issue and,
thirdly, the understanding of cultural tourism asks for
a critical analysis of the social dynamics inside attrac-
tions or destinations.
Bonink (1992, in Richards, 1996) reviewed the ex-
isting definitions of cultural tourism and established
two main approaches: the sites and monuments ap-
proach or descriptive approach and the conceptual ap-
proach. The two approaches are clearly different in the
aspect that the first, more technical, focuses on the
types of cultural tourism attractions and the numbers
of cultural tourists, whereas the second is stating the
motives and activities of cultural tourists. The first ap-
proach is strongly tied to the understanding of cul-
ture as a product and tries to identify all the sites and
other attractions that cultural tourists visit. By narrow-
ing the possible sites and providing typologies of cul-
tural tourism attractions, these kinds of definitions see
cultural tourism from a technical perspective and fail
to explore the activities and motives behind the vis-
its of cultural tourists. The conceptual approach, in
contrast, aims to define the motives and meanings at-
tached to cultural tourism activities and is hence more
process-based. McIntosh and Goeldner (1986), for ex-
ample, define cultural tourism as comprising ‘all as-
pects of travel, whereby travellers learn about the his-
tory and heritage of others or about their contempo-
rary ways of life or thought.’
Similarly, atlas (see http://www.tram-research
.com/atlas/presentation.htm) also distinguishes be-
tween the conceptual and technical definition of cul-
tural tourism: the first focuses more on the motives of
cultural visits, whereas the second establishes the cul-
tural sites and attractions cultural tourists might visit.
The latter two could be considered more holistic defi-
nitions of tourism as they contain a more comprehen-
sive presentation of the phenomenon. They give more
focus on culture itself as the goal for tourism and also
pay more attention to the individual characteristics of
travellers inside this type of tourism.
McKecher and Du Cros (2002) also observed def-
initions of cultural tourism and put them in four cat-
egories: tourism-derived, motivational, experiential,
and operational. Tourism-derived definitions put the
concept of cultural tourism inside the framework of
tourism and tourismmanagement theory. They, there-
fore, recognise cultural tourism as special interest
tourism, in which culture stands as a basis for tourist
attraction or motivation to travel (McIntosh & Goeld-
ner, 1986; Zeppel, 1992; Ap, 1999; in McKercher and
Du Cros, 2002; Dreyer, 2000), or as involving interre-
lationships between people, places, and cultural her-
itage (Zeppel & Hall, 1991, in McKercher & Du Cros,
2002). Motivational definitions consider motivation
to be the key factor in defining cultural tourism. They
state that cultural tourists are motivated to travel for
different reasons than other tourists. unwto states
that cultural tourists travel for study tours, perform-
ing arts and cultural tours, travel to festivals and other
events, visit sites and monuments, travel to study na-
ture, folklore or art, and pilgrimages (unwto, 1985,
p. 6, in McKercher & Du Cros, 2002). Experiential or
aspirational definitions consider cultural tourism to
be an experiential activity that involves experiencing
or being in contact with the unique social fabric, her-
itage, and special character of places (Blackwell, 1997;
Schweitzer, 1999, in McKercher & Du Cross, 2002).
The last, operational definitions, which are the most
common, try to define the places, services, activities,
104 | Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018
Tina Orel Frank and Zorana Medari Cultural Tourism from an Academic Perspective
etc. people visit inside cultural tourism. Nevertheless,
it is difficult to state clear parameters to what activity
is considered cultural tourism and what is not. There-
fore, McKercher and Du Cros (2002) propose using
the term cultural tourism as an umbrella term com-
prising many related activities, such as historical, eth-
nic, arts, museum tourism, etc.
Richards (2003) divided the above-mentioned defi-
nitional approaches into two axes: (1) experiential/con-
ceptual vs operational/measurement and (2) tourism-
derived/supply vs motivational/demand (Figure 1).
The first one is differentiated in terms of purpose,
meaning that we either try to conceptualise the term
as well as its meaning for (cultural) tourists or merely
count the number of people participating. The second
one is differentiated in terms of interest in the knowl-
edge about the market for the tourism industry on the
one hand and in understanding the existence of de-
mand on the other. In his recent study Richards (2018)
identified some additional challenges with regard to
the definition of the concept of cultural tourism in the
future. He highlights that more focus should be put on
studying the practices of cultural tourism. The main
problemof the above-presented approach is that it fails
to measure the meaning of the phenomenon (experi-
ential/conceptual) on the one hand and the integration
of supply (tourism-derived definition) and demand
(motivational) on the other. He, therefore, proposes
studying mainly practices of cultural system which
form a system compound of (a) resources (tangible
and intangible heritage, contemporary culture, cre-
ative industries, lifestyles etc.); (b) competences (ways
of doing cultural tourism, increased cultural capital,
reading and interpreting cultural resources, develop-
ment of cultural routes); and (c) meanings (learning,
identity, citizenship), which are interrelated and mu-
tually dependent (Richards, 2018).
Research
The present research aimed at extracting current defi-
nitions of cultural tourism in research articles. To find
relevant scientific articles, we used the key term ‘cul-
tural tourism’ that appeared in the title, among the
keywords, or in the abstract of articles. For the term
‘extraction’, we used the Science Direct, sage, Wiley,
Experiental/
conceptual
(meaning)
Motivational
(demand)
Operational
(measure-
ment)
Tourism
derived/reso-
urce-based
(supply)
Figure 1 Cultural Tourism Definitional Field
(adapted from Richards, 2003)
and Taylor & Francis databases. As for the publishing
date, we were solely interested in recently published
papers, and thus reduced the number of research el-
ements to journal articles published in 2018. In total,
43 scientific articles were selected. Further context-
based selection, however, revealed that some were not
dealing with cultural tourism at all or the term ‘cul-
tural tourism’ was mentioned in a different context
than that of tourism research (for example, in the con-
text of mathematics, computer studies, etc.) and were
hence excluded. Therefore, the final sample consisted
of 30 scientific articles.
The aim of our research was twofold: (a) to explore
how cultural tourism is currently defined within the
scientific language of tourism in the present year and
(b) to identify themain ‘subgroups’ of cultural tourism
as presented within articles.
Findings
The definitions of cultural tourism within the articles
we researched reflect the diversity of cultural tourism
research and the width of this broad field. Richards
(2003) explains that it is not possible to adopt only
one universal definition of cultural tourism since the
definition depends on the perspective taken and the
objectives aimed at when defining cultural tourism.
According to Richards (2018), the definition of cul-
Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018 | 105
Tina Orel Frank and Zorana Medari Cultural Tourism from an Academic Perspective
tural tourism has also made a journey from the orig-
inal very broad unwto definition, including practi-
cally all tourism experiences, through more narrow
definitions that attempt to provide support in under-
standing and measuring cultural tourism, back to the
new unwto definition, which is againmuch broader
as it is defined as ‘a type of tourism activity in which
the visitor’s essential motivation is to learn, discover,
experience and consume the tangible and intangible
cultural attractions/products in a tourism destination.
These attractions/products relate to a set of distinctive
material, intellectual, spiritual and emotional features
of a society that encompasses arts and architecture,
historical and cultural heritage, culinary heritage, lit-
erature, music, creative industries and the living cul-
tures with their lifestyles, value systems, beliefs and
traditions.’ (unwto, 2018, p. 18).
Motivation for Travel
Whilemost definitions of cultural tourismusedwithin
the researched articleswere not necessarily very broad,
they often focus on the activity of tourists and culture
as amainmotivation for their travel. Therefore, we can
claim that the definitions mostly fell into the realm of
motivational definitions. Frequently, they also empha-
sise the experience aspect (Chen&Rahman, 2018) and
information/knowledge gain (Chiao, Chen, & Huang,
2018). The atlas (see http://www.tram-research
.com/atlas/presentation.htm) conceptual definition
that joins both aspects, is also sometimes used as a
starting point for the article: ‘themovement of persons
to cultural attractions away from their normal place of
residence, with the intention to gather new informa-
tion and experiences to satisfy their cultural needs’ (ex.
Su & Teng, 2018). In one case, the 1985 unwto cul-
tural tourism definition that falls into this domain was
used: ‘cultural tourism includes movements of per-
sons for essentially cultural motivations such as study
tours, performing arts and other cultural tours, travel
to festivals and other cultural events, visits to sites and
monuments and travel to study nature folklore or art
or pilgrimages’ (unwto, 1985, in Vinodan & Meera,
2018, p. 76). As presented above, the 2018 unwto def-
inition used in the article of Richards (2018) can also
be characterised as a motivational one.
Cultural Consumption and Experience
The term cultural tourism is also used to explain the
consumption of, for example, art, heritage,movies, etc.
In this context, the definition is sometimes somewhat
narrowed to the understanding of tourism as a specific
culturalmanifestation, like for example ethnic tourism
in Lugu Lake in China in the article of Wei, Qian and
Sun (2018), where tourists are interested in the ‘matri-
archal’ social organisation and the distinct marriage
practice of Mosuo. In this case, for example, authors
confine cultural tourism to ethnic tourism. Chen and
Rahman (2018) further explore the behavioural in-
tention of arts festival tourists. They stress an im-
portant concept of mte (memorable tourism expe-
riences) that is ‘a tourism experience remembered
and recalled after the event has occurred’ (Kim, Lee,
Uysal, Lim, & Ahn; 2015, p. 2). According to Chen
and Rahman (2018) view, this concept is often over-
looked when researching cultural tourism. In defining
cultural tourism, they, hence, follow the typology by
which cultural tourism is used as an activity and visi-
tation by the tourists to cultural destinations (Silberg,
1995; Richards, 1996; Reisinger, 1994, inChen andRah-
man, 2018) where the emphasis is on the experience of
the tourist during the visit. One of the rather narrow
definitions in this context is that of Libang, Wenjuan,
and Jinghui (2018) who define cultural tourism as ‘a
kind of tourism where travellers are engaged in enter-
tainment and local culture’ (Fu, Gao, & Chai, 2014, in
Libang, Wenjuan, & Jinghui, 2018).
Structural Characteristics of Cultural Tourism
In relation to the definition of cultural tourism, Her-
nández-Mogollón, Duarte, and Folgado-Fernández
(2018) highlight the importance of its structural ele-
ments, i.e., elements that cannot be transferred from
one location to another and are derived from ‘local
traditions, cultural heritage, historical sites and build-
ings, museums, food-related heritage and other types
of natural and manufactured resources permanently
present in specific places’ (Hernández-Mogollón et al.,
2018, p. 171).
In their study about the tourist experience of man-
agement of a heritage tourism product, Wijayanti and
Damanik (2018) emphasise the tangible and intangi-
106 | Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018
Tina Orel Frank and Zorana Medari Cultural Tourism from an Academic Perspective
ble structural aspect of cultural tourism and define it
as: ‘Cultural tourism offers both tangible and intan-
gible cultural attractions, living culture, and cultural
heritage’.
Subfields of Cultural Tourism?
As a part of our research, we attempted to identify
the sub-fields of cultural tourism. Here, it has to be
mentioned that our keyword in searching for arti-
cles was only ‘cultural tourism’; if we had searched
specifically for the phrases that define the ‘emerging
niches’ in which, according to Richards (2018), cul-
tural tourism has been fragmenting, such as gastro-
nomic tourism, film tourism, arts tourism etc., we
would have probably identified more articles with
these topics. Richards (2018), identified the follow-
ing well-developed subsectors of cultural tourism:
cultural heritage tourism, film-induced tourism, and
literary tourism. These three themes also emerged
within our article search (Barber, 2018; Domínguez-
Quintero, González-Rodríguez, &Paddison, 2018; Gy-
imóthy, 2018; Io, 2018; Vinodan & Meera, 2018, Yu &
Xu, 2018;) however, sometimes the above-mentioned
terms were used interchangeably with the term ‘cul-
tural tourism’ and not as a subgroup. For example, Yu
and Xu (2018, p. 292) examine ‘the moral aspect of
literature and literary/cultural tourism’; in this case,
literary tourism is equated with cultural tourism.
Similarly, Gyimóthy (2018, p. 392) explores Bolly-
wood-related film tourism in the Swiss Alps and, at the
beginning, states that it ‘reviews the phenomenon of
non-western popular cultural tourism.’ We identified
the subfield of cultural heritage tourism within the re-
search of Domínguez-Quintero et al. (2018) and that
of Barber (2018) in which heritage and its presentation
are seen as a part of cultural tourism. The latter is fo-
cused on heritage-themed tours and trails, while the
former analyses the aspects of authenticity and satis-
faction within cultural – heritage tourism.
Additionally, Su and Teng (2018) discuss museum
tourism as a part of cultural tourism, while Chianeh,
Del Chiappa, and Ghasemi (2018) research religious
tourism and connect it with the concept of cultural
tourism and throughout the article discuss the de-
velopment of ‘cultural and religious’ tourism. Chen,
King, and Lee (2018) similarly discuss ‘arts and cul-
tural tourism’. Therefore, it seems it is not represented
as a subgroup of cultural tourism, but its equivalent.
Some of the definitions offered an extended view
of cultural tourism. They did not in a literary sense
provide subgroups of cultural tourism but a sort of ex-
tended versions of cultural tourism. Firstly, the term
‘creative tourism’ was found to be an extension of cul-
tural tourism, in which tourists co-create the experi-
ence and they are important actors in, for example,
museum activities (Richards & Wilson, 2006, in Ca-
marero, José Garrido, & Vicente, 2018). Similarly, the
concept of ‘eco-cultural tourism’, which appeared in
two articles by Tiberghien, Bremner, andMilne (2018)
and Tibergien et al. (2018), according to Wallace and
Russel (2004, in Tiberghien et al., 2018, p. 309), com-
bines the ecological and cultural aspects of landscape
to create experiences for tourists.
Conclusion
Our research reveals the expected diversity of uses
of the term ‘cultural tourism’. Through the selection
process of the articles, confined only to the keywords
and abstracts in which the term appeared, it was ob-
vious that the term cultural tourism is used in very
different contexts as well as researched within differ-
ent disciplines. The article search also confirmed the
trend, observed by Richards (2018), that recently there
has been a shift in research focus towards research-
ing cultural tourism topic in Asia, where the connec-
tion between tourism and culture is being redefined
as we identified many types of research that were im-
plemented in this context (for example., Chen et al.,
2018; Chiao et al., 2018; Chianeh et al. 2018; Io, 2018;
Libang et al., 2018; Tiberghien, 2018; Tiberghien et al.,
2018; Vinodan & Meera, 2018; Yang, 2018; Yu et al.,
2018; Wei, Qian, & Sun, 2018, Wijayanti & Damanik,
2018). The aim of the research was mainly to identify
the definitions of cultural tourism as they appear in the
most recent publications in this field, to see what the
prevailing definitions of cultural tourism are, and to
explore whether any older definitions occur in these
articles. The scope of this research is limited in the
sense that it focuses merely on recent publications,
unable to provide a wholesome perspective on such a
Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018 | 107
Tina Orel Frank and Zorana Medari Cultural Tourism from an Academic Perspective
broad term as ‘cultural tourism’. However, looking at
the dilemma from another perspective, we managed
to obtain insight into fresh cultural tourism perspec-
tives.
It has to be noted, however, that a definition of
the term ‘cultural tourism’ was not provided in many
cases. It was used in the context of research as if its
meaning was self-explanatory. Those authors who
did explain the term provided definitions from many
possible angles. Some were placed in the context of
tourism management, while the prevailing ones were
approached from the perspective of culture. On the
one hand, this can be assigned to the fact that cultural
tourism is indeed a broad and multi-faced concept,
but on the other hand, the reason for this might be
that most of the research papers in our survey were
site-specific, allowing cultural tourism to appear in its
many taxonomies. Since currently there is no adequate
or universally accepted definition of this term and
the field of cultural tourism is expected to continue
to expand (unwto, 2018), the definitional challenges
are also bound to continue. Specifically, the interest in
tourism has been growing since the 1980s due to the
general growth in travel, the heritage boom (Hewi-
son, 1987, in Richards, 2018) and the identification of
cultural tourism as a form of tourism that can help
conserving culture as well as contribute to economic
growth. Since the 1990s, cultural tourism has been ori-
enting itself towards mass markets and has begun to
fragment into many niches (Richards, 2018); there has
also been intense growth in academic research.
However, how do the continuous growth of re-
search and the diversity of definitions affect the field
of cultural tourism?A number of articles with the key-
word ‘cultural tourism’ were actually dealing with its
subfields and sometimes a term defining of the sub-
field, such as ‘heritage tourism’ was used interchange-
ably with the term ‘cultural tourism’.
Might both the further growth and the fragmenta-
tion affect the understanding of the concept of cultural
tourism as an umbrella term? Due to this multi-faced
characteristic of cultural tourism, we also encountered
authors who listed the term cultural tourism in key-
words but failed to define it. This could also be as-
signed to the fact that cultural tourism has become
a buzzword among tourism academics that is per-
haps no longer needed to be specifically defined, even
though there has not yet been a universally accepted
definition of it (Dolničar, 2002).
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110 | Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018
Research Note
Looking for a Relationship with the Sea:
Urban-Scape and Cosmopolitan Memories
in Contemporary Odessa
Emilio Cocco
University of Teramo, Department of Communication Science
ecocco@unite.it
The sea is not quite on the radar of social science. However, things change when the
sea and the land touch each other and the sea resonates in living social relations. In
some cases, the encounters with the sea take place in the form of embodied imagina-
tion processes that bring about productive dissonances. My research aims to unveil
the frictions between dissonant embodied imaginations of local citizens and tourists
in an exceptional ‘landscape of dreams’: the post-cosmopolitan port-city of Odessa.
In 2008–2010 I carried out field-work with interviews and surveys aimed at com-
paring the ways maritime imperial legacies were exploited in Trieste and Odessa.
After almost a decade, I was back ‘in the pearl of the Black Sea’ with the intention of
carrying out a more in-depth investigation of the relationship between tourism and
the exploitation of cosmopolitanmemories in this post-socialist port city ofUkraine.
My data are a combination of secondary statistics, ethnographicwork, and first-hand
qualitative accounts, both audio-visual and interviews, collected from April 2017 to
June 2018, here including a two-week period spent in Odessa. After a preliminary
elaboration of data, I ampersuaded that the tourist relations in contemporaryOdessa
are oriented by the double endeavour of both hosts and guests looking for a special
relationship with the sea. The sea and the waterside work both as privileged view-
points for urban spectators (both tourists and residents) and a necessarymedium to
establish a relationship with the city and its multicultural past.
Keywords: Odessa, cosmopolitanism, sea, tourism, urban-scape
https://doi.org/10.26493/2335-4194.11.111-116
Theoretical Background
Does it make sense to speak of ‘resonance of the sea’ in
terms of cultural tourism? And how to study it?
The oceans cover almost two thirds of our planet’s
surface and remain among the less measured, less or-
ganised, and less socialised spaces on earth (Latour,
2005). However, while natural science has been ex-
ploring both the abyss and the surface of the sea for a
long time, nowadays archaeology, geography, history,
and cultural studies have started a sort of ‘blue turn’
(Mentz, 2009). Social science, however, is still lagging
(Cocco, 2014; Hannigan, 2017) and continues to expe-
rience a terrestrial bias and a land-locked dominating
theoretical paradigm (Peters, 2010; Ballinger, 2013). As
a result, sociologists and anthropologists can rarely ex-
plain and understand the ocean space but, even more
importantly, cannot share a theoretical frame that in-
cludes the sea in the understanding of society.
The sea remains for many a heterotopia par ex-
cellence (Foucalt, 1984), the place of pure wilderness
(Corbin, 1994; Davis, 1997) and the space of extra-
sociality by default (Helmreich, 2011, pp. 135–136).
Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018 | 111
Emilio Cocco Looking for a Relationship with the Sea
However, the sea is also a rich repository of legends,
stories, symbols, and images that shape themental im-
ages of the majority of people on earth, although most
of them do not ever have a direct experience of the
sea in their lives, other than beach vacations and short
trips on ferries.
However, things can change in those places where
the sea and the land come together, that is to say at the
interface of land and sea. There, the sea possibly be-
comes part of society and more legible social relations
with the sea take place. As Philip Steinberg reminds
us, the sea is not ‘just’ a social construction but also
a material, physical and emotional relationship. If it is
true that human encounters with the sea are, by neces-
sity, spaced and partial, it must also be said that dif-
ferent types of relationship with the sea can be estab-
lished. From the shore of the sea, like a swimmer; from
the deck of a boat, like a sailor, passenger, or scientist;
from the surface, like an aquatic athlete or a surfer;
even from the depths, like a scuba or deep-sea diver.
All these relationships create different ‘seascapes’ that
originate both in mental representations and in phys-
ical incarnations, as the senses, movements and emo-
tions are part of the interaction with the material en-
vironment and, to a certain extent, they shape it. In
other words, the meetings with the sea are ‘living rela-
tionships’ (Picken, 2015) replete with feelings and sen-
sations, which, in the end, affect both the social rep-
resentations of the sea and the moral values associ-
ated with them (from the respect of the environment
to professional ethics). However, all human relation-
shipswith the sea capture only a fraction of its complex
materiality and, therefore, the partial nature of our en-
counters with the ocean necessarily creates something
that we could call ‘ontological gaps’, because ‘the un-
representable becomes the unrecognized and the un-
recognized becomes the unthinkable’ (Steinberg, 2013,
pp. 156–157).
Accordingly, to better grasp the nature of social
relations with the sea, we refer to the notion of an
‘embodied imagination’ as a new form of social imag-
ination that involves bodily mediated relations with
the environment. In recent years, this originally psy-
choanalytical (Bosnak, 2007) notion has been revived
by a number of research works for different purposes.
In some cases, it functions as a methodological tool
to recover phenomenological and existential perspec-
tives, with the intent of analysing the contrast between
tourism imaginaries and realities (Andrews, 2017, pp.
32–33). Differently, the embodied tourist imagination
might explain the tourist enactment in cultural her-
itage performances and shed light on the co-construc-
tion of the story-scape in historical commemoration
(Chronis, 2005). An especially interesting develop-
ment comes from the anthropologist Laviolette, who
explores the connections between adventurous plea-
sure, moral responsibility, and environmental aware-
ness from the point of view of the anthropology of
emotions and social phenomenology (Laviolette, 2011).
Principally, Laviolette focuses on the knowledge pro-
duced through action and bodily understanding in
those types of leisure and recreational activities in
which danger and an adventurous spirit play an im-
portant role. Specifically, he suggests an alternative
to a basic cognitive or physiological reading of the
work of imagination by stressing the socially produc-
tive outcome of mobility and risk taking. In other
words, he combines the activity and the imaginary
to describe body’s interactions with the landscape it
moves through and its adaptation to contingencies
(Laviolette, 2011, pp. 2–9). Thus, senses, movements,
emotions are phenomenologically bound to the so-
cial construction of cultural contents, environmental
feelings or territorial identities. Laviolette investigates
the cases of British Cornwall and New Zealand, where
identity making is linked to hazardous leisure activi-
ties such as extreme surfing and cliff jumping. How-
ever, the same assumptions may work in other areas
and for different types ofmaritime-based leisure activ-
ities such as the embodiment of an Adriatic seascape
by the boating people yachting across the sea (Cocco,
2018). The combined results of both a survey carried
out with pleasure boaters and an ethnographic inves-
tigation of selected Adriatic marinas show that the
yachters’ performance often replicates amodel ofmar-
itime circulation and trans-Adriatic connectivity that
used to be a historically established paradigm of re-
gional mobility. However, the fieldwork also shows
how such a re-enactment of the Adriatic seascape
is not following contemporary pre-established and
112 | Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018
Emilio Cocco Looking for a Relationship with the Sea
‘made on land’ cultural-political patterns. Nor does
it represent the conscious re-evocation of a European
trans-border maritime region, perhaps along the de-
sires of both nostalgic intellectuals or politically in-
spired spatial planners.
Methodology
Following the above,my research question is to under-
stand to what extent the inconsistencies and the fric-
tions between the embodied imagination of the sea
and the land-based social construction of maritime
space can spark some productive dissonance that de-
serves to be researched. Particularly, frictions and dis-
sonances betweenmaritime brands/images created ‘on
land’, either for political gains or tourist consumption
(or, often, for both), and the everyday life encounters
with the sea have inspired a research action that aims
to compare tourism policies and city branding strate-
gies in frontier maritime cities. Namely, those former
multi-ethnic, imperial hubs once imbuedwith the cos-
mopolitan ethos and trade-orientedmentality are now
struggling to find a place both in the globalised geo-
economy and in the culturally homogenising narra-
tives of the nation-states. In 2008–2010, I carried out
fieldwork with interviews and survey aimed at com-
paring the ways maritime imperial legacies were ex-
ploited in Trieste and Odessa. After almost a decade,
I was back ‘in the pearl of the Black Sea’ with the in-
tention to carry out a deeper investigation of the rela-
tionship between tourism and the exploitation of cos-
mopolitan memories in this post-socialist port-city of
Ukraine.
Meanwhile, many things have changed in Odessa
and in Ukraine: in 2014, the Ukrainian crisis crept
into the city, and violent riots broke out between pro-
Russian and pro-Ukrainian groups. As a consequence,
40 people died, and buildings were burned, among
which was a government one (De Frank, 2014). How-
ever, most of all, memories of violence and massacres
along ethnic-political lines re-emerged from the city’s
complex history, setting ghosts of the pogrom and
urban guerrilla free to stand along and coexist with
Odessa’s mythology of tolerance and transnational-
ism (Sicher, 2015, p. 234). Barricades, shooting and
window-breaking looked like a dangerous remem-
brance of the gloomy autumn days of 1905. More-
over, to many observers, the burst of violence in this
Russian-speaking maritime city that politically dis-
tanced itself from any separatismmeant the end of the
story. As a matter of fact, the eruption of violence far
from the Russian borders, in a site linked to Imperial
Russia but comfortably outside present-day Russia,
could have set the stage for an irreversible spreading of
civil war that would eventually break the entire coun-
try apart. However, things proved to be different, and
Odessa resisted the poisonous consequences of eth-
nic violence that can painfully destroy multi-cultural
settings, as happened in Sarajevo.
In contrast, in Odessa, the story has been, at least
up to now, different, thanks perhaps to a long record
of Odessites of getting their history wrong, which is
not a bad thing all the time (King, 2014). Alternatively,
perhaps because the history of Odessa never changes
(Starobin, 2014), making this country within a coun-
try an irredeemable land where Jewish-blended hu-
mour and joi-de-vivre would always be a potent an-
tibody against such political threats. Somehow like in
post-Yugoslav Istria, the local identity seems to rep-
resent a successful mimetic alternative to a compul-
sory national self-determination process, which con-
flates culture and politics in one exclusive existential
option (Cocco, 2010). Accordingly, ‘odessity’ (Schlör,
2011) is a state of mind: a choice that does not force
you to choose; it is an experience of the sense of place
(Richardson, 2008, p. 20) and a claim to belong to an
ante-litteram modernity, expressed by the alliance be-
tween enlightened absolutism and diasporic commu-
nities of traders and artists, well before the time of na-
tions and nationalisms. In other words, a landscape
of dreams, still engraved in the city’s neoclassical and
art nouveau buildings, as opposed to the inescapable
harshness of both contemporary politics and ethnic
fault-lines.
This is why the memories related to maritime im-
ageries and the multicultural imperial narratives are
often re-evoked with nostalgia and staged in differ-
ent ways (especially in the historical centre) since the
1990s: but always in compliance with the present-day
political guidelines (i.e., nation-state-framed histor-
ical accounts). Thus, the working hypothesis of this
Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018 | 113
Emilio Cocco Looking for a Relationship with the Sea
work is that the relationship between hosts and guests
in Odessa is often fraught with ambivalences and fric-
tions, with particular reference to the sea as a source
of narratives, symbols, and customs staged for tourist
consumption.
In particular, while tourists struggle to fit together
cosmopolitan memories and national narratives, the
local population does not necessarily share the of-
ficial cosmopolitan identity the way it is staged: on
the contrary, the encounter with the tourist ‘other’ are
tarnished by discrimination and suspicion, especially
when the other is ‘non-European’, and the encounter
has sexual implications between male foreigners and
local women. The goal of exploring the dynamics of
tourist encounters in Odessa is coincident with the
many attempts of both hosts and guests to look for
a relationship with the sea. This is true firstly for the
people of Odessa that try to embrace tourism devel-
opment through images based on their cosmopolitan
maritime heritage, which should relocate themselves
in the post-communist world and strengthen their
sense of identity.
Secondly, the relation with the sea is searched by
visitors that are heading to the city both for memory
tours and for the attractiveness of its women, which
stands out in the picture of a lively port-city with al-
leged promiscuous habits. As a matter of fact, the sea
as a symbol of both cosmopolitanism andmoral relax-
ation is part of multiple, intersecting narratives that
aim at different goals: from the ethnic-national rep-
resentation of a maritime and Mediterranean nation
as opposed to the (backward) continental neighbours
to the local, urban identity supported by the persis-
tence of imperial legacies as opposed to the nation-
state homogenising cultural trends. So, if Ukrainian
nation-building can take advantage of a maritime,
cosmopolitan reading of Odessa’s past (vis-à-vis Rus-
sia), then, from the urban perspective, an identity spe-
cific to Odessa (Odessity, as many inhabitants call it)
is often embraced as an alternative to the Ukrainian
one. Also, many traditional ethnonational groups liv-
ing in Odessa, such as Greeks or Jews but also Ital-
ians or Germans, can revive their specific identities in
the contemporary urban-scape by exploiting the cos-
mopolitan narrative of a once thriving maritime port
city made of traders and artists. Truly, the same cos-
mopolitan multinational memories that are staged as
the city’s cultural heritage throughout the urban-scape
is exploited and appropriated by different actors with
somewhat conflicting purposes. Accordingly, my re-
search work aims to discuss the above-mentioned is-
sue by focusing on the analysis of tourism policies that
exploit the material and symbolic importance of the
maritime legacies of the city and play upon mytholo-
gies dating back to the time when the city was a cos-
mopolitan maritime outpost of the Russian empires.
Now, it is true that in the age of the empire, the multi-
ethnic population of Odessa, with special regards to
the diaspora as an agent of civic progress, imperson-
ated the gist of themulticultural imperial idea through
its cosmopolitan flavour, economic prosperity and re-
ligious tolerance. However, the contemporary situ-
ation is far different, and local decision-makers try
to turn these cosmopolitan imageries into factors of
tourism development but often do not frame their ac-
tions within the changed economic and geopolitical
contexts. Eventually, tourists are often puzzled by the
experience of Odessa because they could be misled by
a somewhat mythical interpretation of the social rela-
tionships at the time of the empires and tend to mis-
understand the present reality of ethnic and national
relations in the city. The encounter with the hosts re-
veals a different reality, made of ethnic discrimination,
mistrust, and widespread disconnection between the
present political and socio-economic conditions on
one side, and the celebrated cosmopolitan urban her-
itage on the other.
Research Goals
Therefore, I shall discuss the abovementioned fric-
tions and ambivalences that haunt the tourist relations
in Odessa through the results of an ongoing investiga-
tion that is reaching its final stage. My data are a com-
bination of secondary statistics, ethnographic work
and first-hand qualitative accounts, both audio-visual
and interviews, collected fromApril 2017 to June 2018,
here included a two-weeks period spent inOdessa. Af-
ter a preliminary elaboration of data, I am persuaded
that the tourist relations in contemporary Odessa are
oriented by the double endeavour of both hosts and
114 | Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018
Emilio Cocco Looking for a Relationship with the Sea
guests looking for a relationship with the sea. The lat-
ter is staged as a natural and historical frontier of the
city especially in sites such as beaches, piers and har-
bours. Thus, the sea and its cosmopolitan memories
ought to be explored and rediscovered – perhaps with
nostalgia – by locals and visitors in order to recon-
nect one’s (tourist) experience with the multicultural
urban heritage which is materialized in the cityscape:
monuments, parks, buildings, squares, etc. However,
how does this expectation resonate with the everyday
practices and encounters of the Odessa people with
the visitors/tourists in a sea-shaped context? What
are the frictions and ambivalences, and how are they
managed? We know that landscapes, and monuments
within them, are actively produced and planned by
artists and political authorities to provide citizens and
visitors places for both interaction and reflection, of-
ten following a moral agenda (Hametz, 2014, p. 138).
Thus, the effect of the city on people’s minds, both on
the mental cliché and cognitive perception, depends
on the way the staged cosmopolitan past is affecting
the mental images experienced by visitors and citi-
zens: for instance, through the architectural outlook
of the historical city core that is meaningfully located
by the sea (15–16) and through the monuments ded-
icated to city founders, local artists and imperial au-
thorities, which are the elements of the spatial iden-
tity of the city. The aesthetically valuable images of
the port-city as seen from the sea, among which are
the Primorsky Boulevard and the Potemkin stairways,
suggests that the sea and the waterside work as priv-
ileged viewpoints for urban spectators (both tourists
and residents) to establish a relationship with the city
and its multicultural past. Just like in post-imperial
Trieste (Ballinger, 2003; Treleani, 2009; Schlipphacke,
2014), nostalgia for the golden time of the empire is
often recurring against the uncertainty of the present.
Odessa, once the mythical Southern Palmyra of Rus-
sia, turns to its all-European elite cultural heritage of
opera, ballet, coffee houses and cosmopolitan, artis-
tic vocations to stage its transnational cultural and
economic identity both for tourist and domestic con-
sumption. However, this is when dissonances emerge
and reveal more contemporary fears and contradic-
tions.
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116 | Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018
Original Scientific Article
Jewish Tourism in Berlin and Germany’s Public
Repentance for the Holocaust
AnneM. Blankenship
North Dakota State University, Department of History,
Philosophy & Religious Studies, United States
anne.blankenship@ndsu.edu
For generations, members of the Jewish diaspora boycotted German products and
would not have dreamed of stepping foot within the borders of a nation that mur-
dered six million of their people. Today, however, American Jews are no less likely to
visit Germany than non-Jewish Americans are, and thousands of Israeli Jews live in
Berlin. My research asks how the German government and private tourism indus-
tries approach Jewish tourism in Berlin and assesses how Jewish visitors respond to
the experience of visiting Berlin. During the summer of 2018, I interviewed four tour
guides and numerous tourists, observed people’s interactionwith the city’sHolocaust
memorials and other Jewish sites, partook in Jewish-themed tours, and conducted a
‘netnography’ of analysing over ten thousand TripAdvisor reviews. This qualitative
research showed thatwhilemany Jews express apprehension about visitingGermany
and experience emotional turmoil on site, the abundant memorials and museums
dedicated to the Holocaust convince most Jewish tourists that the nation is dedi-
cated to educating and reminding its people about Germany’s past crimes and com-
mitted to repairing their relationship with the global Jewish community. The trips
have the effect of both strengthening tourists’ Jewish identity and allowing them to
reconcile their people’s traumatic history with the current German nation. The ar-
ticle provides a brief analysis of Germany’s post-war marketing directed at foreign
Jews, describes the Jewish-related sites in Berlin, and reveals the responses of Jewish
tourists in Berlin before presenting its conclusions.
Keywords: Jewish tourism, Germany, Berlin, dark tourism, Holocaust,
memorialisation
https://doi.org/10.26493/2335-4194.11.117-126
Introduction
For generations, members of the Jewish diaspora boy-
cotted German products and would not have dreamed
of stepping foot within the borders of a nation that
murdered six million of their people. Today, how-
ever, American Jews are no less likely to visit Germany
than non-Jewish Americans are, and thousands of Is-
raeli Jews live in Berlin (Podoshen, 2006). As the gen-
eration of Holocaust survivors has died, an increas-
ing number of Jews enter Germany on business trips,
Holocaust pilgrimages, or as tourists, and have faced
the trial of reconciling their relationship with a re-
unified German nation. The German government has
made great efforts to attract foreign Jewish tourists,
and tour purveyors market unique opportunities for
that population.
My research asks how theGerman government and
private tourism industries approach Jewish tourism in
Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018 | 117
Anne M. Blankenship Jewish Tourism in Berlin
Berlin and assesses how Jewish visitors respond to the
experience of visiting Berlin. During the summer of
2018, I interviewed four tour guides and numerous
tourists, observed people’s interaction with the city’s
Holocaust memorials and other Jewish sites, partook
in Jewish-themed tours, and conducted a ‘netnogra-
phy’ of analysing thousands of TripAdvisor reviews.
I limited the study to Berlin, as it was considered the
heart of the Nazi beast and would be more likely to
force visitors to confront the nation’s past. This qual-
itative research showed that while many Jews express
apprehension about visiting Germany and experience
emotional struggles on site, the abundant memorials
and museums dedicated to the Holocaust convince
most Jewish tourists that the nation is dedicated to
educating and reminding its people about Germany’s
past crimes and committed to repairing their relation-
ship with the global Jewish community. The trips have
the effect of both strengthening tourists’ Jewish iden-
tity and allowing them to reconcile their people’s trau-
matic history with the current German nation. This
article provides a brief analysis of Germany’s post-
war marketing directed at foreign Jews, describes the
Jewish-related sites in Berlin, and reveals the responses
of Jewish tourists in Berlin before presenting its con-
clusions.
Formany Jews, visiting Germanywas simply out of
the question until about a generation ago. InMy Ger-
many: A JewishWriter Returns to theWorld his Parents
Escaped, Lev Raphael (2009, p. 53) recalled that ‘the
idea of ever going to Germany was too overwhelming
and frightening to contemplate for long’ Taught that
Germany’s successwas built offwealth plundered from
Jews, he thought that the country ‘wasn’t just a grave-
yard, it was a gigantic thieves’ warehouse [. . .]. Any-
where I turned in that country, I might face something
that had belonged to a murdered relative’ (p. 4). He
was raised to loathe the country and everything it pro-
duced. The children of Holocaust survivors frequently
withhold their tourist or other funds from the country
that wronged them as an act of ‘restored equity’ (Po-
doshen, 2006).
During an interview, Yoav Sapir, who offers pri-
vate tours of JewishBerlin, observed that ‘being Jewish’
for a long time meant not going to Germany, but now
thatmany people have gone for one reason or another-
business travel or a European tour that includes stops
in Germany-many Jews visit, contrary to historical ap-
prehension. Assessing the current nation personally
has become a religious act. The ‘pilgrimage,’ as Sapir
called it, helps the individual affirm his Jewish iden-
tity and reconcile life-long anxieties about the nation.
However, while numerous Jews express apprehension
at visiting Germany in their travel narratives, online
reviews, and private interviews, those individuals al-
most uniformly conclude that Germans are acknowl-
edging their past atrocities and erecting such an abun-
dance of memorials and education centres that future
generations cannot be unaware of that past.
While substantial bodies of scholarship examine
the dark tourism of visiting the remains of Nazi death
camps, the most extensive research on Jewish tourism
to such sites focuses on sites in Poland (Feldman, 2008;
Kugelmass, 1992; Kugelmass, 1995; Reynolds, 2018; for
a detailed literature review, see Podoshen, 2017). Cri-
tique of so-called Holocaust tourism has come from
many directions, but one of the primary criticisms is
that it ignores hundreds of years of innovative, robust
Jewish communities. Israel’s March of the Living tour,
which sends Israeli, American, and other teenagers to
witness the death camps in Poland, has been accused
of deliberately ignoring the history and contemporary
lives of Polish Jews in order to fuel nationalistic aims
(Feldman, 2008; Lehrer, 2013). Fruitful approaches
to dark tourism include discussions of certain loca-
tions as sites of conscience that can teach lessons to
visitors (Ševčenko, 2011), though Brigitte Sion (2017)
argues that ‘death tourism’ has largely replaced Jew-
ish memorial pilgrimage in Europe. In comparison
to Jewish travel to former Soviet bloc countries, Jew-
ish tourism in Berlin has attracted minimal scholarly
attention (Brown, 2015; Coles, 2004; Gruber, 2002;
Leshem, 2013; Podoshen, 2006).
Germany’s Approach to ‘Jewish’ Tourism
Germany has taken a particular interest in catering to
foreign Jewish tourists. In the 1980s, the German Na-
tional Tourist Office published the first edition of its
now-lengthy brochure Germany for the Jewish Trav-
eler for Jewish American tourists. According to the
118 | Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018
Anne M. Blankenship Jewish Tourism in Berlin
most recent edition, the first ‘received worldwide ac-
claim and not a trace of the criticism that some feared.’
Brigit Sion (2010, p. 248) writes that the 1997 edi-
tion ‘simultaneously promotes and sanitisesHolocaust
memory in its effort to attract Jews who have a deep
aversion to Germany, but who might be willing to
make a Holocaust-themed trip.’ This targeted mar-
keting was one of several initiatives to attract interest
groups, such as lgbt travellers and outdoor enthusi-
asts. The Tourist Office mailed copies of the 2000 edi-
tion to 3,600American rabbis, extolling the attractions
of forty-five German cities (Coles, 2004). The current
brochure’s ‘Welcome to Germany’ page uses typical
promotional language, describing ‘exquisite villages’, a
‘wealth of cultural attractions’, ‘glorious architecture’,
and ‘world-class fashion.’ It then explains how leaders
remade Germany after wwii and forged close rela-
tions with Israel.
Contrary to Holocaust education centres and me-
morials throughout the country, which provide am-
ple evidence and explanations based on the histori-
cal record, it expresses bewilderment at how such a
thing could have occurred in a world-renowned civil-
isation, depicting the Nazi era as an anomalous flaw
in an otherwise brilliant tapestry. Konrad Adenauer’s
1951 meeting with David Ben Gurion is used as evi-
dence to show that ‘a new generation of Germans de-
served the opportunity to demonstrate that a better fu-
ture was possible.’ It also employs a quotation from a
Jewish scholar to persuade readers that visiting Ger-
many today demonstrates the Nazi’s failure and recog-
nises the good work of the ‘other Germany’ to deal
with its past. This approach of telling Jews that they
should feel obligated to visit Germany is atypical of
the language used in all other government publica-
tions, which openly acknowledge Nazi crimes, explain
how the country has worked to overcome them, and
humbly invites foreign Jews to judge that progress for
themselves.
For example, a section for Jewish travellers on the
official national tourism website begins:
Even though we are decades removed from
World War ii, the crimes committed against
the Jewish People during the Nazi regime re-
tain a singular identity in the annals of horror.
Today’s Germany is home to the third-largest
Jewish community in Western Europe, indeed
the only European Jewish community that is
growing rather than shrinking. Visiting today’s
Germany is a lesson in how a nation has sought
to come to terms with a devastating legacy. Af-
ter the war, a dedicated number of Germans
were at the forefront of amovement to begin the
long road, not only of atonement and redress,
but towards the building of a new Germany. It
is in this spirit that we are honoured to convey
a special invitation to the Jews of the world to
visit our country. As we do so, it would be naïve
not to recognise that for many, contemplating a
visit to Germany may never be without a mix-
ture of emotions.
Its ‘Jewish Traveler from A to Z’ menu allows con-
sumers to select one of dozens of cities (and former
concentration camps), read a brief, but detailed his-
tory of Jewish life in that region and a description of its
Jewish-related sites. The page for each city does not shy
away from listing connections tomedieval pogroms or
the Nazi period, but also describes the current com-
munity and provides, when possible, contact informa-
tion for the town’s Jewish community organisations.
In a 2002 collaborative programme with the Israeli
tourist bureau, Lufthansa, and the tal Travel com-
pany, the German Tourist Office planned ‘joint vis-
its’ to Germany and Israel for American Jews (Coles,
2004). While not focused on tourism specifically, the
‘About Germany’ section of the German Embassy in
the United States’s website features four topics, one of
which is ‘Jewish Life in Modern Germany and His-
toric Responsibility.’ Seemingly out of place along-
side the broad categories of business, international
relations, and education, it shows how much this is-
sue is at the forefront of German public relations. In
this vein, the German Ministry for Economic Affairs
and Energy works with Action Reconciliation Service
for Peace and German Jewish organisations to spon-
sor 250 young Jewish Americans to visit Germany
each year through Germany Close Up: American Jews
MeetModernGermany.A related programmehas sent
Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018 | 119
Anne M. Blankenship Jewish Tourism in Berlin
young Germans to volunteer in the us for nearly fifty
years, seeking to strengthen relationships with Amer-
ican Jews.
The differences between these statements and that
of the Germany for the Jewish Traveler brochure are
stark. Particularly incongruous are the latter’s defen-
sive and evasive statements and the gracious acknowl-
edgement of guilt and promises for the future on the
tourist and embassy websites. Admittedly, the sin-
cerity of these organisations cannot be measured-all
seek financial gains through international commerce
and tourism-but the gesture is likely appreciated by
some and may smooth the way for apprehensive Jew-
ish tourists. However, while the guides I interviewed
were aware of the government’s attempts to mend this
relationship, not a single tourist I spoke to had encoun-
tered these publications or websites.When I informed
Jewish tourists of this rhetoric during our interviews,
it confirmed their existing impression that Germany
was heavily invested in changing its reputation with
the Jewish community.
Berlin’s Holocaust and Jewish-Themed Sites
Berlin offers numerous sites for visitors interested in
Jewish history and culture and the Holocaust, and I
observed visitors at every site during the summer of
2018. Due to its central location,most visitors to Berlin
will encounter theMemorial for theMurdered Jews of
Europe and a smaller percentage also explore its un-
derground information centre, though longwait times
and its discrete entrance may deter casual or rushed
visitors. The less-centrally located Jewish Museum at-
tracts hundreds of thousands of visitors each year, in
no small part due to Liebeskind’s architecture, famous
for physical voids that represent the missing elements
of European Jewish culture. Throughout the city, ob-
servant visitors will notice Stolpersteineņ metal ‘stum-
bling stones’ inscribed with information about Holo-
caust victims who lived or worked at the sites of these
small but powerful memorials. For under $20, Insider
Tours offers a walking tour (available in English orHe-
brew) of numerous sites in the Scheunenviertel, the old
Jewish quarter. Participants hear about the origins of
the Jewish community in Berlin; the sacrifices of Jew-
ish soldiers during wwi; a description of the thriving
intellectual community prior to wwii marked by the
monument at Moses Mendelssohn’s house, the Altes
Synagogue, and the house of Regina Jonas, often con-
sidered to be the first female rabbi; and several sites
related to the Holocaust. The tour visits Otto Weidt’s
Workshop for the Blind, a Jewish cemetery, the site of
a Jewish high school, the Missing House memorial,
and the RosenstrasseMonument, which honours gen-
tile women who successfully protested the arrest of
their Jewish husbands. The tour ends at the security-
bedecked Neue Synagogue. It is not an active house of
worship, and Berlin’s other synagogues are not open
to the public. The city’s three largest tour companies
also offer daily excursions to the Sachsenhausen con-
centration camp, an hour train ride from the city cen-
tre. Less frequented Holocaust memorials include the
Trains to Life-Trains toDeathKindertransportmemo-
rial at Friedrichstrasse, the camp memorial at Wit-
tenbergplatz, the Weissensee Cemetery, Steglitz’s Mir-
rored Wall Memorial, Platform 17 in Gruenewald, the
Places of Memory in Bavarianplatz, the House of the
Wannsee Conference, and numerous markers at the
sites of former synagogues, some of which were de-
stroyed on Kristallnacht. In addition to these memo-
rials, fifteen Sites of Remembrance, educational cen-
tres that teach about specific aspects of the Holocaust,
can be found in the larger Berlin-Brandenburg region.
Many of the city’s other tourist sites, like the history
and technology museums, incorporate information
about Jewish culture and the Holocaust. Additionally,
several private guides help visitors of German Jew-
ish heritage find the sites related to their ancestors.
However, whether tourists have genealogical ties to
Germany or not, the nation plays a looming role in
collective Jewish memory.
Several guidebooks assist Jewish tourists in Ger-
many. Ben Frank (2018) has published four editions
of his Travel Guide to Jewish Europe, which frames
itself as ‘a perfect companion for those seeking their
roots in Europe or for those searching for places where
relatives and friends once lived.’ Reminding readers
that Jewish history in the lands that constitute present-
day Germany long predate the formation of that state,
Billie Ann Lopez and Peter Hirsch’s (1998) Traveler’s
Guide to Jewish Germany also lists ‘roots’ tourists as
120 | Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018
Anne M. Blankenship Jewish Tourism in Berlin
one of their primary audiences. Barkan (2016) pro-
vides specialised information in Berlin for Jews: A
Twenty-First-Century Companion. The Jewish Mu-
seum’s gift shop sells several additional books on Jew-
ish Berlin, but only one is translated into English for
foreign travellers.
Five guides offer private tours of Jewish Berlin for
foreign Jewish tourists. Over email exchanges and
during in-person interviews, these guides said that
tourists choose their services for a more personalised
experience, for insight to Berlin’s Jewish community,
and, frequently, because they feel more comfortable
facing Berlin, a city that causes extreme anxiety for
some, alongside an informed Jewish companion.
While the guides all visit the sites listed above, they
present Jewish Berlin in different ways. The website
of private guide Eyal Roth, for example, tells a solely
devastating narrative of persecution and destruction
of the Jewish people from their earliest settlement in
the area in an essay titled ‘Early Jewish Settlement in
Berlin: A Somewhat Depressing Chronicle,’ followed
by explanations of several memorials and the destruc-
tion they commemorate. The subtitle of his regular
Jewish heritage tour is ‘AWalk Through a Lost World.’
In contrast, Nadav Gablinger emphasises the revi-
talised Jewish community and offers additional tours
about contemporary Jewish and Israeli life in Berlin.
This reveals an agenda of presenting Jewish Berlin
from a more positive perspective, but he and oth-
ers are still subject to the interests of their clients.
Few tourists request those neighbourhood tours but
ask their guides many personal questions about their
lives as Jews in Berlin. Yoav and Natalie Sapir counter
both perspectives by not dwelling on negative experi-
ences or revitalisation but try to correct what their
website describes as a ‘common misconception (or
hype) about our Jewish community that supposedly
has been “revived.”’ They argue that not only is the to-
tal population less than a tenth of its pre-war status,
but the vast majority of Jews in Berlin are immigrants
or the children of immigrants.Most do not speak Ger-
man as their native tongue, and most are not Reform
Jews, characteristics of the pre-war community. In-
deed, nearly all of the private and group tour guides are
immigrants or sojourners; most of the private guides
specialising in Jewish tours are Israeli, and the larger
companies hire several Israeli guides for tours of Jew-
ish Berlin and Sachsenhausen. The Jüdishe Gemeinde
zu Berlin, the umbrella Jewish organisation in Berlin,
and the Sapirs describe these current residents as ‘Jews
in Germany’ rather than ‘German Jews.’
The Jewish-related destinations in Berlin are over-
whelmingly memorials of one type or another. Very
few provide information about Jewish history or con-
temporary culture. Nearly all other sites are part of
Germany’s Vergangenheitsbewältigung. Sometimes
translated as ‘memory work’, this term refers to Ger-
many’s efforts to grapple with the atrocities commit-
ted by their former government and populous. The
most significant Jewish sites are of relatively recent
origin. The Jewish Museum opened in 2001, and the
central monument near the Tiergarten was completed
in 2005. These projects took decades of planning and
debate, stalled in no small part by the city and na-
tion’s post-war division and subsequent reunification
in 1990. Ruth Gruber (2002) argues that the suffer-
ing of the Holocaust was ‘universalised’ and equated
with all otherwartimedifficulties until the 1980s,when
public critique and official commemoration of Holo-
caust victims became more common. The Neue Syna-
gogue hosts a poorly-advertised exhibit that offers in-
formation about a pre-war Jewish community and, if
visitors are not overwhelmed by its Holocaust memo-
rials and exhibits and architecture, the JewishMuseum
offers an exhibition on Jewish culture. The latter, a
state-owned museum, has fought to demonstrate that
it is not simply a museum of the Holocaust, as peo-
ple might presume. An early marketing campaign de-
picted surprising images, like a split coconut reveal-
ing a halved orange inside, with the tagline Nicht das,
was Sie erwarten (Not what you were expecting). It
was one of nine ‘quasi-surreal’ images placed on 2,500
billboards throughout the country in 2005 (Chamet-
zky, 2008). Though it sought to advertise that it was
not yet another Holocaust centre, due to renovations,
all exhibits about Jewish culture were closed for ren-
ovation during my research in 2018. Insider Tours’
Jewish Berlin tour goes into the greatest detail about
the notable past of Jewish communities in Berlin. In
general, Berlin’s sites of Jewish interest tell visitors far
Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018 | 121
Anne M. Blankenship Jewish Tourism in Berlin
more about Germany, its methods of coping with past
crimes, and perhaps its public relations agenda than it
does about Jewish culture or tradition.
Visitor Experiences
I assessed visitor experience through netnography and
on-site interviews and observations. My netnographic
data included over 10,000 TripAdvisor reviews of pri-
vate guides, group tours, and sites, in addition to the
comments displayed on the websites of private tour
guides and companies. While netnographic data has
certain drawbacks (see Mkono, 2012; Podoshen &
Hunt, 2011) and the guide Yoav Sapir said that only
about half of his clients post reviews, this approach al-
lowed me to access thousands of reviews in multiple
languages stretching back to 2008.
Based on TripAdvisor reviews, people seek Jewish
aspects of Berlin for a variety of reasons.Many tourists
feel the need to be a witness to genocide, while others
seek family roots. Aware that Jewish life is an impor-
tant part of Berlin history, many Jews and non-Jews
choose to engage private guides or join group tours to
learn more about these issues and related sites. Sev-
eral reviews admit discomfort at engaging in ‘atrocity
tourism’, as a man from Glasgow described a tour of
Sachsenhausen. Another wrote:
I am a bit ambivalent about tours like this since I
find it hard to reconcile tourism with what hap-
pened in a camp like this. I would also like to
congratulate [the guide] on the sensitivity with
which he dealt with this difficult balance be-
tween tourism, history and memorial. At ap-
propriate intervals, he took time to remind us
what we were seeing and about the people these
things had happened to. I particularly appreci-
ated the respectful manner in which he related
the events here to events beyond ww2 and its
aftermath.
The hundreds of reviews for the Jewish Quarter
walks and Sachsenhausen day trips offered by Insider
Tours (it) and Original Berlin Walks (obw) are over-
whelmingly positive, averaging (by rounding) 5/5. 92
per cent of reviewers describe the tours as excellent.
Three reviewers on obw’s Sachsenhausen trip identi-
fied themselves as the children of Holocaust survivors
who felt uneasy about taking a group tour to such a
personally sensitive location but unanimously com-
mended the guides’ sensitivity and the value of the ex-
perience.
Reviews on TripAdvisor recount several successful
‘roots’ pilgrimages, and I learnedmore from the guides
themselves. A woman fromMaine wrote,
Yoav took us to places that directly impacted
my family. I learned so much I didn’t know be-
fore.We stood onPlatform 17 atGrunewald Sta-
tion where 386 deportations from Berlin took
place. I cannot imagine a more chilling experi-
ence. We learned and saw so much more that
touched my soul. Words cannot alone express
how extraordinary our tour with Yoav was.
Based on Sapir’s help, she discovered two surviving
second cousins in London during her Berlin visit. A
Jewish tourist from Seattle also appreciated how Sapir
gave him ‘a better sense of [his] German heritage.’ In
an interview, Sapir said that the number of genealog-
ical tours is slowly growing, but he had still only led
four such tours in the past year.
Berlin’s tour guides caution their customers to be
prepared for difficult emotions, whether touring Sach-
senhausen concentration camp or walking the streets
of the old Jewish Quarter and advertise their ability
to help visitors work through these experiences. Eyal
Roth advertises that the tour might ‘provoke an emo-
tional response and it’s my job to facilitate this and
give space for it within the tour.’ Similarly, in the re-
vised edition of Jewish Heritage Travel: A Guide to
East-Central Europe, author Ruth Gruber (1994, p.
3) warns that ‘Jews and non-Jews alike who visit the
places described in this book should be prepared to
deal with a maelstrom of emotions.’ As Erica Lehrer
(2013, p. 15) wrote in her study of Jewish tourism in
Krakow, even themed tours are ‘often quite the op-
posite of package tourism. They are opportunities for
unpacking baggage long carried but rarely examined.’
TripAdvisor reviews suggest that the private guides in
Berlin do this successfully. Milk and Honey Tours, a
122 | Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018
Anne M. Blankenship Jewish Tourism in Berlin
company offering international Jewish-themed tours,
posts comments from past customers that comple-
ment the guides’ ‘sensitive and compassionate’ ap-
proach and their ability to make a ‘rather “difficult”
experience into something that we would have not
missed for the world.’ Another guest wrote:
I am writing to say how good it was to spend
time with you in Berlin. My experience was so
varied and complicated. Being able to talk with
you and share some of the emotional impact
was of tremendous value to me. Your thought-
ful planning and knowledge showed me things
I would not have learned about and your open-
ness and honesty allowed me to speak honestly,
which was a great relief. I was experiencing
distress that I could not otherwise discuss. So,
thank you for the many ways you offered a safe
harbor.
Yoav Sapir claimed that his job was to accommo-
date those emotional experiences. He believes that the
sites themselves are less important for visitors than the
conversations he facilitates and his perspective as an
Israeli Jew living in Berlin.
Some tourists respond to their experience with
political statements. Sapir observed that American
Jews frequently make analogies between Nazi horrors
and the political climate of the United States under
Donald Trump’s presidency. His clients respond with,
‘That’s just what’s happening in my country!’ when he
describes the increasing anti-Semitism of the 1930s.
Sapir believes that Jewish American tourists come
to ‘reinforce their political identity’, whether that be
liberal or conservative. While conservative Jews of-
fer sympathy regarding anti-Semitic acts perpetrated
by Muslim refugees, believing Germans and Amer-
icans face that same threat, others praise Germany’s
open refugee policy, understanding it as penance for
the Holocaust. I observed that some guides did not
hesitate to share their political views, even when they
contrasted with those of their clients, but one guide,
requesting anonymity, said that s/he tries to stay apo-
litical and let tourists believe that their assumptions
about her/his views are correct. Sapir said that he re-
ceives many questions, particularly from Americans,
about his political views on Israel, Germany, and the
refugee crisis. Other Jewish guides made similar state-
ments and, on the tours I took, Jewish customers
acted more interested in contemporary personal ex-
periences and perspectives than learning about Jewish
heritage. When my Israeli Insider Tours guide, Orit
Arfa, promoted her autobiographical erotic novel of
falling for a German man, at least half of the people
on our tour wrote down the title after taking no notes
and few photographs during the tour.
The identity of the guide made a notable difference
to several reviewers. Multiple TripAdvisor reviews ex-
pressed tourists’ initial dismay or disappointment that
their guide for a Jewish-themed tour was not Jewish
(though most are). All guides I encountered and in-
terviewed identified themselves as Jewish online and
in person. For travellers with sufficient financial re-
sources, hiring a private guide-with an assurance of
their Jewish identity-can be an attractive alternative.
The guide Sue Arns states her Jewish identity and that
of her driver at the top of numerous pages of her sim-
ple website. The first faq is ‘Are you Jewish?’ to which
she answers, ‘Yes, both of us are Jewish. Many of our
clients think it is easier to be guided by a Jewish guide
in Germany. And we agree.’
Numerous reviews of Eyal Roth and the Sapirs
mention that having a Jewish guide made hearing
these stories and grappling with the difficult history
easier and more valuable. One praised the value of
hearing stories froma child of survivors, while another
wrote that Sapir’s ‘Israeli and Jewish background cre-
ated a sense of trust and interest fromour behalf, while
his thorough interest in our Jewish history brought
about a personal bond.’ Reviewers who expressed ap-
prehension of visiting Germany and Berlin compli-
mented the guides’ ability to, as a Jewish woman from
SantaMonica wrote, ‘gently easeme into a place where
I could absorb the past, present, and future of Jewish
Berlin.’ Another wrote, ‘I’m not sure I could have done
it without Natalie.’ A Jewish couple from Fort Laud-
erdale confessed to guide Sue Arns, ‘As you know, we
had been reluctant to visit Germany and especially
Berlin, but we are so very glad we did and had you
both show us your city. It is truly amazing, and we ap-
Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018 | 123
Anne M. Blankenship Jewish Tourism in Berlin
preciated your sharing it with us.’ A couple fromMin-
neapolis responded similarly. One visitor to Berlin on
a Milk and Honey tour wrote, ‘I still can’t believe I let
my foot fall onto German soil, and I credit the positive
experience to you, your expertise and mostly to your
warmth and enthusiasm. There are so many things
that are just now filtering into my consciousness and
a million things I’d like to see again or explore more
[. . .] perhaps, someday.’ Reviews of both private and
group tours emphasise the key role their guide played
in their experience.
Conclusions
Studies of Armenian diaspora tourism to Turkey of-
fer a helpful comparative context for examining Jew-
ish tourism to Germany. In both cases, a government
regime committed genocide against a minority pop-
ulation several generations ago. Most home villages
and extended family are gone. Turan and Bakalian
(2015, p. 173) argue that diaspora ‘pilgrimage nurtures
the Armenian diaspora by preserving and reimagin-
ing its identity.’ They view it as a rite of passage that
fosters communitas. A similar experience transpires
in Germany, where Jewish travellers enter a nation
that permanently changed the diaspora community. It
reinforces their identity as Jews, and for some, their
political identity as well. Turan and Bakalian argue
that physically viewing the land and meeting its peo-
ple (and realising that they are not wholly evil) can
heal psychological wounds for the children and grand-
children of survivors. This healing phenomenon is
substantiated by people like Lev Raphael who con-
fronted the ‘German ghosts’ that haunted his child-
hood (45) and recent travellers who ‘felt more com-
plete’ and could accept the past more easily after vis-
iting Germany. Turan and Bakalian also described the
surprising, and not always welcome, attachment Ar-
menians felt toward the people and landscape of Ana-
tolia. Raphael and others report similar feelings, un-
expectantly developing deep attachments to Germany,
especially Berlin.
Travelling to Germany, particularly Berlin, beco-
mes a religious ritual of reconciliation for many Jews.
Kugelmass (1994, p. 175) calls the experience a ‘secular
ritual’ and describes how it ‘confirms who they are as
Jews.’ While he believes such travel is shallower than a
pilgrimage, he agrees that the experiences appropriate
many of its elements, such as liminality and its power
to change individual lives. Yoav Sapir invoked the re-
ligious language of pilgrimage during our interview as
well. He believes that visiting Berlin and seeing how
Germans have dealt with their nation’s past atrocities
is a significant religious act that relates to and affects
their identity as Jews. Kugelmass (1994, p. 176) quotes
a grandson of survivors who said upon visiting Birke-
nau, ‘I am reborn, in my present life. As witness, not
as survivor.’ Cohen (1992, pp. 58–59) concludes that
the functional aspect of pilgrimage ‘not only recre-
ates and revitalises the individual but also reinforces
his commitment to basic cultural values; he is resti-
tuted to, and reconciled with, his role and position in
society.’ This occurs among foreign Jews who travel
to Berlin, face the nightmares of their people’s past,
and manage to reconcile the Nazi terror with the Ger-
many of today. During a Jewish Berlin walking tour, a
73-year-old Canadian Jew confided to me why he de-
cided to visit Berlin after avoided the country for his
entire life. Brought up with considerable anti-German
sentiments-his father fought in World War ii, and his
mother survived the London Blitz, he credited Cana-
dian tolerance for his ability to forgive the current na-
tion, but also expressed his satisfaction that the coun-
try had reconciled its past without forgetting it.
Similarly, Basu (2007, p. 221) acknowledges that pil-
grimages to one’s roots become ‘personal therapeu-
tic acts, influenced as much by popular psychology
asmore institutionalised ritual practices-’ Along those
lines, tourist Evie Woolstone, a child of German Jew-
ish refugees and client of guide Sue Arns, expressed a
common perception that ‘it did feel as though Berlin
was trying to atone for its guilty past [. . .] I amglad that
I went but throughout felt slightly unsettled by the fact
of actually being in Germany and all the emotions that
this entailed.’
Germany’s Vergangenheitsbewältigung looms so
heavily in Berlin that focusing on anything but the na-
tion’s response to the atrocities is difficult. Over 5,000
Stolpersteine dot the sidewalks of Berlin; the blocks
surrounding Bavarianplatz are replete with dozens
of signs detailing race legislation; the memorial to
124 | Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018
Anne M. Blankenship Jewish Tourism in Berlin
murdered Jews is vast and complemented by nearby
memorials dedicated to politicians and otherGermans
who fought against the Nazis, murdered Sinti and
Roma, people murdered for having physical or mental
disabilities, andmurdered homosexuals. Plaques com-
memorating the sites of former synagogues far out-
number active religious sites or Jewish organisations.
Opportunities to learn about the influential commu-
nities of German Jews who once lived in Berlin are
scarce, and few tourists request tours about contem-
porary Jewish life. These performances of guilt and
repentance have the power to overwhelm the atroci-
ties themselves. The subject of German guilt and Ger-
many’s production of public memory and memori-
alisation dominated the weeks I spent visiting sites
and interviewing guides and tourists, not sorrow or
thoughtful contemplation about the loss of life and
destruction of a community. My research supports
Sapir’s theory that Germany’s installation of memo-
rials to the Holocaust in recent decades, particularly
those in Berlin, directly contributes to foreign Jews’
increasing acceptance of the country. While the ori-
gins of these memorials are as diverse and unique as
their forms, the visitors I spoke with tend to read the
memorials as a formally organised and coordinated
display of national guilt and repentance.
Berlin is in an admittedly difficult position. Pro-
moting a thriving Jewish culture (either contempo-
rary or pre-war) would be seen by some as an attempt
to gloss over past crimes. Moreover, while some Jews
will refuse to set foot onGerman soil, others who show
hesitancy are frequently convinced by the plethora of
memorials that Germany is making clear efforts to ed-
ucate its citizens about the nation’smistakes and show-
ing penance by devoting resources to those ends and
supporting relatively open policies toward refugees to-
day. How Germans feel about wartime crimes or the
ubiquity of memorials is unclear to the casual visitor,
particularly to the Jewish visitor who chooses a Jewish,
andmost likely Israeli, guide, but at least twomessages
conveyed by the sheer mass of monuments is clear:
Germany wants to appear repentant and is making
concerted efforts to educate its populace about these
crimes.WhileGerman officials enact penance through
the construction of memorials and museums to the
Jews of Europe, they are, through the same act, also
earning the tourist money of and perhaps reconcili-
ation with foreign Jewish communities. My research
showed that online reviews, personal interviews, and
autobiographical works from Jewish visitors to Berlin
are overwhelmingly positive. While some attribute
their trip’s success to the sensitivity of their Jewish
guide, others articulate that they have personally rec-
onciled their fear and anger related to Nazi Germany
with the nation today.
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126 | Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018
Original Scientific Article
The Influence of an International Festival on Visitors’
Attitudes toward Diverse Cultures
Yao-Yi Fu
Indiana University, School of Health and Human Sciences, usa
yafu@iupui.edu
SuoshengWang
Indiana University, School of Health and Human Sciences, usa
suwang@iupui.edu
Carina King
Indiana University, School of Health and Human Sciences, usa
carking@indiana.edu
Yung-Tsen Chu
Indiana University, School of Health and Human Sciences, usa
chuyung@umail.iu.edu
Interacting with people from other countries can enhance our knowledge of cultural
diversity and provide an international perspective. There are many ways of enhanc-
ing cultural understanding, one of which is attending international festivals. While
research on festivals is fast growing, visitors’ attitudes toward diverse cultures is a rel-
atively unexplored subject. This study used a visitor attitude scale to investigate vis-
itors’ behavioural, cognitive, and/or affective components of diversity attitudes. The
research focused on measuring visitation frequency, stay-time at the event, similar
event participation, cultural interest, and overseas travel experience contributing to
any observed differences in visitors’ attitudes. The visitors’ intention to travel over-
seas after attending this festival was also investigated. A total of 195 visitors were
surveyed on site at an international festival in a Midwestern city in the us, with 176
providing usable data. The findings suggest that international festivals play an im-
portant role in improving visitors’ awareness, appreciation, and acceptance of diverse
cultures. Specifically, visitation frequency, the time spent at the event, and personal
interest in cultures have significant influence on attitudes. These findings have im-
plications for future researchers and event organisers.
Keywords: international festivals, ethnic groups, visitor attitude, diverse cultures
https://doi.org/10.26493/2335-4194.11.127-141
Introduction
In this era of globalisation, there are more opportu-
nities to meet many ethnic groups in our daily lives,
whether in schools, in the workplace, in the private
sector, or in government. Interactingwith people from
other countries can enhance our knowledge of cultural
diversity and provide uswith an international perspec-
tive (Allport, 1954). However, conflicts may happen
due to the misunderstanding of cultural differences
(Berry, 2005). Cross-cultural interaction and commu-
Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018 | 127
Yao-Yi Fu et al. The Influence of an International Festival on Visitors’ Attitudes
nication can increase awareness of similarities and dif-
ferences so that people can better appreciate and re-
spect each other (Berry, 2005).
There are many ways of enhancing cultural under-
standing, including travelling overseas, visiting muse-
ums, attending cultural events, etc. Travel abroad may
be the most direct way of interacting with different
cultures; however, travel is not available for everyone.
Fortunately, there are increasing numbers of multicul-
tural activities in which people can participate.
For example, Indianapolis is the 12th largest city
in the United States and has several cultural festivals
throughout the year, including Brazil Carnival, Ital-
ian Street Festival, Indiana Latino Expo, Indiana Black
Expo, Greek Fest, Irish Fest, German Fest, and oth-
ers. Among those festivals, the oldest and largest eth-
nic celebration in central Indiana is the annual indy
International Festival.
The indy International Festival has taken place
since 1976. For the past few decades, the National-
ities Council of Indiana, a non-profit organisation
composed of several ethnic groups has had a mission
to promote cultural and ethnic activities, to increase
communication, cultural exchange among people of
all nationalities, races, and cultures, and to support the
cultural and ethnic activities of their member groups
and other organisations. The indy International Fes-
tival is the signature event of the Nationalities Council
of Indiana. It fully demonstrates the value of the Na-
tionalities Council of Indiana, displays Indiana’s eth-
nic diversity, celebrates unique ethnic traditions, and
encourages cultural exchange.
The indy International Festival can be classified
as a one-time, recurring event with a particular theme
each year (e.g., the theme for 2017 was visual arts
around the world) that people can participate in, learn
from, and enjoy. Every year, the indy International
Festival includes a variety of events, such as a parade
of nations, street painting, continuous ethnic music
and dance by local and national performing groups,
and Culture Booths where Indiana residents can learn
and connect with other national heritages. At the same
time, the festival provides authentic foods and handi-
crafts that Indiana residents can sample from around
the world.
The indy International Festival has been through
many changes. It started as a street festival organised
by the partnership of the International Center andNa-
tionalities Council of Indiana (hereafter nci). Since
most members of nci are volunteers and only a few
national groups are large enough to be self-supported,
nci had been working with a promotion company on
the indy International Festival. However, 2014 was
the last year of their contract. It was a new beginning
for nci to run this event without the support of the
promotion company in 2015.
The indy International Festival is a four-day event
on one weekend in November. Although it is an open-
for-public event, it also sets aside specific times only
for schools. Schools within a radius of 100 miles can
apply for special school hours at the event. At least
200 schools have had field trips to the indy Inter-
national Festival. There were approximately 6,000 to
10,000 students and 10,000 adults, totalling 20,000–
25,000 visitors each year. 15–20 were repeat visitors,
and 80 were first-time attendees.
Purpose of the Study
Very limited research has been conducted examin-
ing the visitors’ attitudes toward diverse cultures in
a festival setting. With the growing interest and en-
thusiasm for cultural festival events and the lack of
information regarding visitors’ attitudes and accep-
tance of cultural diversity, an in-depth analysis was
thought to be necessary. Therefore, the purpose of the
study was to examine the influence of the indy Inter-
national Festival on visitors’ attitudes toward diverse
cultures. Attempts were made to determine the ex-
tent to which visitors’ visitation frequency, stay-time
at the event, similar event participation, cultural inter-
est, and overseas travel experience contributed to any
observed differences, as would be indicated by the vis-
itor attitude scale. Also, the visitors’ intention to travel
overseas after attending this festival was investigated.
Specifically, the study sought to answer the following
research questions:
1. Does attending the international festival in rela-
tion to visitation frequencies, visitors’ personal
interests, and past travelling experiences influ-
ence visitors’ attitudes toward diverse cultures?
128 | Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018
Yao-Yi Fu et al. The Influence of an International Festival on Visitors’ Attitudes
2. Does attending the international festivalmotivate
visitors to travel overseas? How well do the three
measures of control (visitor attitude scale, visi-
tation frequency, stay-time at the event) predict
visitors’ intention to travel abroad after attending
this festival?
Hypotheses
The study was designed to test the following null hy-
potheses:
h1 There is no significant difference between first-
time and repeat visitorswith their attitude (udo)
scores.
h2 There is no correlation between stay-time at the
event and visitors’ attitude (udo) scores.
h3 There is no significant difference between visi-
tors in relation to their past experiences in par-
ticipating in international events and their atti-
tude (udo) scores.
h4 There is no correlation between visitors’ cultural
interests and their attitude (udo) scores.
h5 There is no significant difference between visi-
tors in relation to their overseas travel experi-
ences and their attitude (udo) scores.
h6 Visitors’ intention to travel overseas after at-
tending the festival are not affected by their at-
titude (udo) scores, visitation frequency, and
stay-time at the event.
Literature Review
This section provides a review of literature related to
the construct of Universal Diverse Orientation (udo)
that was adopted by this research. Next, the Miville-
Guzman Universality-Diversity Scale that was devel-
oped to measure udo is discussed. Finally, this sec-
tion presents a review of festival research.
Universal Diverse Orientation and Miville-Guzman
Universality-Diversity Scale
As human beings, we are alike inmanyways yet differ-
ent fromeach other. Knowing the similarity and differ-
ences between us can make our interactions with each
other more effective. This common understanding of
each other would break down barriers between peo-
ple from a variety of cultural backgrounds (Vontress,
1979).
Universal-Diversity Orientation (hereafter udo)
is a construct thewas developed and defined byMiville
et al. (1999) as ‘an attitude toward all other persons
that is inclusive yet differentiating in that similarities
and differences are both recognised and accepted; the
shared experience of being human results in a sense
of connectedness with people and is associated with
a plurality or diversity of interactions with others’
(p. 292). Simply stated, udo describes an attitude of
awareness, acceptance, connectedness and apprecia-
tion of both similarities (i.e., commonality of being
human) and differences (i.e., diverse cultural factors
such as race, gender, religion, and age) among peo-
ple (Fuertes, Miville, Mohr, Sedlacek, & Gretchen,
2000). udo reflects cognitive, behavioural, and af-
fective components of social attitudes, which yielded
three factors of udo value: Diversity of Contact, seek-
ing the opportunities to interact with diverse social
groups; Relativistic Appreciation, revealing the recog-
nition of similarities and differences between diverse
populations; and Comfort with Others, expressing a
sense of connection with members of diverse cultures.
Meanwhile,Miville et al. (1999) created theMiville-
Guzman Universality-Diversity Scale (m-guds) to
measure the level of udo as well as those three in-
dividual components of udo. The m-guds is a 45-
item questionnaire with items that are rated on a 6-
point continuum (1 = strongly disagree, 6 = strongly
agree). The scale yields a total score as well as scores
from three 15-item subscales. Reliability (i.e., inter-
nal consistency and stability) and validity (i.e., con-
struct) of the m-guds have been assessed and evalu-
ated through much research. A higher score indicates
a higher level of udo.
In a series of studies (Miville et al., 1999), the m-
guds was proved to have high levels of reliability in-
ternally (all correlations were approximately 0.90 and
subscales were intercorrelated above 0.75) and signif-
icantly correlated with a number of other scales. The
m-guds was found to be significantly and positively
correlated with the Contact, Pseudo-Independence
and Autonomy subscales of the White Racial Identity
Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018 | 129
Yao-Yi Fu et al. The Influence of an International Festival on Visitors’ Attitudes
Attitude Scale (wrias) and negatively correlated with
the Disintegration and Reintegration of the wrias
and the Dogmatism Scale and the Homophobia Scale
as well. The Perspective Taking and Empathic Con-
cern subscales of the Empathy Scale were found to
be significantly and positively correlated with the m-
guds. Also, the m-guds were positively correlated
with healthy narcissism as Healthy Grandiose Self and
Healthy Idealised Parental Image subscales of the In-
ventory of Self Psychology as well as the attitudes to-
ward feminism and androgyny. The results indicated
that udo, as measured by the m-guds, is consistent
internally and over time, and is significantly related to
social attitudes on racial identity, gender (feminism),
sexual orientation (homophobia), and some aspects of
personality functioning as healthy narcissism.
Fuertes et al. (2000) concluded that ‘udo is best
conceptualized as a unidimensional construct with be-
havioral, cognitive and affective components, rather
than a multidimensional construct with three dis-
tinct but interrelated domains’ (p. 158). Later, a 15-
item m-guds, Short Form (m-guds-s)was developed
(Fuertes et al., 2000). The Short Form is conceptu-
ally similar to the original m-guds. The scores on the
Short Form were adequately reliable and valid, and
that presents some advantages over the original scale.
First, the m-guds-s is shorter and can be quickly ad-
ministered. The positive correlation between long and
short forms indicated that the short form measures
udo as significantly as the long form. Second, the
factor structure and scale relationship was more clar-
ified. Third, the m-guds-s allowed udo analysis us-
ing subscale scores. The evidence suggested that sub-
scale scores measured distinct aspects of udo yet dif-
ferently predicted diversity-related attitudes and be-
haviours.
Due to the development of the tourism industry
and the increasing discussion on cultural interaction,
the researcher hopes that Indiana residents can better
understand and appreciate different cultures through
participation in international festivals. Although m-
guds is mostly used in the field of psychology and
counselling, it can be tested in event study to evaluate
visitors’ attitudes toward diverse cultures in festival
settings. For the purpose of this study, the researcher
adapted the 15-item Miville-Guzman Universality-
Diversity Scale, Short Form (Fuertes et al., 2000) and
modified the items to adapt them more appropriately
for this particular event. The three-factor diversity at-
titudes measure structure: (a) Diversity of Contact –
visitors’ interest in participating in diverse cultural ac-
tivities; (b) Relativistic Appreciation – the impact of
diverse cultural activities on self-understanding and
personal growth; (c) Comfort with Differences – visi-
tors’ degree of comfort with individuals from diverse
cultures, to test their level of Universal-Diverse Ori-
entation (udo), which refers to visitors’ attitudes in
recognising and accepting differences and similarities
in others was used.
Three itemswere developed for each subscale (nine
items total). The reliabilities of the nine-item udo
measure, as well as the three subscales, were high. This
study explored relationships between event visitation
frequency, stay-time at the event, personal cultural
interest, overseas travel experiences, travel intention,
and udo overall and by the three subscales separately.
This will allow the research to determine whether the
relationships found are due to behavioural, cognitive,
and/or affective components of diversity attitudes.
Festival Research
The United States is a nation of immigrants which
means people often come into contact with people
of different races in daily life. Such interactions have
both positive and negative impacts. Generally speak-
ing, people living in metropolitan areas such as New
York and Chicago may have high levels of diversity
awareness and acceptance because of the cultural di-
versity of cities (Zukin, 1998). According to the con-
tact theory developed by Allport (1954), under certain
conditions, interpersonal contact is a way to reduce
prejudice as well as increase understanding and ap-
preciation between different groups.
People can enhance their cultural understanding in
many different ways including travelling overseas, vis-
iting museums, attending cultural events, etc. (Chang,
2006; Falk & Foutz, 2007). In this research, ‘interna-
tional’ and ‘multicultural’ are interchangeable terms.
The definition of a multicultural festival can be var-
ied, from different researchers’ points of view. Based
130 | Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018
Yao-Yi Fu et al. The Influence of an International Festival on Visitors’ Attitudes
on a combination of Duffy (2005) and McClinchey’s
(2008) definitions, multicultural festivals are ‘pub-
lic, multicultural-themed celebrations at which multi-
ethnic people – including both ethnic minorities and
members of dominant population – have an extraor-
dinary as well as mutually beneficial experience’ (Lee,
Arcodia, & Lee, 2012, p. 95). Multicultural festivals
create a themed environment for people to feel cul-
tural authenticity, to engage with others, to learn new
things, to observe the similarities and differences
among ethnic groups in a leisurely way. A previous
study has indicated several characteristics of multi-
cultural festivals, including social interaction, cultural
celebration, cultural identity and expression (Lee et
al., 2012). Studies indicated that multicultural festi-
vals provide a place for ethnic minority groups to re-
call their memories and experiences of where they are
originally from, and to express and share their culture
with the public through festival activities. Festivals not
only foster cultural acceptance within the community
but also generate interaction between minorities and
the dominant population, which can reduce prejudice
and conflicts in society as well as promote social har-
mony (Lee et al., 2012).
With the growth of event tourism as an academic
field, research focusing on festivals has been increas-
ing. People today demand higher event quality and
content. Event organisers need to consider not only
the cultural value of festivals but also visitors’ needs.
Visitors have personal motivations to visit festivals
(Uysal, Gahan, & Martin, 1993; Nicholson & Pearce,
2001; Lee, Lee, & Wicks, 2004; Li & Petrick, 2006;
Wamwara-Mbugua & Cornwell, 2009; Lee, Arcodia,
& Lee, 2012; Kim, Savinovic, & Brown, 2013). Many
festival studies emphasised the importance of visitors’
motivation. Visitors’ motivation can vary from per-
son to person, from event to event, and even from
ethnicity to ethnicity. Many researchers have devel-
oped their own theoretical frameworks of motivation
study and identified several motivations. Among fes-
tival studies, some common motivations can be iden-
tified, including family togetherness, socialisation, es-
cape, novelty, uniqueness, excitement, entertainment,
education, attraction, cultural exploration, curiosity,
entertainment, and others (Uysal et al., 1993; Nichol-
son & Pearce, 2001; Lee, Lee, &Wicks, 2004; Li & Pet-
rick, 2006;Wamwara-Mbugua&Cornwell, 2009; Lee,
Arcodia, & Lee, 2012; Kim et al., 2013). Motives can
be different for different types of events (Crompton
& McKay, 1997). For example, people attending food
festivals are more likely to be motivated by novelty.
Furthermore, everyone has their own perspective and
expectation of the events that they are going to visit.
Personal characteristics such as age, gender, income
level, and education would cause motivational differ-
ences (Tkaczynski & Toh, 2014; Wooten & Norman,
2007). Women and people with higher educational
background tend to be knowledge-seeking while vis-
iting cultural festivals.
Multicultural festivals are different from other sin-
gle-focus festivals such as theGreek festival or the Irish
festival; visitors may have multiple motivations when
visiting a multicultural festival. Among various mo-
tivations, cultural exploration was identified as the
most important motivation for a multicultural festi-
val (Chang, 2006; Lee et al., 2012). However, for those
visitors whose culture is presented in a multicultural
festival and those whose culture is not presented, their
motivations are slightly different. Those whose cul-
tures were not presented were more likely to seek con-
nections of previous life experience, family or friends
of a different cultural origin, and their personal inter-
est in a multicultural festival. In contrast, those whose
cultures were presented were more likely to celebrate
their own cultural traditions (Huang & Lee, 2015).
Because event organisers hope that festivals will
not be a one-time event but a sustainable one, under-
standing visitors’ motivations is necessary. To main-
tain a recurring festival, keeping those repeat visitors
is the key. Repeat visitors not only spend more money
in the festival, but also stay longer, are more likely to
return, and possibly recommend the festivals to others
(Shani, Rivera, &Hara, 2009). As a result, understand-
ing visitors’ motivations is crucial for event organisers
to build effective marketing strategies and meet the
needs of festival visitors.
In addition to encouraging visitors to return, event
organisers should consider the amount of time spent
at the festival. One applicable study by Falk (1982) fo-
cused on the time spent at a museum as a measure
Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018 | 131
Yao-Yi Fu et al. The Influence of an International Festival on Visitors’ Attitudes
of visitor behaviour. The research divided visitors into
two categories: ‘window shoppers’ and ‘serious shop-
pers.’ The ‘window shoppers’ go to a museum to pass
the time in a leisurely way. They try to see as many ex-
hibitions as they can in the shortest amount of time.
Therefore, good displays, clear access and space, and
signage are important to them. In contrast, the ‘seri-
ous shoppers’ come with a purpose; they know what
they want to see and they will spend time on a par-
ticular exhibition. Nevertheless, a ‘window shopper’
can turn into ‘serious shopper.’ If they discover some-
thing interesting, they will spend more time than they
originally planned and may come back again. In con-
clusion, the time a visitor spends is an important fac-
tor that contributed to his/her behaviour (Falk, 1982).
Therefore, it could be assumed that visitors’ behaviour
and even their attitudes can be changed after spend-
ing more time at the festival. Visitors may be attracted
to the festival by different motivations, but the con-
tent that the festival provided can influence their be-
haviour.
Although many studies discuss the benefits that
festivals bring to the community, research specifically
on the values and benefits gained from festivals on the
personal level remains limited. Visitor benefits in the
festival context are defined as ‘the ultimate value that
people place on what they believe they have gained
from observation or participation in activities pro-
vided by a festival’ (Lee et al., 2012, p. 335). Having a
comprehensive understanding of visitor benefits al-
lows event organisers to evaluate the effectiveness of
festivals. Such effectiveness could be an indicator of
what the event offers, how the event programme and
activities are executed, and what the event experience
means to visitors. In terms of the benefits gained from
attending festivals, a group of researchers using several
benefit scales to test the outcome identified four key
factors: social, cognitive, transformational, and affec-
tive benefits (Lee et al., 2012). The test results showed
transformational benefit was the greatest benefit that
visitors gained from attending a multicultural festi-
val. Inmuseum studies, ‘transformational’was defined
as discarding old ways of thinking, exploring new
ideas and concepts (Soren, 2009), developing new at-
titudes, appreciation, and beliefs (Lord, 2007). There-
fore, festivals have the potential to change visitors’ atti-
tudes and give them a positive perspective on different
cultures.
The majority of the reviewed publications on festi-
val study focus on marketers’ perspectives. At the in-
dividual level, many of the resources emphasised vis-
itor motivations, along with the festival visitors’ sat-
isfaction and behavioural intentions, but few studies
have discussed the value and benefits gained from at-
tending international festivals. Moreover, attitude and
behavioural changes after the event have rarely been
discussed.
In this study, the researcher intends to determine
if the visitors’ attitude toward diverse cultures would
be influenced after attending the indy International
Festival. Due to a lack of relevant research, the re-
searcher adopted the construct of Universal-Diversity
Orientation from the psychological field andmodified
the items of m-guds-s to examine visitors’ attitudes
toward diverse culture.
Methodology
An on-site survey was conducted. The samples of the
study were attendees of the 38th Annual indy Inter-
national Festival, which lasted four days. Participants
were approached via convenience sampling on site at
various times. Due to the objective of examining atti-
tudes of visitors towards diverse culture in this study,
the researcher tried to approach subjects from differ-
ent races to survey. The researcher collected 195 sur-
veys of which 176 had usable data.
The research instrument was designed to test the
visitors’ attitude toward diverse culture based on the
construct ofUniversal-DiverseOrientation (udo) and
the development of the Miville-Guzman Universality-
Diversity Scale, Short Form (m-guds-s) by Miville et
al. (1999). The questionnaire can be seen in Appendix
B and consisted of three parts: (a) 9-itemquestionnaire
adapted from m-guds-s; (b) 11-item questionnaire of
past experience at the event and other culture-related
experience; and (c) 8-item questionnaire of included
demographic variables.
There were several differences between the scale
items in this research and original m-guds-s. The
original 15-item m-guds-s can be seen in Table 1. The
132 | Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018
Yao-Yi Fu et al. The Influence of an International Festival on Visitors’ Attitudes
Table 1 The Miville-Guzman Universality-Diversity Scale-Short Form
Aspect Item
Diversity of
Contact
1. I would like to join an organization that emphasizes getting to know people from different countries.
2. I would like to go to dances that feature music from other countries.
3. I often listen to the music of other cultures.
4. I am interested in learning about the many cultures that have existed in this world.
5. I attend events where I might get to know people from different racial backgrounds.
Relativistic
Appreciation
1. Persons with disabilities can teach me things I could not learn elsewhere.
2. I can best understand someone after I get to know how he/she is both similar and different from me.
3. Knowing how a person differs from me greatly enhances our friendship.
4. In getting to know someone, I like knowing both how he/she differs from me and is similar to me.
5. Knowing about the different experiences of other people helps me understand my own problems better.
Comfort With
Differences
1. Getting to know someone of another race is generally an uncomfortable experience for me.
2. I am only at ease with people of my own race.
3. It’s really hard for me to feel close to a person form another race.
4. It is very important that a friend agrees with me on most issues.
5. I often feel irritated by persons of a different race.
Table 2 Modified m-guds-s Items
Aspect Item
Diversity of
Contact
1. Helps me know more people from different countries.
2. Makes me more interested in trying different foods from other countries.
3. Makes me more interested in learning about different cultures.
Relativistic
Appreciation
4. Teaches me more things that I could not learn elsewhere.
5. Helps me best understand someone by knowing how he/she is similar to and different from me.
6. Increases my self-understanding by knowing other people’s cultural background.
Comfort with
Differences
7. Makes me feel a sense of kinship with persons from different ethnic group.
8. Makes me become comfortable getting to know people from different countries.
9. Makes me become more empathetic after knowing more people of different races.
scale in this research was modified from the original
and reduced from fifteen to nine items because a few
items from the original did not pertain to the popula-
tion and geographical site of the study. For example,
‘I would like to go to dances that feature music from
other countries (Diversity of Contact),’ ‘Persons with
disabilities can teach me things I could not learn else-
where (Relativistic Appreciation),’ and ‘It is very im-
portant that a friend agrees with me on most issues
(Comfort with Differences)’ do not fit quite right in
this study; therefore, the researcher eliminated these
few items from the original. It was the first time the
m-guds-s was used in an event study. In order to suit
the research objectives, the researcher rephrased the
items and reduced the original m-guds-s from five
to three items per aspect. Items are rated on a 6-point
Likert type scale, ranging from 1 for ‘strongly disagree’
to 6 for ‘strongly agree.’ Higher scores on the m-guds-
s reflect higher levels of udo. In addition to being
a reliable scale, the reliability of the m-guds-s has
been tested and found to be 0.90. Table 2 displayed
the m-guds-s items as they pertain to three aspects
of udo.
The study analysed several factors influencing the
udo scores including visitation frequencies, length of
stay during the visit, interests in culture, and past in-
ternational travelling experience. In order to obtain
the demographic data of festival visitors, the following
Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018 | 133
Yao-Yi Fu et al. The Influence of an International Festival on Visitors’ Attitudes
Table 3 Respondent Profile
Variable Group N 
Gender Male  .
Female  .
Total  
Age –  .
–  .
–  .
–  .
+  .
Total  
Marital Status Single  .
Married  .
Divorced/Partnered  .
Widowed  .
Total  
Education High School  .
College  .
Post-Graduate  .
Total  
Race Caucasian  .
African American  .
Hispanic  .
Asian/Pacific Islander  .
Others  .
Total  
Continued in the next column
questions were asked: (1) gender; (2) age; (3) marital
status; (4) race; (5) education; (6) annual household
income before taxes; (7) employment status; (8) resi-
dence zip code.
Results
Descriptive Profile of the Respondents
Overview of item frequencies and descriptive statistics
permitted assurance of accuracy across all question-
naire items. Upon further review, input errors were
identified and corrected. In total, 195 questionnaires
were collected from visitors to the indy International
Festival, with 176 (90) questionnaires usable. The de-
Table 3 Continued
Variable Group N 
Annual Household
Income
Less than ,  .
,–,  .
,–,  .
,+  .
Total  
Employment Status Employed  .
Unemployed  .
Retired  .
Others  .
Total  
Table 4 Correlations among Modified m-guds-s Full
Scale and Subscales
Scale/subscale () () () ()
() Diversity of Contact –
() Relativistic Apprec. .** –
() Comfort With Diff. .** .** –
() udo Full Scale .** .** .** –
mographic characteristics of the participants are pre-
sented in Table 3. This table demonstrated that the
gender distribution of festival visitors was quite even,
with 82 male (47.1) and 92 female (52.9). The age
groups that recorded the highest attendance at the fes-
tival were the 18-to-28 age group (27.6) and the 29-
to-38 age group (28.8). Marital status single (44.8)
and married (46.5) were quite even. For the educa-
tion level of respondents, over half of the respondents
(55.9) had a college education, and 56 (32.9) were
post-graduate. In terms of race, the majority of re-
spondents were Caucasian (65.3), with 17.3 Asians
and Pacific Islanders. The annual household income
of respondents was between the range of $25,001 to
$50,000 (31.4) and $50,001 to $100,000 (33.3).Most
of the respondents were employed (77.2).
The Visitor Attitude Scale
TheVisitor Attitude Scale in this researchwas adopted
from the original 15-item m-guds-s by Miville et al.
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Yao-Yi Fu et al. The Influence of an International Festival on Visitors’ Attitudes
Table 5 Means and Standard Deviations of the Items
Items Mean sd
Makes me more interested in trying different foods from other countries (dc) . .
Makes me more interested in learning about different cultures (dc) . .
Helps me know more people from different countries (dc) . .
Makes me feel a sense of kinship with persons from different ethnic group (cd) . .
Makes me become more empathetic after knowing more people of different races (cd) . .
Helps me best understand someone by knowing how he/she is similar to and different from me (ra) . .
Makes me become comfortable getting to know people from different countries (cd) . .
Increases my self-understanding by knowing other people’s cultural background (ra) . .
Teaches me more things that I could not learn elsewhere (ra) . .
Notes dc – Diversity of Contact, cd – Comfort with Differences, ra – Relativistic Appreciation. N = 176.
Table 6 Results of t-Tests and Descriptive Statistics of Full Scores and Subscale Scores by Visitation Frequency
Outcome First-time visitors Repeat visitors Sig. t df
Mean sd n Mean sd n
Diversity of Contact . .  . .  .* –. 
Relativistic Appreciation . .  . .  .** –. 
Comfort with Difference . .  . .  .* –. 
Universal-Diverse Orientation . .  . .  .** –. 
Notes * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01 (two-tailed).
(2000) and reduced from five to three items per sub-
scale. The reliability of all items as well as three sub-
scales was tested using Cronbach’s alpha. Cronbach’s
alpha for the 9-item udo measure was 0.90, whereas
coefficient alphas for the subscales were 0.70, 0.84, and
0.84, for diversity of contact, relativistic appreciation,
and comfort with difference, respectively. Subscales
were found to be significantly inter-correlated with
each other as well as with the full scale (Table 4).
Table 5 provided the mean scores of the m-guds-s
items in descending order. The m-guds-s were mea-
sured on a 6-point Likert type scalewith 1 synonymous
with ‘strongly disagree,’ 2 synonymous with ‘disagree,’
3 synonymous with ‘disagree a little bit,’ 4 synonymous
with ‘agree a little bit,’ 5 synonymous with ‘agree,’ and
6 synonymous with ‘strongly agree.’
The mean scores of items were between 4.9 to 5.39.
The average score of all items was 5.1. The two items
with the highest means measuring visitor attitudes
were ‘Item 2: Makes me more interested in trying dif-
ferent foods fromother countries’ (m = 5.39) and ‘Item
3: makes me more interested in learning about differ-
ent cultures’ (m = 5.37), which were both located in
the subscale of diversity of contact. In contrast, the
two items with the lowest mean were ‘Item 4: teaches
memore things that I could not learn elsewhere’ (4.90)
and ‘Item6: increasesmy self-understanding by know-
ing other people’s cultural background’ (4.96), both
located in the subscale of relativistic appreciation. The
average scores of three subscales were 5.29 (Diversity
of Contact), 4.96 (Relativistic Appreciation), and 5.03
(Comfort with Difference).
Testing of Hypothesis 1
From the usable data (N = 176), 91 respondents were
first-time visitors (51.7)with 85 repeat visitors (48.3).
An independent-samples t-test was conducted to ex-
amine whether there was a significant difference be-
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Yao-Yi Fu et al. The Influence of an International Festival on Visitors’ Attitudes
Table 7 Correlations among Modified m-guds-s
Full Scores and Subscale Scores with Visitation
Frequency
Item Visitation Frequency
Visitation Frequency –
Diversity of Contact .*
Relativistic Appreciation .**
Comfort with Difference .*
Universal-diverse Orientation .**
Notes * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01 (two-tailed).
Table 8 Correlations among Modified m-guds-s
Full Scores and Subscale Scores
with Stay-Time
Item Stay-Time
Stay-time –
Diversity of Contact .*
Relativistic Appreciation .**
Comfort with Difference .*
Universal-diverse Orientation .**
Notes * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01 (two-tailed).
Table 9 Results of t-Tests and Descriptive Statistics of Full Scores and Subscale Scores by International Event Experience
Outcome () () Sig. t df
Mean sd n Mean sd n
Diversity of Contact . .  . .  .** –. 
Relativistic Appreciation . .  . .  . –. 
Comfort with Difference . .  . .  .* –. 
Universal-Diverse Orientation . .  . .  .** –. 
Notes (1) Didn’t attend any international event. (2) Attended at least one international event in the last three years. * p <
0.05, ** p < 0.01 (two-tailed).
tween first-time and repeat visitors in relation to their
overall udo scores and each subscale. Table 6 re-
vealed a significant difference in average udo scores
between first-time visitors (m = 4.96, sd = 0.67) and
repeat visitors (m = 5.24, sd = 0.56; t (174) = –2.988, p
= 0.003, two-tailed). The magnitude of the differences
in the means (mean difference = –0.28, 95 ci: –0.47
to –0.10) was small (eta2 = 0.049). There were also
significant differences in the three subscales: Diversity
of Contact (p = 0.018), Relativistic Appreciation (p =
0.003), and Comfort with Difference (p = 0.018).
In addition, the relationship between the numeri-
cal data of visitation frequencies and udo scores were
conducted by Pearson correlation analyses. A modest,
positive correlation was found between visitation fre-
quency and udo scores (r = 0.21, p = 0.008). More-
over, visitation frequencies were positively correlated
with each subscale: Diversity of Contact (r = 0.16, p =
0.049), Relativistic Appreciation (r = 0.23, p = 0.003),
and Comfort with Difference (r = 0.16, p = 0.037) (Ta-
ble 7).
Table 10 Correlations among Modified m-guds-s Full
Score and Subscale Scores with Cultural Interest
Item Cultural Interest
Cultural Interest –
doc .**
ra .**
cwd .**
udo .**
Notes * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01 (two-tailed).
Testing of Hypothesis 2
The relationship between visitors’ udo scores and
their stay-time at the event was investigated using
the Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient.
There was a positive significant correlation between
the two variables, r = 0.22, n = 172, p = 0.003, with
high levels of udo scores associated with long stay-
time at the event (Table 8).
Moreover, stay-time was also positively correlated
136 | Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018
Yao-Yi Fu et al. The Influence of an International Festival on Visitors’ Attitudes
Table 11 Results of t-Tests and Descriptive Statistics of Full Scores and Subscale Scores by Oversea Travel Experience
Outcome Have traveled overseas Never traveled overseas Sig. t df
Mean sd n Mean sd n
Diversity of Contact . .  . .  . . 
Relativistic Appreciation . .  . .  . –. 
Comfort with Difference . .  . .  . –. 
Universal-Diverse Orientation . .  . .  . –. 
Notes * p < 0.05, ** p < 0.01 (two-tailed).
with each subscale: Diversity of Contact (r = 0.18, p =
0.021), Relativistic Appreciation (r = 0.22, p = 0.004),
and Comfort with Difference (r = 0.20, p = 0.01).
Testing of Hypothesis 3
An independent samples t-test was conducted to ex-
amine whether there was a significant difference be-
tween respondents who did not attend any interna-
tional events (group 1,N =66, 40) and thosewhohad
attended at least one international event in the previ-
ous three years (group 2, N = 97, 60). There was a
significant difference in udo scores for group 1 (m =
4.93, sd = 0.69) and group 2 (m = 5.20, sd = 0.57; t
(161) = –2.696, p = 0.008, two-tailed). The magnitude
of the differences in the means (mean difference = –
0.27, 95 ci: –0.46 to –0.07) was small (eta2 = 0.043).
There were also significant differences in two sub-
scales: Diversity of Contact (p = 0.004) and Comfort
with Difference (p = 0.028), excluding Relativistic Ap-
preciation (p = 0.055) (Table 9).
Testing of Hypothesis 4
The relationship between visitors’ udo scores and
their cultural interest was investigated using the Pear-
son product-moment correlation coefficient. There
was a strong, positive correlation between the two
variables, r = 0.51, n = 176, p < 0.001, with high lev-
els of cultural interest associated with high levels of
udo scores.
Also, the Pearson correlation coefficient is positive
on each subscale: Diversity of Contact (r = 0.55, p <
0.001), Relativistic Appreciation (r = 0.38, p < 0.001),
and Comfort with Difference (r = 0.44, p < 0.001) re-
spectively (Table 10).
Testing of Hypothesis 5
An independent samples t-test was conducted to ex-
amine whether there was a significant difference be-
tween respondents who had travelled overseas (Group
1, N = 140, 80) and those who had never travelled
overseas (Group 2, N = 36, 20). There was no signif-
icant difference in udo scores for group 1 (m = 5.09,
sd = 0.64) and group 2 (m = 5.12, sd = 0.61; t (174)
= –0.231, p = 0.817, two-tailed). There were also no
significant differences in the three subscales: Diversity
of Contact (p = 0.742), Relativistic Appreciation (p =
0.929), and Comfort with Difference (p = 0.469) (Ta-
ble 11).
Testing of Hypothesis 6
A multiple linear regression was calculated to predict
visitors’ intention to travel overseas after attending this
festival based upon their average udo scores, visi-
tation frequency, and stay-time at the event. In con-
ducting the regression analysis, the variable of ‘Over-
seas travel intention’ served as the dependent variable,
while three factors (udo scores, visitation frequency
and stay-time at the event) were used as the indepen-
dent variables.
Preliminary analyses were performed to ensure
there was no violation of the assumption of normality,
linearity and multicollinearity. As illustrated in Table
12, a significant regression equation was found (F =
18.74, p < 0.0001), with an R2 of 0.252, which means
that 25.2 of the total variance in the dependent vari-
able can be explained by the variables in the model.
The degree of variable collinearity is considered ac-
ceptable with the variance inflation (vif) less than 10.
Visitors’ intention to travel is equal to 0.889 + 0.709
Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018 | 137
Yao-Yi Fu et al. The Influence of an International Festival on Visitors’ Attitudes
Table 12 Overseas Travel Intention after Attending
the Festival
Model () () () () ()
Regression .  . . .
Residual .  .
Total . 
Notes Column headings are as follows: (1) sum of squares,
(2) degrees of freedom, (3) mean square, (4) F, (5) signifi-
cance. R = 0.516, R2 = 0.266, adjusted R2 = 0.252
Table 13 Variables in the Equation
Variable B Beta t Sig.
Constant . . .
udo . . . .
Stay-time –. –. –. .
vf –. –. –. .
Notes Dependent variable: Overseas travel intention after
attending the festival.
(udo) – 0.005 (visitation frequency) – 0.066 (stay-
time at the event) (Table 13).
Discussions
Using a quantitative approach, this paper explored the
indy International Festival visitors’ attitudes toward
diverse cultures and compared the differences between
groups in relation to their visitation frequencies to this
particular festival, past experiences in participating in
international events, and overseas travel experiences.
In addition, the relationship between stay-time at the
event, personal, cultural interest and attitude scores
were tested. Moreover, overseas travel intentions after
attending this event were analysed.
Demographic data revealed several items worthy
of note. The previous cultural event study concluded
that gender, age, education, and income are some of
the personal characteristics that influence motiva-
tions to attend multicultural festivals (Tkaczynski &
Toh, 2014). In this research, respondents were near
equally distributed across each gender, with 82 male
(47.1) and 92 female (52.9). Although the propor-
tion of gender difference is not large here, it is obvious
that females are more likely to be drawn into cultural
events. Over half of the respondents were between the
ages of 18 to 30 (56.4); 151 respondents (88.8) indi-
cated that they had either some college education or a
post-graduate degree. These two demographic factors
indicated that the majority of visitors were highly ed-
ucated young adults. It indicated that cultural events
are more attractive to visitors who have high educa-
tional backgrounds. The findings showed the annual
household income of respondents were between the
range of $25,001 to $50,000 (31.4) and $50,001 to
$100,000 (33.3). Although it was concluded in other
research that income was an indicator influencing vis-
itors’ decision to attend cultural events (Tkaczynski
& Toh, 2014), it is uncertain whether those with high
or low income would participate in cultural events
more often. More research needs to be done in or-
der to find the rationale for this argument. Based on
the record of the United States Census Bureau (2014),
more than 80 of Indiana residents were White, and
only 2.1 were Asians/Pacific Islanders. The result of
this research included 65.3 Caucasian respondents
and 17.3 Asians and Pacific Islanders respondents.
The reason that the high percentage of Asians/Pacific
Islanders attended this festival may be caused by their
cultures’ representation at the festival. Those whose
cultures have presented would feel connections and
have a sense of cultural self-esteem (Huang & Lee,
2015).
The scale that tested visitors’ attitudes in this study
was adapted from m-guds, Short Form (Fuertes et al.,
2000). The present findings suggested the scale has
good reliability and validity and can be used success-
fully to measure visitors’ attitudes toward diverse cul-
tures in the festival setting. The average score of all re-
spondents was 5.1 on the 6-point Likert type scale. Vis-
itors as a whole had high attitude scores. The average
score of three subscales were 5.29 (Diversity of Con-
tact), 4.96 (Relativistic Appreciation), and 5.03 (Com-
fort with Difference) respectively. The mean scores of
each item were between 4.9 to 5.39. The item with the
highest score was ‘Makes me more interested in try-
ing different foods from other countries (Diversity of
Contact)’ (5.39).
In contrast, the item with the lowest score was
‘Teaches me more things that I could not learn else-
138 | Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018
Yao-Yi Fu et al. The Influence of an International Festival on Visitors’ Attitudes
where (RelativisticAppreciation)’ (4.90). Respondents’
attitude scores on the subscale of Diversity of Contact
were comparatively higher than the other two sub-
scales. It revealed that this festival successfully created
a comfortable interaction environment for visitors to
learn and to try new things from different cultures.
However, the scores on the subscale of Relativistic Ap-
preciation were lower; this does not mean that the
festival is not helpful in this aspect of attitudes. The
results may be affected by how the researcher stated
the questions and respondents’ understanding of it.
In order to answer the research questions, six hy-
potheses were analysed. Differences were found be-
tween first-time visitors (51.7) and repeat visitors
(48.3). Repeat visitors have higher attitude scores (m
= 5.24) than first visitors (m = 4.96) as well as on each
subscale. In addition, stay-time at the event was pos-
itive and significantly correlated to visitors’ attitude
scores (r = 0.22, p = 0.003). It is said that themore time
spent at the festival and the more often visitors come,
the better the understanding of cultural differences
(Falk, 1982). With a longer period of exploration and
involvement in the festival, visitors developed more
in-depth understanding and appreciation for different
cultures.
According to several motivation studies, cultural
exploration was identified as the most important mo-
tivation to attend multicultural festivals (Crompton
& McKay, 1997; Chang, 2006; Lee et al., 2012). The
findings of this study showed that visitors’ cultural
interest in visiting ethnic festivals and museums was
positive and significantly correlated to visitors’ atti-
tude scores (r = 0.51, p < 0.001). Differences were also
found between those who had participated in inter-
national events in the previous three years than those
who had not. Those who have participated in interna-
tional events in the previous three years have higher
attitude scores (m = 5.20) than those who had not par-
ticipated in any international events (m =4.93). It indi-
cated that people who have interest in cultures would
pay more attention to cultural events and their atti-
tudes toward diversity are likely more positive than
those who do not have an interest in cultures. Sig-
nificant results were also seen on two subscales: Di-
versity of Contact and Comfort with Difference, ex-
cluding the subscale of Relativistic Appreciation. The
reason that Relativistic Appreciation is not significant
for this particular group may be because those who
have interest in cultures already have basic under-
standing of diverse cultures from their past experi-
ences. They do not necessarily expect this particular
festival to teach them something they cannot learn
elsewhere. Compared with their past experiences, this
festival was not beneficial on the aspect of Relativistic
Appreciation.
In this study, visitors were asked about their over-
seas travel experience and were divided into two gro-
ups: one who had overseas travel experience and the
other who had not travelled overseas. It was assumed
that positive attitudes toward diverse cultures would
be stronger after attending this festival in those with
overseas travel experience than those who do not have
the experience. However, there was no significant dif-
ference in udo scores between those who have over-
seas travel experience (m = 5.09) and those who have
not (m = 5.12). One possible reason for there being
no statistical significance may lie in the small size of
the never-been-overseas group. In the present study,
only 36 participants (20) had never travelled over-
seas. Moreover, another possible reason may be that
this festival does not give themmuchmore to see than
their experience in other countries. Therefore, it is un-
able to find a definitive answer from this study. Finally,
this study analysed if attending this festival could in-
crease visitors’ overseas travel intention. A significant
regressionwas found (F = 18.74, p<0.0001), with anR2
of 0.252. Visitors’ intention to travel is equal to 0.889
+ 0.709 (udo) – 0.005 (visitation frequency) – 0.066
(stay-time at the event). However, 25.2 of the total
variance is not strong. Theremay be some related vari-
ables that were not included in the study.
Conclusions
This study aimed to determine if attending inter-
national festivals can improve visitors’ attitudes to-
ward diverse cultures. Several practical implications
of the study could be useful to event organisers and
even other multicultural organisations or communi-
ties hosting multicultural festivals. The findings of
the study reflect that Indiana residents who attended
Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018 | 139
Yao-Yi Fu et al. The Influence of an International Festival on Visitors’ Attitudes
this international festival have high attitude scores.
Those who have high educational background may
have encountered people from different ethnic groups
in school or in the workplace. Their educational path
gives them more opportunities to interact with differ-
ent cultures, and it makes them have a different per-
spective on cultural diversity.
Moreover, for thosewhohave an interest in cultural
events andmuseums, theirmotivation in attending the
festival was more purposeful. They only seek specific
exhibits that interest them. If the festival canmeet their
needs, they will stay longer and perhaps visit again.
International festivals play an important role in cul-
tivating visitors’ awareness, acceptance, and apprecia-
tive attitudes toward diverse cultures; understanding
the levels of attitudes reveals the importance that in-
ternational events can have and suggests how better to
organise festivals for various groups of visitors.
This research has produced some significant find-
ings. However, it is not without its limitations. The
indy International Festival is positioning itself to be
the largest ethnic celebration in Indiana. While they
are eager to promote cultural diversity in the city, it
is difficult to evaluate if the festival is delivering their
message to the visitors. Therefore, this study provides
useful information on the visitors’ profile. With the
visitors’ profile information, it would be easier to find
target groups and consider ways to keep the groups
the festival already have and attract different types of
groups at the same time. Furthermore, without know-
ing visitor’ attitudes toward diverse cultures before at-
tending the festival, it is difficult to know if visitors’ at-
titudes have changed because of the festival. In order
to have an anticipated outcome, this study should be
replicated each year at the festival.
Recommendations
Since it was a preliminary test on attitudes in the fes-
tival setting, further research is needed to explore the
nuances of this study. The study could be replicated
with a different group of visitors who go to the same
event to determine if the results are similar. Since the
indy International Festival, where this studywas con-
ducted, is an annual local event in Indianapolis, a
replication of the current study that compares vari-
ous groups of visitors for each year would be power-
ful. A focus could be on exploring issues of age differ-
ences, racial differences, educational differences, etc.
Additionally, comparing the results of the attitudes
with other cultural events assessments would be use-
ful. Other cultural events have equal contribution to
promoting diversity. However, toomany similar activ-
ities and events may dilute the crowd. If public sectors
can integrate resources of local communities and or-
ganisations to utilise and share resources effectively,
the contribution of cultural events would be more no-
table.
A central focus of this research addresses the mis-
sions of many multicultural events: to display cul-
tural and ethnic diversity, increase communication,
and encourage cultural exchange. As is evident in this
research, a well-designed international festival could
be an effective instrument. In an era of globalisation,
multicultural events must make a significant impact
for the society. Event organisers must find ways to de-
velop educational, interactive, and amusing activities
and programmes for local communities to embrace
similarities and differences in our society.
The study has made two contributions. Theoreti-
cally, this study put forth measurement strategies that
are more reflective as to what visitor’s attitudes toward
diverse cultures are when visiting multicultural festi-
vals. Practically, the findings of this study will bene-
fit central Indiana and other communities consider-
ing that international or so-called multicultural festi-
vals play an important role in the tourism industry to-
day. Festivals not only benefit the community econom-
ically but also psychologically. The greater demand for
well-organisedmulticultural festivals justifies the need
for more effective, accurate, quantifiable data. Thus,
event organisers that consult the data derived from
the results of this study will be able to organise events
more efficiently and effectively.
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Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018 | 141

Original Scientific Article
Tea for Tourists: Cultural Capital, Representation,
and Borrowing in the Tea Culture
of Mainland China and Taiwan
IrenaWeber
University of Primorska, Faculty of Tourism Studies – Turistica, Slovenia
irena.weber@fts.upr.si
Tea is arguably one of the most widely consumed beverages in the world. It has been
imbued with diverse medicinal, cultural, and symbolic characteristics. Tea plays a
significant role in the construction of contemporary national and regional identities
that are, in turn, presented and represented for tourists in the formof tea houses,mu-
seums, tea trails, guided tours, and tea tastings. Based on ethnographic participant
observation in Shanghai, Hangzhou, Taipei, and Pinglin, this paper tackles a com-
parative analysis of tea culture as used and represented in cultural tourism, focusing
on the identity narratives of specialised tea museums, tea houses, and tea markets to
trace cultural representations and flows of contemporary cultural borrowing in the
art of tea.
Keywords: tea culture, tourism, China, Taiwan, cultural capital
https://doi.org/10.26493/2335-4194.11.143-154
Introduction
One day when Pooh Bear had nothing else to
do, he thought he would do something, so he
went round to Piglet’s house to see what Piglet
was doing. It was still snowing as he stumped
over the white forest track, and he expected to
find Piglet warming his toes in front of his fire,
but to his surprise he saw that the door was
open, and the more he looked inside the more
Piglet wasn’t there.
A. A. Milne, The House at Pooh Corner
When the mind is clear one can sip tea, when
the spirit is at ease one can talk of aspiration.
Old Chinese Saying
Onewinter afternoon, several decades ago,whenTwin-
ing’s tea was considered a privilege, if not a luxury, a
friend asked me to tea. There were no teahouses in
Ljubljana at the time, so the partaking of tea took place
at home. His was an old apartmentwith squeaky wood
floors and high ceiling, and china teaware that went
with the décor. A small group of friends and acquain-
tances tended to meet in each other’s houses for tea
and talk during their study years. It was a particular
gathering of ‘us’, the tea drinkers, against ‘them’, the
coffee drinkers, a self-ascribed identity marker with
the airs that went with it. On that particular after-
noon, waiting for tea to be prepared, I recall picking
up a book and opening it at random – the passage of
Pooh looking for Piglet jumped out at me and, with
laughter, Pooh has stayed with me ever since.
Finding myself in Shanghai in the spring of 2018,
I was reminded of Pooh’s predicament vividly. Look-
ing forward to tasting a variety of Chinese green tea
and expecting to find tea served in teapots, I entered
the breakfast room in the hotel on the morning af-
ter arrival. More than fifteen cooked dishes were pre-
pared and elegantly laid out, but no green tea. There
Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018 | 143
Irena Weber Tea for Tourists
were a coffee machine and two low-grade black Lip-
ton tea bags sitting in water in a glass pitcher with-
out being removed. The more I looked, the more the
green tea was not there. Bewildered, I finally asked the
staff, and they shrugged: no green tea. The same oc-
curred among the tea fields in Hangzhou.When asked
in a hotel why there was no green tea, the staff an-
swered with a solemn expression: ‘Tourists drink cof-
fee’. Though tea is arguably one of themostwidely con-
sumed beverages in theworld, and it would appear im-
probable not to find it right there from where it origi-
nates, in the middle of tea plantations, the reality of a
tourist in a hotel in China at present appears to be . . .
no green tea.
Tea is an acquired taste. It took decades of tea
drinking to slowly learn about the art of tea, from
tea bags to loose-leaf tea, from boiling water, to the
nuances of temperature, from black to light colours,
fragrance and taste, from British mugs to Chinese and
Japanese small teacups, from clay to porcelain, from
functionality to ritual. Tea is also an idiosyncratic taste
(Figure 1). Both acquired and idiosyncratic tastes fit
into Bourdieu’s concept of cultural capital in two of the
three proposed forms. Themost explicit is the embod-
ied form of cultural capital, the accumulation of which
depends on the individual and her investment of time
and effort. In that sense, it corresponds to the skill of
preparing tea, the Gong fu chá – Gong fu or Kung fu,
meaning tomake somethingwith an effort, in our case
chá. Not just pouring boiling water over a teabag but
employ the accumulated knowledge in order to have
the best result in tea preparation. Effort entails a per-
sonal cost of invested time, ‘On paie de sa personne’
(Bourdieu, 1986, p. 244) as well as socially constructed
‘libido sciendi.’ The outcome is a symbolic value that
cannot be directly transmitted like economic capital
or, indeed, an objectified form of cultural capital that
can be defined only in relation to the embodied cul-
tural capital. The objectified form may be both ma-
terial and symbolic. In material form, it can be trans-
mitted to the next generation; in our case, for instance,
that wouldmean the teaware; in contrast, the symbolic
part may be transmitted only partially as knowledge
or appreciation but not as skill, effort, or time.
Tea is a commodity with a complex, even exciting
Figure 1 Objectified Cultural Capital: Gong fu chá Tray,
Teapot, Teacups, Tea Pitcher, Teaspoon and a Tea
Friend from Taipei, Shanghai, Hong Kong and
Tokyo
history and global impact. It has been imbued with
diverse medicinal, cultural, and symbolic characteris-
tics. It has only recently attracted the somewhat nar-
row attention of tourism scholars.
Based on ethnographic participant observation
and informal interviews in Shanghai, Hangzhou, Tai-
pei, and Pinglin, this paper tackles a comparative anal-
ysis of tea culture as used and represented in cultural
tourism, focusing on narratives of specialised tea mu-
seums, tea houses, and tea ceremonies in order to trace
cultural representations and flows of contemporary
cultural borrowing in the art of tea.
Lacking knowledge of theChinese language,my re-
search heavily depended on local interpreters. Hope-
fully, an acquired embodied cultural capital of the art
of tea may have helped to mitigate that unfortunate
handicap to a certain extent.
Not a believer in the deep analytical value of adjec-
tive tourism(s), I am not interested in defining ‘tea
tourism’ in this paper but rather tackle tea within
tourism contexts. In order to do so, I first introduce
a short historical overview of tea, followed by basic
descriptions of tea classifications before engaging in
topics of tea and tourism.
Tea History: A Short Overview
Drinking tea over time strengthens thought.
Hua Tuo, Dissertation on Foods
Tea in China is firmly set in the mythological past.
144 | Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018
Irena Weber Tea for Tourists
Figure 2 Evolution of Chinese Characters Depicting Tea,
China National Tea Museum, Hangzhou
Regardless of the type and style of writing, popu-
lar (Wang, 2013), semi-academic (Tong, 2010; Saberi,
2010), academic (Benn, 2015; Han, 2007), all accounts
of the history of tea in China tend to start with the
Shen Nong (also transliterated as Shennong), a mythi-
cal ruler, heroic and cultural figure who was supposed
to rule between 2737 and 2697 bce. He is alleged to
have discovered the beneficial effects of tea by chance,
when one day the wind blew a leaf into his cup of hot
water. Referred to as aDivine Husbandman, a father of
agriculture and herbal medicine, he is portrayed with
a transparent stomach that enabled him to see which
ingested plants were beneficial and which not. In the
Pinglin tea museum in Taiwan, he appears as an ani-
mated figure that serves as a prop for tourist guides.
The mythological past may turn out to be more
tangible than previously thought. Namely, the Chi-
nese archaeologists are engaged in numerous excava-
tions that may, as they did in the past, reveal material
culture once considered mythological, the Xia, Shang,
and Zhou dynasties being cases in point (Saje, 2015).
Shen Nong may thus appear one day out of mythol-
ogy, but perhaps not quite with a transparent stom-
ach. Tracing the history of tea is complicated by the
fact that before the 7th century there was no single
unambiguous character to denote tea or indeed tea
culture. There were diverse characters thatmay ormay
not have explicitly referred to tea but included other
beverages as well (Figure 2). The cultivation of tea in
China is usually traced to the mountainous southwest
of Sichuan and Yunnan, regionally limited and quite
unknown in other parts of today’s China.
It was not before the Tang dynasty (7th–10th cen-
tury) that the chá character was introduced and has
since then been used to describe tea as a plant and a
beverage. It was also in the Tang dynasty that the first
official book on tea was written around 780, by Lu Yu,
entitled Chá Jing, usually transliterated as The Classic
Figure 3 Statue of Yu Lu at the Tea Market in Shanghai
of Tea. Lu Yu is celebrated as the ‘sage of tea’ or even
the ‘god of tea’ (Tong, 2010). His statues are found at
teamuseums and teamarkets. He is portrayed in good
spirits, holding a cup of tea and a scroll with the teapot
and a rock placed at his feet (Figure 3).
His three-volume book on tea consists of the writ-
ing on the origin and characteristics of tea, produc-
tion and tools, preparation, and utensils. It also in-
cludes anecdotes, legends, fables, and recipes. LuYu ef-
fectively mixed historical accounts with literature that
flourished in Tang dynasty and established the con-
nection between the art of tea and the arts includ-
ing calligraphy, which is being revitalised at present
in public displays as well as in university curriculums
(Figure 4).
The period has also produced an extensive body of
tea poetry that may be read as historical and ethno-
graphic data on the production, consumption, mate-
rial culture and art of tea. One of the most famous
poems is the Seven Bowls of Tea by Lu Tong who is
considered to be the second sage of tea, after Lu Yu.
He describes the effect of the seven brews of tea on
Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018 | 145
Irena Weber Tea for Tourists
Figure 4 Tea and Calligraphy: Video Presentation
at Shanghai Tea Market
his body, thoughts, emotions, and attitudes, following
Taoist imagery (Benn, 2015, 14).
In the 9th century, tea was introduced to Korea and
from there to Japan, where it initially attracted little at-
tention. However, three centuries later Japan adopted
tea. In a time of the Song dynasty (10th–13th century),
sophisticated new rules were introduced into the art of
tea, and it is from this period that the JapaneseCha No
Yu ritual was developed and elaborated on.
In the Ming dynasty (14th–17th century), com-
pressed tea was banned, and loose leaf tea was pre-
pared in a bowl (gaiwan) or a pot, thus underlying the
importance of utensils. The whole new economy of
teapot production stems from this period. During the
17th and 18th centuries, tea came to Taiwan with sev-
eral waves of Han Chinese settlers; yet it was not until
the 19th century that tea was produced on a larger
scale.
Tea was introduced to Europe in the 17th century
by Portuguese and Dutch traders. The styles of pro-
duction and processing remained a closely guarded se-
cret in China throughout Qing dynasty up to 1850s,
when the situation changed dramatically.
In 1848, a Scottish gardener and botanist, Robert
Fortune was sent to the interior of China by the East
India Company as a plant hunter and a spy with a sole
mission of bringing back specimens and seeds of tea
plant together with detailed notes on tea production
and processing. He was disguised as a mandarin sup-
posedly coming from beyond the Great Wall (Rose,
2010). He negotiated with the Chinese intermediaries
from the areas where tea was produced. The outcome
of his mission – successful from the point of view of
the British Empire – shifted the relationship between
China and Britain and not only reshaped the map of
tea production fromChina to India, which was part of
the British Empire at the time but plunged China into
a great economic crisis. The Chinese production of tea
did not truly recover until a century later.
In the 20th century, there were several ruptures
that influenced the tea culture inmainlandChina. The
most devastating was the period of theGreat Leap For-
ward in the 1960s, when not only the production of
tea plummeted, but material culture in the form of tea
houses also disappeared to a great extent. The Cultural
Revolution also saw the further erosion of tea culture
although production itself picked up at the time (Han,
2007). In the late 1970s and through the 1980s, there
was the rapid growth of tea production along with the
re-established tea houses, new tea museums, markets,
and shops –many of themdesigned to cater to tourists.
Currently, China is once again the largest tea producer
in the world due to changes in the global market.
In Taiwan, the period from the early 1970s was
marked by the changed international position of the
island that was no longer a member of the un. At that
period tea production was re-orientated towards a do-
mestic consumption with a focus on the high-grade
tea, teaware design and tea houses. The period marks
a start in the complex process of forming a new iden-
tity referred to as Taiwanisation, which is an ongoing
process marked by a transition from a civic identity
towards an ethnic one that includes de-Sinicisation.
What’s in a Name?
The tea plant, either a tree or a bush, belongs to the
Camellia family and is classified as Camellia sinensis
with two varieties that are commercially produced:
Camelia sinensis from China and Camellia sinensis as-
samica from India.
Names for tea – as plant or beverage – in most lan-
guages stem either from the Mandarin Chinese chá or
t’e from an Amoy dialect of southern Fujian via the
Malay teh. The difference in adopted names reflects
the historic trade routes and influences. In the early
17th century, The Dutch East India Company was the
main importer of tea thus spreading the thee to the
most of Western Europe with the notable exception of
146 | Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018
Irena Weber Tea for Tourists
Portugal where the cha was adopted by way of Macao.
In the 16th century, before theDutch transmission, the
expression for tea in English was a version of theMan-
darin chaa, cha, tcha (see https://www.etymonline
.com/). The Mandarin version also travelled overland
to eastern countries.
• Dutch: thee
• English: tea
• French: thé
• Spanish: té
• German: tee
• Portuguese: chá
• Russian: chai
• Slovenian: čaj
• Turkish: çay
• Persian: cha
• Greek: tsai
• Arabic: shay
In everyday use, the word ‘tea’ does not necessar-
ily refer to Camellia sinensis but is more broadly used
to include numerous varieties of herb infusions that,
strictly speaking, should not be referred to as ‘tea’. This
standpoint is considered purist by some authors (Ellis,
Coulton, &Mauger, 2015). Be that as it may, in this pa-
per, we consider tea in its pure form or in a fusion form
as in contemporary bubble tea or cheese tea prepared
by any variety of Camellia sinensis sinensis or sinensis
assamica.
Historically, herb infusions or tisanes were consid-
ered medicinal beverages and were not equated with
tea. It was the invention of the teabag that opened the
door to different forms of production, perception, and
consumption that eventually led to the name of ‘tea’
being widened to include herb and fruit infusions.
Teabags were invented in the usa at the beginning of
the 20th century while in Britain Tetley adopted them
half a century later only to be met with an initially
‘frosty reception’ (Ellis et al., 2015, p. 264). However,
they quickly picked up the pace, and other tea com-
panies were forced to follow suit. Teabags marked a
new period of standardisation for mass production in
which low grade and low quality equalled high prof-
its. It also marked the changed social structure of tea
drinking. From the communal, sharing of tea in a
teapot it increasingly turned into an individual ‘one
bag per mug’ occasion. The teabag also meant the pre-
dictable taste – always the same – ordinary – a reversal
as it were of pure tea for which taste marked its dis-
tinction.
Tea Classifications and Grading
Varieties of tea by colour are the result of different pro-
duction procedures. Contemporary classification usu-
ally includes distinction by fermentation, shape, bak-
ing, and season. Fermentation is an expression bor-
rowed from wine production and is, in fact, a mis-
nomer (Needham, 2000). The process that plucked tea
leaves undergo is one of oxidation, not fermentation.
The only exception is Chinese Pu Er tea, which is sub-
jected to natural fermentation by Aspergillus niger, a
yeast bacterium that thrives in warm, damp, and ven-
tilated environments. Natural fermentation takes up
to five years. In most contemporary Pu Er production,
the process is artificially accelerated from45 to 90 days
(Zhang, 2014).
The shape of tea, such as string, sphere, flat or
rolled depends on the processing. Baking is the appli-
cation of heat to the plucked leaves, which may come
from natural sun heat or several varieties of artificial
heat. There is no set season for tea plucking; it de-
pends on the region or even the individual tea garden.
It may be plucked just once a year for a few days or
four or more times a year. It depends, much like wine,
on the complex concept of terroir,1 though this pays
little or no role in the official grading of tea quality.
There is no unified tea grading system. In China, tea is
graded by numbers, with one being the highest grade.
Grades are determined according to the shape of the
leaves. i.e., the same shape, same size leaves are of high
grade, at the bottom is dust which goes into teabags.
In addition, tea may be graded by the name of the gar-
den or the mountain where it is produced, such as the
1 Several expressions in Chinese are transliterated as terroir.
They are usually divided in three groups, one reffering to
micro-climate, soil, geology, the other to style of production
and preparation, the third to history, tradition, folklore and
political framework (Chan, 2012).
Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018 | 147
Irena Weber Tea for Tourists
Lion grade of the Long Jing (Dragon Well) green tea
from the Lion Peak mountain in Hangzhou (Figure
5). In addition, the so-called historical tribute teas –
teas that have been given to emperors as tribute each
season and are included in historical books on tea –
are considered of high grade, Long Jing being one ex-
ample.
Japanese grading is determined by the season of
plucking while grading in Taiwan includes appear-
ance, aroma and flavour, thus making taste to account
for the 60 of the grade. In Taiwan, the systematic
efforts to produce, maintain and promote high-grade
tea – particularly oolong – started (as already men-
tioned) in the early 1970s and established a network of
both large and small producers.
The international prices of Japanese and Taiwanese
teas tend to be significantly higher than the Chinese
ones, though there are some exceptions, like Da Hong
Pao,one of themost expensive oolong teas in theworld
with original trees from the Ming dynasty in the area
of theWuyi Mountain, one of the iconic cultural spots
infused with legends, stories and beliefs (Xiao, 2017).
In the case of Da Hong Pao, the name itself influences
the price while the quality that a tourist attempts to es-
tablish must be through tea tasting, as there are many
varieties with the same name.
Tea and Tourism
In a seminal work on tea and tourism, Jolliffe (2007 p.
250) proposed a set of objectives for a research agenda
including understanding tea cultures and traditions in
relation to tourism and cultural change, the study of
tea tourism products, demographics of tea tourists,
their motivation and experience, studies of natural
tea destinations, preservation of tea material culture,
and sustainable tea tourism projects of various kinds.
After the literature review in English, it appears that
such broad objectives are as yet far from being met al-
though there are some indications that tea research is
alive and strong in the Chinese language (Benn, 2015)
though it is not clear towhat extent it includes tourism.
In English, research on tea is scattered at best (Xiao,
2017; Writer, 2013; Mezcua Lopez, 2013; Zhang, 2016)
and some essential ethnographic work has been done
by the same scholar (Zhang, 2014, 2018a, 2018b) and
Figure 5
Lions Grade
of Spring 2018
Long Jing Tea
addresses tourism only tangentially. The abovemen-
tioned 2007 edited volume perhaps already indicated
the shortage of relevant researchers by including four
contributions by editor herself in addition to two that
she co-authored. Two other authors also contributed
or co-authored two articles each. To my knowledge,
there was no other edited volume or monograph pub-
lished exclusively on tea and tourism after that. It ap-
pears to remain an under-researched area.
Based on a relatively short ethnographic partici-
pant observation in China and Taiwan that was con-
nected to a topical conference and Erasmus teaching,
a few observations on contemporary tea culture are
offered in the present paper. Conducting research in
mainland China and Taiwan without the command
of the language is (as already noted) bound to be of
limited degree. Either one needs a mediator and inter-
preter or is reduced to body language and observation.
Where possible, I have relied on interpreters, particu-
larly in tea markets.
Tea Museums
Two tea museums, both constructed in the 1990s, are
observed in comparison. The one in mainland China
was visited in May 2018, the one in Taiwan in March
148 | Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018
Irena Weber Tea for Tourists
Figure 6 China National Tea Museum, Hangzhou
2013. In 1991, the National TeaMuseumwas opened in
Hangzhou, among fields of the reveredLong Jing green
tea. This is the unesco world heritage area of West
Lake, where culture and particularly poetry is sedi-
mented and mixed with the art of tea practices from
different historical periods (Dewar & Li, 2007).
While there is no singular linear history of tea
in China, or indeed of China itself, there are differ-
ent periods, diverse schools and practices, numerous
changes and ruptures, the official discourse is increas-
ingly stressing the national narrative of 5000 years of
uninterrupted ‘everlasting’ history. A short, broad and
vague, though the decidedly friendly description of
tea history that glosses over the hegemonic discourse
is offered on the introductory wooden panel in the
China national tea museum in Hangzhou, opened in
1991, and reads as follows:
Tea is one of China’s major contributions to man-
kind and world civilisation. China is the origin of
the tea tree and the first country to discover and use
tea. The tea industry and tea culture started from the
drinking of tea. Over thousands of years, as the custom
of drinking tea penetrated more and more deeply into
Chinese people’s lives, tea culture has been steadily en-
riched and developed as part of the age-old national
culture and a gem of traditional oriental culture. To-
day, as a worldwide beverage, tea serves as a tie of deep
affection between the Chinese and people in other
parts of the world (Figure 6).
The museum collection is divided into several
houses each with its themes and topics. Despite the
all-encompassing essentialism at the beginning of the
museum’s historical explanations (mentioned above),
there is a comprehensive overview of the historical
styles, customs and ritual uses of tea among differ-
ent ethnic groups presented in writing, material cul-
ture, installations, and videos. All written explanations
are transliterated to English while the staff, polite and
friendly, do not communicate in English with a noted
exception of a very young boy of ten or so, who was
able to explain in fluent English, the background of the
teaware on display and for sale in one of the houses. It
was however quite easy to do a self-guided tour while
three buses of Italian tourist visiting at the same time
had their own guide who spoke Italian. Tea tasting was
offered to groups of Chinese families and appeared to
be much more informal than at tea markets. Another
tea tasting for larger groups of guided tourists was of-
fered in a tent at the edge of the museum. Tea was
presented in large glasses and brewed several times by
simply adding more water from the kettle. The gong
fu chá way of preparing tea is not suitable for large
groups unless there are numerous demonstrators or
tea masters present at the same time.
After a short reflection, I decided not to participate
in a group tasting, taking advice from the famous Song
dynasty calligrapher Cai Xiang, who, in 1051, wrote A
Record of Tea or Cha Lu (Tong, 2010). In the book,
he makes the following observation on the number of
people partaking in tea: ‘The fewer guests when drink-
ing tea, the better. A crowd of guests is noisy, and noise
detracts from the elegance of the occasion. Drinking
tea alone is serenity, with two guests is superior, with
three or four is interesting, with five or six is extensive
and with seven or eight is an imposition’ (Wang, 2013,
p. 62). It is a timely reflection on the well-recorded
tension in tourism of how to balance the number of
tourists with sources and resources to offer meaning-
ful experience to all involved. Is there a holistic, long-
term view of tea tasting?
The Pinglin tea museum in Taiwan was opened in
1997 and is located by the Beishi River, in New Taipei
city, an hour’s drive out of Taipei, under the moun-
tains were green and oolong tea is produced. At the
time of the visit, I was the only visitor, so the staff was
very engaged in my well-being though none of them
spoke English. While the history is comparably pre-
sented to the one in Hangzhou with some nuanced
Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018 | 149
Irena Weber Tea for Tourists
Figure 7 Food Served with Tea, Teahouse at Pinglin Tea
Museum Taiwan
differences, particularly on the importance of quality
teaware and proper preparation of tea, the focus of pre-
sentation that is also laid out in several buildings is
mainly on Taiwanese tea culture and particularly on
the local ethnography of tea – with narratives and vi-
sual material on several generations of the same fam-
ily tea producers in Pinglin. At the time, one of the
rooms was entirely dedicated to sensory experience –
the sound, sight, smell, and taste of tea. In one of the
buildings, there was a tearoom with open windows to
the river on the one side and the inner gardenwith wa-
ter so the sound of water, essential to all Taiwanese tea-
housesmay be heard alongwith soft traditionalmusic.
The gong fu cha was prepared for me with the food of
themidday (Figure 7). The tea foodmenuwas changed
in accordance to the time of day, so one dish cannot
be served all day long. The demonstrator who per-
formed gong fu cha explained that with high quality
tea the locals did not like to pour the first water over
the teapot but prefer to be economical andmix the first
and the second brew. I agreed that this was a sensible
thing to do, so she poured me a mix. Before I left, she
packed the remaining tea and offered me the whole
box, which I then drank sparingly at home over the
course of several months as the smell, colour, and taste
would vividly bring back the entire experience.
In her comparative research on mainland China
and Taiwan, Zhang (2018a) tackles the complex con-
cept of authenticity and transnational flow and ex-
change of the art of tea. In mainland China, the Tai-
wanese art of tea is sometimes regarded as the more
‘authentic’ since it was not subjected to the period
of the Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution.
The supposed ‘authenticity’ of the Taiwanese practices
are only recently being perceived as of value with the
process of revitalisation of cultural practices in main-
land China, that are being in no small way influenced
by tourist demands that search for ‘authentic’ experi-
ences.
The process of flow in cultural borrowing, however,
is subject to shifting rules, perceptions, and practices,
both in traditional gong fu chá as well as in contem-
porary designer teahouses frequented mainly by the
young urban population.
Tea Markets and Tea Houses
A bowl of tea, seeing the nature of mountain
and river, seeing inner peace, and the boundless
creative possibility therein.
Wistaria Teahouse, Taipei
The Chinese invented tea 5,000 years ago, but
they didn’t do anything aside frompour hot wa-
ter and drink it. But we can do so many won-
derful things with Chinese tea. Nobody would
ever think that cheese, mango, and strawberries
would gowith Chinese jasmine tea – this is only
the tip of the iceberg.
Flamingo Bloom teahouse, Hong Kong
In tea markets, one is able to engage with a variety
of traders who may also be producers or are part of
the family engaged in tea production. Tea tasting at the
market is a standard occurrence and vendors are well
prepared to offer several types of tea in quick sequence
(Figure 8). The main difference in tea tasting in mar-
kets and tea houses is that at the market one needs to
be persuaded to buy tea while in that tea house one has
already bought it; therefore, an atmosphere of pressure
and expectation is present in tea market, which ren-
ders tea tasting less complex and enjoyable. It is, after
all, a process of negotiation (though of course, some
might enjoy precisely that).
150 | Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018
Irena Weber Tea for Tourists
Figure 8 Tea Tasting at Shanghai Tea Market: Three Types
of Tea Prepared in gaiwan
Figure 9 Selection of Teaware at Shanghai Tea Market
In contrast, markets offer wide selections of teawa-
re that is only sparingly available if at all in tea houses.
Tea is offered in a teaware shop, and although it is not
possible to choose the type of tea, the experience is
much less hurried than the one of buying tea (Fig-
ure 9).
In the fao’s most recent report on the tea produc-
tion and consumption (2018), tea production is set to
increase 2.2 annually with green tea production in-
creasing even more at a rate of 7.5 mainly due to the
promotion of its health benefits. In stressing health as-
pects, tea is in a sense coming back to its beginning,
whether mythical or real, when it was perceived as
a plant and beverage mainly used for health reasons.
The argument of health speaks both to the ‘pure’ as
well as ‘fusion’ tea drinkers.
Two distinctive trends were noted during the eth-
nographic research. First the revitalisation and re-in-
vention of the ‘traditional’ teahouses with the complex
borrowing and fusion styles in interior design and par-
ticularly in teaware and the new designer tea houses
that cater to urban young generations such as the chain
brand heytea (Figure 10). heytea was established
in 2012 in Guangdong and became a great success af-
ter opening its first shop in Shanghai. Young people
were prepared to stand in line for five hours or more
to obtain a fashionable tea product. heytea serves
mainly cheese tea zhı̄ shì chá that was re-developed
from the Taiwanese, cheese tea which in turn repre-
sents a second generation of Taiwanese bubble tea – a
milk tea with tapioca pearls, considered a xiaochi, part
of Taiwanese street food culture with global popularity
(Okrožnik, 2018). Great attention is paid to the design
of heytea tea houses, less so to tea quality. It appears
that matters little whether it is a low grade or medium
grade tea, that goes into zhı̄ shì cháas the other ingre-
dients, fruit, salty cheese, mask the original taste of
pure tea. Fusion beverages are given colourful names
such as Gold Phoenix, Red Jade, or Green Beauty, in a
way following the tradition of established tea names,
like DragonWell (Long Jing) and a Red Robe (Da Hong
Pao), although these come infused with mythological
narratives (Su & Hong, 2017).
The fusion beverage of heytea is exported to
Hong Kong, Singapore, and the usa (Springer, 2017).
The flows of cultural borrowing are intertwined but
with diverse aims. In mainland China, they support
the emerging young urban lifestyle while in Taiwan
they appear to mark an identity distinction.
It would be incorrect to assume that there is a clear
age divide between traditional and new tea houses.
Young people in Taiwan are regular visitors of tea
houses, where they can partake in pure or fusion tea;
the same goes for all generations enjoying bubble tea
Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018 | 151
Irena Weber Tea for Tourists
Figure 10 heytea Chain Teahouse, Hangzhou
and cheese tea as part of street food culture. In small
tea houses in Tianzifang, the old part of Shanghai,
young designers are selling high-grade tea in fashion-
able packages (Figure 11).
Tea Presentations at ITB Berlin
Based on seven years of observation at itb (Interna-
tionale Tourismus-Börse Berlin), arguably the largest
tourism trade fair in the world, tea plays no significant
role in the tourism promotion of tea-producing coun-
tries, although it is served at different stalls, most con-
sistently at the stall of Sri Lanka. When it engages in
offering tea, Japan does so with a degree of sophistica-
tion that arguably stems from the most complex and
complicated tea ritual in the world. Tea is served as
part of hospitality in porcelain teacups, observing the
respect of the guests by rotating the cup before hand-
ing it to the guest. The Taiwan stand makes tea a non-
complicated happy occasion with laughter, serving it
in small porcelain cups with a logo (Figure 12).
China occupies a much larger space at itb, yet
there appears little space for tea. It was served last year
in transparent plastic cups and, while tea of good qual-
Figure 11
Da Hong Pao in
Contemporary
Container
Figure 12 Porcelain Cup Offered to the Author at itb
ity, it was servedwith indifference, perhaps in linewith
the notion that Europeans simply drink coffee.
Conclusions
Tea encapsulates the spirit of hills and streams,
it rids the heart of misery and melancholy, it
revives the soul and calms the mind, but most
people are unaware of these merits.
Zhao Ji, On Tea
152 | Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018
Irena Weber Tea for Tourists
Due to numerous historical ruptures, there is no
one single history of tea, nor is there one canoni-
cal art of tea. Contemporary cultural borrowing in-
cludes Japanese and Taiwanese tea masters teaching
the mainland Chinese the art of tea: the art that was
introduced in China, forgotten, re-invented, and re-
assembled. The current art of tea is an invented tra-
dition with historical Chinese, Japanese, Taiwanese,
British, Indian and other cultural elements. In the con-
text of tourism and tea, there is much to be researched,
such as contested processes of national identity and
cultural heritage construction mediated by tourism
discourse, research of embodied and sensory expe-
rience in tourism, tea as an edible chronotope and
cultural marker, art and design, language and image,
power and responsible tourism. The contemporary lo-
cal, national, and global trends of young generations
that include uses of tradition and heritage in newly
shaped urban lifestyles also offer a new and poten-
tially exciting research topic. Tea as a plant, a beverage,
a symbol, heritage, experience and process should be
further researched frommultidisciplinary standpoints
in order to expand the theoretical and applied knowl-
edge of cultural tourism inter alia.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Zhaokun Zhang and Feng Guo
whohelpedme as translators and interpreters in Shang-
hai with selfless dedication and endless patience with
my tea enthusiasm. I am also grateful to the suibe
students who engaged in a discussion of contempo-
rary Chinese identity and the role – or lack of it – of
tea in it.
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154 | Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018
Research Note
Anthropological Portrait of a Home
Turned Into a Tourist Resource
Helena Tolić
University of Zagreb, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Croatia
helena0908@gmail.com
This article presents a part of research conducted on Radunica, a street located
in Split, Croatia. Its primary purpose is to present and name the processes that
took place in the local community, specifically the connection and the dynamics of
changes caused by the tourist activities of the locals. The goal is to show how emo-
tional attachment to home and the usage of it as a resource for profit influences and
changes everyday life in the community. Through open-ended interviews, participa-
tion, observation, and a phenomenological approach, I have found that tourist activ-
ities in Radunica, alongside the financial gain as themost beneficial effect of tourism,
are significantly changing the everyday life and culture of the locals by altering the
notion and emotional connection to one’s home. In this manner, the sustainability
of local communities becomes questionable, and collateral damage is also done to
tourist activity. The main premise is that tourism is not a negative force that ruins
communities, but that it can and should be designed and controlled, so it serves the
local community and not vice versa. The goal of this article is not to present the pos-
itive or negative influences of tourism but to raise awareness about some deficiencies
of tourist activities in local communities and to look in the direction of solutions.
Keywords: tourism, tourist activity, local community, Radunica, commodification,
touristification
https://doi.org/10.26493/2335-4194.11.155-160
Introduction
Since 2004, a small street named Radunica, located
east of the city centre of Split, which is the largest city
in the Dalmatia region of Croatia, has gradually be-
come a very popular tourist destination. With every
new tourist season, Radunica gains more features of
a typical tourist settlement, which is causing many
changes in the everyday life and culture of its inhab-
itants. The tourist activity is realised mainly through
renovations of old Mediterranean stone houses and
the process of turning them into suitable apartments
for tourists, with charming Mediterranean detail. Be-
fore 2004, tourism and the presence of tourists in
Radunica was rare and sporadic. Notmany locals were
renting their homes or parts of their homes to tourist
until the extensive expansion of the tourist activity.
Nowadays, most of the houses in Radunica are rental
spaces, or at least one or more storeys inside houses
are turned into apartments for tourists. Tourist activ-
ity has become a massive and significant part of the
everyday lives of the local community.
The implications of these tourist activities of lo-
cal inhabitants have been the subject of my ongo-
ing research since 2013. Through the anthropological
lens, I have been studying variousmaterialisations and
manifestations of tourism in the local community of
Radunica for the previous five years. However, here I
will be taking a closer look at the process and results of
making one’s home a tourist resource. My goal is con-
touring the main characteristics of the changes that
Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018 | 155
Helena Toli Anthropological Portrait of a Home Turned Into a Tourist Resource
took place in Radunica for the (roughly) last fifteen
years.
The street of Radunica is known as a kaleta in Split;
the word kala or kaleta in the dialect of the region of
Dalmatiameans a small and narrow street. Its primary
and predominant characteristic is Mediterranean ar-
chitecture, which implies ancient stone houses and
gardens with Mediterranean vegetation. Radunica is
the central street of the Lučac neighbourhood, which
is one of the first neighbourhoods that were con-
structed outside of the historical city centre, Diocle-
tian’s Palace, which was built during the reign of the
Roman Emperor Diocletian in the 4th century ad
The earliest historical documents found about the
Lučac neighbourhood date back to the 13th century
ad (Kečkemet, 1986). Therefore, Mediterranean his-
torical heritage alongside the geographical position of
Split on the coast of the Adriatic Sea are themain char-
acteristics and leitmotivs used in the development of
Split as a tourist destination.2 Radunica with its conve-
nient micro-location adjacent to the city centre, its old
stone architectural heritage, and the entrepreneurial
actions of its inhabitants quickly gained significant
success within the tourist industry as a desirable loca-
tion for self-catering apartment rental. The theoretical
base for comprehension of the factors that contributed
to changes that took place in the small local commu-
nity of Radunica is the understanding of a city as a
continual process (Low, 2006).
I grew up in Radunica, but with every new visit I
realised that it was inevitably changing, and this pro-
cess was defined and determined by the industry of
tourism. At the beginning of my research, this reali-
sation came as an obstacle, as I felt that tourism had
invaded my home. It took some time to distance my-
self from that feeling. The process of balancing be-
tween myself as a child of my neighbourhood and my-
self as an anthropologist was challenging and an on-
going learning experience. I heard everything that was
said, felt and understood it as one of the locals, while
2Not only Split used this strategy. In fact, Croatia’s official slo-
gan for the international tourism campaign for fifteen years
used to be ‘Croatia – the Mediterranean as it once was’ until
it was replaced with ‘Croatia – full of life’ in 2015.
I was simultaneously re-evaluating, rationalising, and
translating everything found into an anthropological
discourse. Thus, the theoretical framework of this re-
search is installed in auto-cultural defamiliarisation,
a process of estrangement from the personal (Gulin
Zrnić, 2006). However, early on I decided not to make
a dichotomybetween the experience I had inRadunica
as my home and Radunica as the field of my study,
with the goal of not subordinating my work to the os-
tensible ideal of objectivity. Instead, I decided to bal-
ance between Geertz’s (2010) ‘experiences-near’ and
‘experiences-distant’, shifting these terms back and
forth in an attempt to understand Radunica as both
a home and a research field. I have then looked at
these new processes of change that were motivated
by the tourist activity of the locals through the lens
of the anthropology of space and place, or more pre-
cisely through the concept of social production and
the social construction of space (Low, 2006b). The so-
cial production of space presented by Low includes
social, economic, ideological, and technological fac-
tors that result in the creation of material surround-
ings. The social construction of space refers to the real
transformation of space through social interactions,
feelings, memories, usage of the space or conversa-
tions that project certainmeanings (Low, 2006b). This
perspective allowed me to focus on specific processes
and changes in the notion of Radunica as a home and
tourist settlement.
Methodology
To gather data, I used different methods of research.
The first was an observation of social interactions be-
tween locals and participation in different jobs related
to the rental of apartments to tourists. I also used the
method of open-ended face-to-face and telephone in-
terviews with various locals of Radunica who have
connections to tourism. Since most of their activi-
ties in the first years of operating as tourist workers
formed a part of the informal economy, I had many
problems finding individuals who would be willing to
talk to me. The mere fact that I was discovering lo-
cations and their connection with the informal econ-
omy made most of the locals unwilling to cooperate
with me.
156 | Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018
Helena Toli Anthropological Portrait of a Home Turned Into a Tourist Resource
In addition to these two methods, I used a phe-
nomenological approach, researching through praxis,
the physical senses, working as a host, and commu-
nicating with tourists, being in the street and in the
tourist apartments, serving as a translator, an interior
decorator of tourist apartments, photographer and a
cleaning lady. I was basically doing everything I could
as one of the local hosts. With the locals, I shared
their private time, listening to the challenges they were
dealing with as tourist hosts. The fact that I am from
Radunica gave me an opportunity to use the location
of my family home as an observing point for the inter-
actions that took place in the street. I used my private
memories as well as written notes before commencing
with interviews and before researching the theoreti-
cal findings of other authors. Overall, this is a qual-
itative study immersed in the anthropology of space
and place, auto-anthropology, and the anthropology
of tourism.
Touristification of Radunica
Here, I will be describing interconnected factors that
enabled the touristification of Radunica. Touristifica-
tion is the process that transforms a place through the
presence of many tourists and saturation with tourist
facilities, which becomes visible through changes of
the spatial, social, economic, and cultural character-
istics of a place (Vojnović, 2016, p. 45).
The city of Split had a tradition of transit tourism
in Yugoslavia, so in terms of private tourist accom-
modation, its potential was not fully developed by to-
day’s standards. In the early 2000s, Croatia started to
invest more in the development of tourism. This pe-
riod was a post-war time in Croatia, and the begin-
ning of a bad economic situation formany Croats who
were losing their jobs or retired with small pensions
that could not adequately support themselves. With
the global economic crisis, tourism became an oppor-
tunity to solve financial difficulties in the years that
followed. As Croatia was becoming more attractive to
tourists, the lack of accommodation in Split became
evident. Very quickly, the city was losing the label of a
transit city and was becoming a popular tourist desti-
nation.
In 2004, the (mostly informal) tourist activity star-
ted to gain power when the locals organised collab-
oration intra muros by dividing roles of hosts and
gatherers3 between themselves. The first group owned
apartments, and the later was going to the main bus
station to find tourists that were looking for accom-
modation. Gatherers would walk with them back to
Radunica, helping to carry their bags. The host would
then pay the gatherer 30 of what he was making.
Radunica started being used as a resource and was
developed into a tourist product. Due to tourism de-
mands, neighbourly relationships became monetised
and ran by the logic of profit (Šurán, 2016). Radunica
turned into a place of the collision of the formal and
informal economies,4 a place of financial exchange, a
place of creation of a tourist product and formation of
new social-business relationships.
When asking about themotives and causes for par-
ticipating in tourist activities, most of the answers I re-
ceived from locals showed that renting to tourists was,
in fact, a strategy of survival (Rubić, 2013). ‘It was a
pure necessity, for the love ofGod, only to survive,’ said
Bili summing up the motives of many other locals at
the beginning of their tourist activities. However, the
answer to the question about why somebody’s home
became a tourist resource is not that simple. The in-
fluence of the global industry of tourism, especially the
demand of tourists to experience something new and
different than their usual life was a crucial inducement
thatmergedwith the fact that, in the first decade of the
21st century, Croatia was a new player on the global
level of the tourism industry.
Boissevain (2008, p. 26) explains the need for a
tourist to experience something different and authen-
tic, to learn about someone else’s heritage, to observe
3 In Croatian, they were called iznajmljivači and sakupljači in
Radunica. Sakupljači or gatherers were also called ‘the ones
that look for tourists’, ‘the ones that go to the station’, ‘the
ones who pick-up tourists’.
4 The shift of the tourist activity from informal to (mostly)
formal economy was a consequence of the frequent tourist
inspections and sanctions of the authorities. The process of
turning businesses legal became accelerated in 2007. As a
consequence, in the years that followed, the role of gatherers
stopped being a necessity and was replaced by advertising
platforms, such as www.airbnb.com and www.booking.com.
Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018 | 157
Helena Toli Anthropological Portrait of a Home Turned Into a Tourist Resource
the Other from up close. For almost 15 years, Croatia
was advertised as ‘The Mediterranean as it once was’,
emphasising exactly the fact that it still was not ex-
ploited by the tourist industry nor overcrowded with
tourists. Simultaneously, Croatia was reclaiming the
undiscovered Mediterranean part of its identity as the
right one (cf. Škrbić Alempijević, 2012). These factors
influenced the locals of Radunica, making them aware
that their home could have value in the tourist mar-
ket. According to Simmel (1978, in Appadurai, 1986, p.
3), value is not an inherent property of objects; it is a
judgment made about them by subjects. This creates
space between the desire and enjoyment that is over-
come through economic exchange (Simmel, 1978, in
Appadurai, 1986). Under the influence of the global
market, locals realised that their way of life, the loca-
tion of their home, theMediterranean heritage and ar-
chitecture, their history and culture, in fact, are desir-
able merchandise that could improve their economic
standard significantly. That was what occurred in 2003
and 2004when a few locals started the process of turn-
ing their homes into tourist resources. Soon this praxis
expanded to massive proportions. It all started with
the hosts and the gatherers, and profit was the only
criteria that made this transformation worthwhile to
them. The awareness of desirability of these types of
locations was quickly materialised in Radunica in two
ways. First in the form of ‘apartmanisation’ and later
through the aestheticisation of Radunica. Mrki, a lo-
cal host, gives an example of apartmanisation, a phe-
nomenon of saturating place with rental property for
tourists:
Everything is rented out before it was just extra
space, but now every single hovel, every garage,
every basement, every possible business space,
storage, stores, everything was reorganised and
turned into a bedroom. [. . .] anything that they
could, they turned into apartment and rooms.
They throw in two or three beds, they build in
a shower, put in a toilet and that is it.
The process of excessive apartmanisation is not
over; the number of apartments is growing with every
new season. During the low season, old stone houses
are remodelled into new and attractive apartments.
The imperative of attractiveness became important
since there was more competition between the lo-
cals; once neighbours and friends, they became com-
petitors in the tourist market. Apartmanisation was
promptly followed by the process of the aestheticisa-
tion of Radunica. The main characteristic of aestheti-
cisation was the ‘Mediterraneanisation’ of the place,
that is, emphasising the idealised and easily recog-
nisable Mediterranean symbols. Apartments and the
street were purposely filled with motifs, such as bare
stone walls, Mediterranean plants and herbs, photos
of antiques, lavender in a vase, lemon trees, seashells
on dining tables, old window treatments called grilje
and škure were remodelled, flower pots put on stairs
and windows, etc. The goal was to meet the expec-
tations of the ideal Mediterranean place. In contrast,
before apartmanisation, the goal ofmaking their home
beautifulwas not carefully thought through; it was not
analysed with the objective of being exhibited, judged,
and admired by the Other. Before mass tourist activ-
ity, Radunica was not meant to be attractive. In fact,
many villas and exclusive and remodelled apartments
were somebody’s homes just a few years ago. From
the perspective of today’s aesthetics, they were in poor
condition with a patina of time visible on many walls.
Still, the everyday life and interactions of locals in the
common space were more vivid, intimate, and active
than today. Locals utilised the space more often and
freely to socialise; there were many more local busi-
nesses that were common spots for social interaction.
Now, with profit in mind, the locals used and magni-
fied Mediterranean symbols as an answer to the de-
mands that came from the tourist industry. Mediter-
ranean identity was used as a tool in the process of
aestheticisation with the goal of attracting tourists:5
Spend amemorable, pleasant and romantic hol-
iday in the heart of the old town, in the Stone-
house.Authentic accommodation, antique style.
Feel the spirit of the Mediterranean! Go to the
5 Example of advertising of a property in Radunica, see
http://www.adriatic-home.com/Croatia/Split/Radunica/
Apartments-STONE-HOUSE-6120
158 | Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018
Helena Toli Anthropological Portrait of a Home Turned Into a Tourist Resource
beach, visit the city’s landmarks, visit the mon-
uments, museums, galleries, concerts [. . .] taste
the superb Mediterranean cuisine, relax, sleep
[. . .] soak up the sun and the culture. Listen
to the sound of the waves. Enjoy the beauti-
ful Mediterranean climate, crystal clear sea and
warm sands!
Combined, these actions resulted in the commodi-
fication of home, where once private and homey char-
acteristics and particularities are turned into objects of
trade. Tourists are invited to enter personal domains
and share time and space with the local inhabitants.
Tourists are seeking leisure, relaxation, and adven-
ture while locals are looking for financial gain from a
place they are emotionally attached to, trying tomain-
tain everyday life in new circumstances. The fact that
Radunica used to be (only) a home is extremely sig-
nificant. The effects of the commodification of home
are many, as Luči, one of the locals, explains:
Radunica definitely became a tourist settlement.
Every house has a sign for a flat, apartment or some
kind of hostel. The feeling is a little creepy. On a rare
occasion I have a chance to say ‘Hi’ to someone I know,
and sometimes I feel like I am in another city. Before
[tourism] I felt better, definitely. I have nothing against
the visitors from other countries, but now there are
more foreigners than locals.
Everything is done for profit, and that changed
good neighbourly relations a lot. I liked it better
before. Radunica as a tourist settlement, Imean,
that’s notmy home. [. . .] I mean it will always be
my home. I still feel like I belong. I notice that
everything is different, but it’s still Radunica. I
mean it is, and it isn’t. When it comes to people,
it isn’t. For the most part, people have changed.
All of that, that tourism, it created a distance be-
tween people. It is not as pleasant as before be-
cause the relationships are not like before.
As Luči observed, monetised relationships were a
product of a rival culture that emerged as a side effect
of non-planned tourist activity. Rivalry caused alien-
ation between local inhabitants because their collab-
orations were often unstable and depended on emo-
tional connections. Changes in social relations and
interactions were significant and altered everyday life
and the habits and culture of locals. For example, the
apartmanisation of Radunica caused the disappear-
ance of crafts shops, stores, coffee bars, and other busi-
nesses in favour of self-catering apartments for rent.
Prices of real estate have risen and are sold almost
exclusively for rental purposes, so many people sold
their property to move away from tourism, and not
many young families are willing or capable of buying
a home in these conditions. Just like tourism itself, life
in Radunica became seasonal; crowded and loud in
spring and summer, quiet and slow during winter and
fall. Locals are making personal plans and arranging
their lives around the tourist season. With the infras-
tructure of Radunica transformed, the way locals use
space also changed: there are fewer places where peo-
ple socialise, the street is arranged to look beautiful
for the use of tourists, many houses are empty during
low season, there are fewer common places since most
of the patios and gardens are closed now with fences
and hidden for the privacy of tourists. The locals ex-
perience Radunica in two overlapping dimensions: as
a home and as a tourist settlement. The first one is
slowly entering the realms of nostalgia, and its image
is fading. Radunica as a tourist settlement is rapidly
gaining more power every new tourist season.
Conclusion
All the processes described show that tourism acts
as an agent of change (Šurán, 2016, p. 96). Although
all the results speak in favour of this conclusion, it is
important to realise that tourism is not something as
uncontrollable as a force of nature. It can, in fact, be
designed and controlled so that it serves the commu-
nity. Although in the beginning tourism in Radunica
was not planned and was informal, today almost all
tourist activity forms part of the formal economy and
is guided by tourist policies. Still, there seem to be
little or no awareness of the possible adverse effects
that tourism has on the local community. I do not see
tourism as a destructive force per se, but I see signif-
icant gaps, oversights and negligence in how the pol-
itics of tourism in Croatia is mirrored in Radunica.
Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018 | 159
Helena Toli Anthropological Portrait of a Home Turned Into a Tourist Resource
There is no awareness of the importance of the local
community and its culture; there are no actions that
would adapt the tourist activities so that they serve
the locals. In fact, quite the opposite is happening –
the local community serves the industry and is often
depending on it. The result is the creation of a tourist
settlement that is becoming detrimental to the concep-
tion of home. Paradoxically, precisely the way of life of
the local communities is a pull factor for the tourists –
the attractive features of the ever-desirable authentic-
ity. In this pace of touristification of Radunica, those
features are slowly disappearing. So, by neglecting the
local community, the damage is simultaneously done
to the tourism of Radunica itself. What I mean is, if
in some time from now tourists are getting only the
experience of living in tourist settlement and not the
experience of the life in a local Mediterranean com-
munity, it could easily become a push factor for the
tourists and endanger the sustainability of tourism.
Therefore, I find that it is necessary to find ways that
will stop the negative trends in the local community
and promote the positive aspects of tourism. Further-
more, the local inhabitants could have an advantage
and priority to rent to tourists. This could be man-
dated by tourist regulatory frameworks and strate-
gies. It could stop the trend of selling property at high
prices for rental purposes only, which is the reason
that many locals sell their homes and leave Radunica.
Young people and families could get tax exemptions
when buying a home in areas that are becoming tourist
settlements while almost entirely disappearing as do-
mestic neighbourhoods. In this way, Radunica could
recover demographically. With more investigation,
many more ways could be found that would benefit
Croatian society and even enhance tourist offerings
and promote sustainability for tourism and for the
local community.
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160 | Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018
Original Scientific Article
The Interplay between the Verbal and Visual
in Outdoor Interpretive Panels
Šarolta Godnič Vičič
University of Primorska, Faculty of Tourism Studies – Turistica, Slovenia
sarolta.godnic.vicic@gmail.com
Nina Lovec
University of Primorska, Faculty of Tourism Studies – Turistica, Slovenia
nina.lovec@fts.upr.si
Ljudmila Sinkovič
University of Primorska, Faculty of Tourism Studies – Turistica, Slovenia
milka.sinkovic@fts.upr.si
Outdoor interpretive panels inform visitors about the features of a heritage site and
the events and objects they encounter during their visit with the aim of improving
their awareness and understanding of the site. In addition to having this educational
role, interpretive panels are also regarded as a means of enhancing visitor experience
and the quality of natural or cultural heritage sites – especially since the information
on these signs is available at all hours and can be accessed by large numbers of visi-
tors. Various disciplines have treated outdoor interpretive panels as communication
and a form of product development, highlighting topics such as visitors’ use of inter-
pretive panels, strategies for capturing and holding visitors’ attention, the effective
conceptual design of interpretive panels, their efficiency in educating visitors and en-
hancing visitor experience, and others. This study will focus on outdoor interpretive
panels in natural sites. To deliver their message, interpretive panels combine verbal
and visual information. The analysis of the intersemiotic logical relations between
them aims to reveal the ways in which the twomodes interplay in interpretive panels
and create cohesive messages through logical relations.
Keywords: heritage interpretation, outdoor interpretive panels, textual-visual
intersemiosis, intersemiotic cohesion, intersemiotic logical relations
https://doi.org/10.26493/2335-4194.11.161-170
Introduction
Outdoor interpretive panels6are a formof non-person-
al interpretation that most frequently offer textual and
visual interpretive contents to visitors in natural and
cultural heritage sites. Since interpretive panels do not
6 In the relevant literature, interpretive panels are interchange-
ably referred to as ‘interpretive’ or ‘interpretation boards’,
‘signs’ or ‘signage’, or ‘wayside exhibits’.
require an interpreter to share their contents, visitors
are free to read them or not. If they decide to read
the texts and view the visual materials on display, they
can do so in any order they prefer; moreover, they
can read all the text and view all the images or only
some of them (Ham, 2013; Smaldone, 2013; Ward &
Wilkinson, 2006). This freedom of selective reading
and viewing, however, may come at a price: visitors
may overlook parts of the messages the creators of the
Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018 | 161
Šarolta Godni Vii et al. The Interplay between the Verbal and Visual
panels intended them to read (Smaldone, 2013; Ward
& Wilkinson, 2006). While there is ample literature
reporting on the effects of the placement decisions of
interpretive panels (Hall, Ham, & Lackey, 2010; Ham,
2013; Light, 1995; Smaldone, 2013) and highlighting the
principles for designing effective texts for interpretive
displays both in heritage sites (Hall et al., 2010; Ham,
2013; Light, 1995; Smaldone, 2013; Ward & Wilkinson,
2006) and inmuseums (Fritsch, 2011;Hillier&Tzortzi,
2006; Moser, 2010; Psarra, 2005), little has been said
about the interplay between texts and visuals in out-
door interpretive panels. The aim of this paper, there-
fore, is to address this gap by exploring the intersemi-
otic relations between the verbal and visual semiotic
resources in interpretive panels and their cohesive ties
with each other.Using amultimodal approach, this pa-
per will analyse an interpretive panel from a protected
nature reserve, the Strunjan Natural Park in Slovenia,
in greater detail.
We begin the next section with a brief review of
heritage interpretation, outdoor interpretive panels
and intersemiosis. The rationale for the choice of
methods is then presented as well as the intersemi-
otic relations found in the outdoor interpretive panel.
We conclude the paper with a discussion of the impli-
cations of our results.
Heritage Interpretation
While the roots of heritage interpretation have been
traced back to the times of storytellers and bards
(Brochu&Merriman, 2002) as well as to ancient travel
journals and stories told by the first tourist guides
4000 years ago (Silberman, 2013), heritage interpreta-
tion as a profession and object of academic inquiry is
of a more recent origin. Disciplines such as geography,
education, sociology, environmental science, archae-
ology, museology, and marketing have all contributed
to the theories and techniques on which heritage in-
terpretation is based. The diversity in their under-
standings about the interaction between visitors and
heritage sites was partly lost in the 1980s due to stan-
dardisation processes that narrowed the focus of her-
itage interpretation, reducing it mainly to communi-
cation and education (Staiff, 2014). This is why Tilden’s
(1977) heritage interpretation precepts from the 1950s
still resonate with contemporary interpretive practice
and more practice-oriented interpretation literature
(among others Brochu &Merriman, 2002; Ham, 2013;
Ludwig, 2015).
Tilden regards heritage interpretation as ‘[A]n edu-
cational activitywhich aims to revealmeanings and re-
lationships through the use of original objects, by first-
hand experience, and by illustrativemedia, rather than
simply to communicate factual information’ (Tilden,
1977, p. 8). His six principles of interpretation are
meant to assist interpreters in achieving this goal. They
suggest that heritage interpretation should relate its
contents to the experience of the visitor, be provoca-
tive and adjusted to children when it addresses them
as visitors, and interpret heritage as a whole and not
only its parts; finally, interpretation is more than in-
formation – it is an art that can be taught.
Although Tilden’s definition and principles still
echo not only in the practice-orientedworks suggested
above but also in the influential icomos Charter for
the Interpretation and Presentation of Cultural Her-
itage Sites (icip, 2008), recent years have witnessed
more critical views of Tilden’s work (Silberman, 2013;
Silverman & Ruggles, 2007; Staiff, 2014; Uzzell, 1998).
Tilden’s approach to heritage interpretation is thus
viewed as ‘stuck in a rut where how has become more
important than the why’ (Uzzell, 1998, p. 12; emphasis
in original), or just ‘a method of face-to-face com-
munication’ (Silberman, 2013, p. 22). Tilden is further
criticised for ‘separating heritage interpretation – as
an educational activity for visitors – from interpreta-
tion more generally’ (Staiff, 2014, p. 34; emphasis in
original) and maintaining ‘a hierarchical power rela-
tionship between the “expert” and the nonexpert, be-
tween those with “the knowledge” and those “without
the knowledge”’ (Staiff, 2014, p. 37). Therefore, it has
been suggested that heritage interpretation should be
rather approached as a system of representation that
aims to facilitate multiple meaning-making as well as
meaning-making as a dynamic process (Clarke &Wa-
terton, 2015; Francesconi, 2018; Staiff, 2014).
Outdoor Interpretive Panels
Unlike personal interpretation (e.g., guided tours and
walks, demonstrations, talks), in which the interpreter
162 | Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018
Šarolta Godni Vii et al. The Interplay between the Verbal and Visual
controls the content, delivery, and order of informa-
tion presented, interpretive panels communicate
through a combination of vivid images and short writ-
ten texts (Hall et al., 2010; Ham, 2013), and it is the
visitors who choose the pace and order of communi-
cation when looking at panels, and decide whether to
access the information at all or not (Moscardo, Bal-
lantyne, & Hughes, 2007; Smaldone, 2013). Outdoor
interpretive panels help improve the visitor experi-
ence in places where the constant presence of staff is
not convenient or possible, or where other commu-
nication media (e.g., audio guides, brochures) are not
available (Hall et al., 2010; Hose, 2006; Moscardo et
al., 2007). Heritage sites can feature a single interpre-
tive panel or a series of interpretive displays that can
be used as a self-guided trail.
Outdoor interpretive panels support visitors’ en-
gagement with heritage sites through the ‘official mes-
sage’ of the site incorporated in the panels’ contents
and also through engagement with that which is be-
yond the panels’ discursive contents: the landscape,
the sound, smell, movement, etc. (Clarke &Waterton,
2015). This is why interpretive panels are widely re-
garded as important communication mediators that
help direct the interactivity of visitors with heritage
sites (Tussyadiah, 2014) and encourage suitable visitor
behaviours at sensitive natural sites (Hall et al., 2010;
Hose, 2006; Light, 1995).
Interpretive panels are, however, also known for
their inflexibility (e.g., they are incapable of adjust-
ing to diverse audiences, they cannot be changed or
updated easily) and constant need for care and main-
tenance (Light, 1995; Moscardo et al., 2007). Research
has also shown that some interpretive boards are
viewed by many while others by only a handful (Hall
et al., 2010; Light, 1995). Besides careful placement of
interpretative panels, the vividness of the message and
overall design seem to play essential roles in assur-
ing the greater visibility and attractiveness of pan-
els. While visitor interest is enhanced through mes-
sages that appeal to visitors’ empathy and encourage
them to take perspective, or through stories, humour
and telegraphic thematic titles (Hall et al., 2010; Smal-
done, 2013) or metaphors (Smaldone, 2013), the com-
munication appeal of interpretive panels is also en-
hanced through design (e.g., background colour, fonts
and illustrations, layout) (Hall et al., 2010; Ham, 2013;
Moscardo et al., 2007; Smaldone, 2013). The attention-
paying behaviour of visitors to heritage sites is further
shaped by their purpose of visit (Light, 1995), the var-
ious schemas, past experiences, interests (Hall et al.,
2010), or the cultural systems (Clarke & Waterton,
2015) visitors bring with them to heritage sites.
Intersemiosis and Justification of Method Choice
Texts targeting tourists tend to exploit more than one
semiotic resource to increase their cognitive and emo-
tional effects on the text recipients, i.e., the tourists.
There is, however, limited research on intersemiotic
relations between the verbal and visual modes in mul-
timodal tourism texts. Following Martinec and Sal-
way’s (2005) classification of logico-semantic relations
between words and images in static texts, Francesconi
(2014) explored the integration of the verbal and visual
modes in humorous British postcards often purchased
by tourists. She found that the verbal and the visual
may exhibit both equal and unequal relative status,
the verbal and the visual may be independent of each
other or theymay complement each other. UsingKress
and van Leeuwen’s (2006) approach to the analysis of
multimodal texts, Maci (2007) examined the compo-
sition, interrelation, and interaction between the ver-
bal and visual modes on websites and found that the
visual mode often stresses the representational char-
acter of places while the verbal enhances the inter-
active and persuasive aspects of communication with
tourists. To our knowledge, the relations between the
verbal and visualmodes in outdoor interpretive panels
have not yet been addressed by research, thus justify-
ing our choice of the method a brief overview of find-
ings on intersemiosis in static texts that will follow.
It was Roland Barthes (1977) who started the criti-
cal debate on intersemiosis in his analysis of the rela-
tions between the visual and verbal in printed adver-
tisements by claiming that the verbalmode dominated
the visual one. In recent years, however, the interplay
between the visual and verbal semiotic modes has at-
tracted the attention of multimodal discourse analy-
sists too. Kress and van Leeuwen (2006) suggested that
the use of several semiotic modes may reinforce or
Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018 | 163
Šarolta Godni Vii et al. The Interplay between the Verbal and Visual
Figure 1 The Interpretive Panel at the Entrance to the
Strunjan Natural Park (photo by Šarolta Godnič
Vičič)
complement each other, or be hierarchically ordered.
Stöckl (2004), in contrast, suggested that the verbal
and the visual modes can be integrated in two ways:
first, verbal texts and images are most commonly inte-
grated in ways that allow eachmode to use its semiotic
potential strategically in order to create a combined
meaning, and secondly, the integration of the modes
takes place when verbal texts emulate the visual (e.g.,
typography and layout give verbal texts an image qual-
ity). Stöckl further suggested that this complex inte-
gration of verbal and visualmodes involvesmodemix-
ing and mode overlapping.
Meaning between the different semiotic modes in
multimodal texts is created on the ideational, interper-
sonal and textual metafunction levels; therefore, inter-
semiotic relations exist on all three levels (O’Halloran,
2008). The different modes have to create a coherent
semantic unit. However, Liu and O’Halloran (2009)
warn that the semantic integration of the verbal and
visual modes should not be taken for granted: words
and images can also merely be placed together. Fol-
lowing Halliday and Hasan (1976) who regard cohe-
sion as a crucial criterion to distinguish text fromnon-
text and thus an essential property of a text, Liu and
O’Halloran (2009) suggest that semantic relations be-
tween different modalities are realised through inter-
semiotic cohesive devices and not by the mere linking
of the two modes. Liu and O’Halloran thus propose
that the semiotic relations between the textual and vi-
sual are shown in the intersemiotic texture of multi-
Figure 2 The View of the Interpretive Panel on the Way
Out of the Strunjan Natural Park (photo by
Šarolta Godnič Vičič)
modal texts, which integrates the two modes through
intersemiotic cohesion into a coherent whole.
Liu and O’Halloran (2009) further show that the
intersemiotic logical relations (ideational metafunc-
tion level) between verbal text and images, or between
images, or even between verbal text, image and context
can be comparative, additive, consequential, or tem-
poral. When visual and linguistic components share
a similar experiential meaning, the different modes
are a semiotic reformulation of each other, and their
logical relations are defined as being Comparative.
They are accompanied by the use of intersemiotic co-
hesive devices, such as correspondence, parallelism,
and contextualisation propensity. When one semiotic
component adds new information to another compo-
nent, the verbal and visual parts convey related, but
different messages and the logical relation is defined
Additive. In contrast, when one semiotic message en-
ables or determines the other, the logical relation is
that of Consequence. A subfield of Consequence can
beContingencywhen the cause carries only the poten-
tial to determine a possibility and the effect is not en-
sured. Temporal logical relations are procedures that
are not realised inmere language but are characterised
by multimodality when different procedural steps are
represented both verbally and visually.
Using Liu and O’Halloran’s (2009) classification of
intersemiotic logical relations, the present study sets
out to explore the ways in which the verbal and the
visual modes form a coherent unit in outdoor inter-
164 | Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018
Šarolta Godni Vii et al. The Interplay between the Verbal and Visual




   
 



 
 
  
  
 
Figure 3 The Front Side of the Interpretive Panel (photo by Šarolta Godnič Vičič)
pretive panels in a protected natural area. The analysis
of the verbal and visual elements in multimodal texts
tends to be detailed; therefore, a single outdoor inter-
pretive panel will be analysed for intersemiotic logical
relations. This modest analysis details the intersemi-
otic logical relations in an outdoor interpretive panel
from the Strunjan Natural Park (Slovenia) that is lo-
cated at one of the entry points to the natural park. It is
the last interpretive panel in the series of fifteen panels
that provide interpretation to park visitors who start
their thematic tour at the park’s visitor centre. How-
ever, it is the first interpretive display to those who en-
ter the park from the centre of Strunjan (a small settle-
ment). The panel has two sides, and its front is turned
towards those who enter the park (Figures 1 and 2).
Findings
The design of the interpretive panel follows the ‘Rules
on the marking of protected areas of valuable nature
features’ (‘Pravilnik o označevanju zavarovanih ob-
močij naravnih vrednot,’ 2002), which determine the
design and format of interpretive panels in the pro-
tected areas of Slovenia: their shapes, sizes and layout,
as well as the use of logos and the designations of pro-
tected natural areas. As such, the panel under scrutiny
resembles interpretive panels found in other natural
Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018 | 165
Šarolta Godni Vii et al. The Interplay between the Verbal and Visual






  
 

Figure 4 The Back Side of the Interpretive Panel (photo by Šarolta Godnič Vičič)
parks around Slovenia. The interpretive panel consists
of two sections (one wider and one narrower) joined
(or split) by a pole that carries them. They both share
the same background colour and a strip of a dark green
header that connects both sections into a visually co-
hesive unit (Figures 3 and 4). There are short texts
and various images (illustrations, logos, pictograms,
maps) on both sides of the interpretive panel. The texts
are presented in three languages: Slovene, Italian (the
park is located in a bilingual area of Slovenia where
the translation of public texts into Italian is compul-
sory) and English (often regarded as the lingua franca
of tourism communication). The texts in different lan-
guages are visuallymarked by different fonts, but these
do not give the texts an image quality in the sense sug-
gested by Stöckl (2004).
The individual intersemiotic logical relations found
in the front right section of the panel are presented in
detail in Table 1 and those in the front left section of the
panel in Table 2. Table 3 summarises the intersemiotic
logical relations found in the left section of the back
side of the interpretive panel and Table 4 those found
in the right section. The texts in English translation
are used in the tables for ease of understanding.
The analysis of the intersemiotic logical relations
between the verbal texts and images in the interpre-
166 | Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018
Šarolta Godni Vii et al. The Interplay between the Verbal and Visual
Table 1 Intersemiotic Logical Relations on the Front Right Side of the Interpretive Panel
Verbal mode Visual mode* Intersemiotic logical relations
Protected area 1 Comparative – abstraction
Strunjan: Portraits of the Sea. Landscape Park Strunjan reveals itself
through images that have been moulded by the sea for millennia, that
merge to form a natural and cultural heritage given life by the Adriatic
and meaning by the local people. Set out along the path to discover the
secrets of this unique maritime environment. Get to know and respect
this naturally preserved strip of Slovene coast.
2 Comparative – abstraction
A pinch of sea 3 Comparative – generality
A pinch of sea + Image 3 4 Comparative – abstraction
Sea trapped in a lagoon 5 Comparative – generality
Sea trapped in a lagoon + Image 5 4 Comparative – abstraction
A living sea sculpture 6 Comparative – generality
A living sea sculpture + Image 6 4 Comparative – abstraction
Marine life 7 Comparative – generality
Marine life + Image 7 4 Comparative – abstraction
A landscape with an air of sea 8 Comparative – generality
A landscape with an air of sea + Image 8 4 Comparative – abstraction
Landscape Park Strunjan Centre 9 Comparative – abstraction
Landscape Park Strunjan Centre + Image 9 4 Comparative – generality
Footpath – Passage at your own risk
Area of the Strunjan Landscape Park
Strunjan Stjuža Nature Reserve
Strunjan Nature Reserve
Strunjan Nature Reserve – core area
10 Comparative – abstraction
Footpath – Passage at your own risk
Area of the Strunjan Landscape Park
Strunjan Stjuža Nature Reserve
Strunjan Nature Reserve
Strunjan Nature Reserve – core area + Image 10
4 Comparative – generality
Notes * See Figure 3.
tive panel revealed that comparative and additive in-
tersemiotic logical relations prevail; however, the ra-
tio between them differs from section to section of the
interpretive panel. It seems that the front right sec-
tion of the panel aims to represent the park by pro-
viding an overview of the park’s most prominent fea-
tures and facilities as well as overall spatial orientation
in the park. There are strong intersemiotic logical re-
lations between the verbal and images (illustrations of
selected places in the park and maps). Some of them
form cohesive units that further form new logical rela-
tions (e.g., A pinch of sea + Image in Table 1). However,
the map in this section also showed a few loose ends:
three illustrations of places in the park that are em-
bedded in the map seem independent from the verbal
texts and form no intersemiotic logical relations with
them. Should a visitor read the text about the pine av-
enue on the back side of the interpretive panel, one
of these images (i.e., the one with the row of pines)
would form a logical relation with that text, but this
Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018 | 167
Šarolta Godni Vii et al. The Interplay between the Verbal and Visual
Table 2 Intersemiotic Logical Relations in the Left Front Part of the Interpretive Panel
Verbal mode Visual mode* Intersemiotic logical relations
Strunjan Landscape Park 11 Comparative – abstraction
You are here 12, 13 Additive
26 min 14, 15 Additive
6 min 16, 17 Additive
What can I experience in the park? 18, 19, 20 Additive
What can I do to protect it? 21, 22, 23 Additive
Public Institute Landscape Park Strunjan 24 Comparitive – abstraction
Strunjan 152, 6320 Portorož, +386 (0)8 205 1880,
info@parkstrunjan.si, www.parkstrunjan.si
25 Comparitive – abstraction
Notes * See Figure 3.
Table 3 Intersemiotic Logical Relations in the Left Back Part of the Interpretive Panel
Verbal mode Visual mode* Intersemiotic logical relations
Protected area 26 Comparative – abstraction
The Strunjan saltpans are the northernmost and smallest among the
Mediterranean saltpans still in operation, where Piran salt has been
harvested traditional method for over 700 years.
27 Additive
Stjuža is the only Slovene lagoon, a legacy of natural fish farming of
times past. Today it is important for water birds, which come here look-
ing for food, shelter or a nesting site.
28 Additive
The Cliff of Strunjan formed in the sea and remains united with it. It
is made up of flysch rock mass, whose exposed, precipitous face is the
tallest along the Adriatic.
29 Additive
With its lively flora and fauna, the mosaic of habitats in the park’s wa-
ters displays the height of the biotic diversity of the Slovene sea.
30 Additive
The favourable Mediterranean climate and flysch substratum created
conditions which the local people put to good use, their traditional
activities determining the characteristic appearance of the Strunjan
Penninsula.
31 Additive
Poti po parku je sofinancirala Krka, tovarna zdravil, d.d., Novo mesto 32 Comparitive – abstraction
Parenzana – The Route of Health and Friendship 33, 34 Comparative – abstraction
Notes * See Figure 4.
logical relation seems weaker, less obvious and subject
to greater chance.
In addition to reinforcing the identity of the park,
the intersemiotic logical relations between the verbal
and the visual in the left section of the front side of the
interpretive panel also direct visitors’ explorations of
the park and encourage particular visitor behaviour.
The back side of the interpretive panel mainly aims
to provide new information about the heritage aspects
of the park and its history. The intersemiotic logical re-
lations between the verbal and the visual are those of
Addition. The park’s identity is again reinforced with
comparative relations of Abstraction (the logo). Infor-
mation is also provided on a sponsor and visitors on
bicycles are given directions. The photo of the pine av-
enue from the 1950s is slightly vague, but its logical re-
168 | Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018
Šarolta Godni Vii et al. The Interplay between the Verbal and Visual
Table 4 Intersemiotic Logical Relations in the Right Back Part of the Interpretive Panel
Verbal mode Visual mode* Intersemiotic logical relations
Strunjan Landscape Park 35 Comparative – abstraction
A Stone Pine Welcome. In 1935, the railway line Parenzana connect-
ing the Istrian littoral towns with their hinterland was shut down and
its role was taken over by roads. Upon the construction of the main
Koper–Izola–Portorož stretch, pine trees were planted alongside. To-
day, this stone pine avenue of around 110 trees is the longest and best-
preserved in Slovenia. In 2004, it was declared a natural monument,
part of Landscape Park Strunjan.
36 Additive
Stone pine avenue in the 1950s 36 Comparative – generality
Public Institute Landscape Park Strunjan 37 Comparitive – abstraction
Strunjan 152, 6320 Portorož, +386 (0)8 205 1880,
info@parkstrunjan.si, www.parkstrunjan.si
38 Comparitive – abstraction
Notes * See Figure 4.
lation with the text below helps to diminish the photo’s
vagueness.
Discussion and Conclusions
Outdoor interpretive panels are studied in this pa-
per as multimodal texts. Using Liu and O’Halloran’s
(2009) framework for intersemiotic logical relations
between the verbal and the visual, we aimed to reveal
the cohesive ties that connect both modes in outdoor
interpretive panels into a cohesive, meaningful unit.
The analysis showed that the prevailing intersemi-
otic logical relations in interpretive panels are those
of Comparison and Addition. Both can be deployed
to create representations of the heritage site as space
and place, direct the movement and behaviour of visi-
tors, and also reinforce the identity of the park both
as a heritage site and as a protected area managed
and regulated by park authorities. The intersemiotic
logical relations of Addition convey new information
about the heritage site that aims to grab visitors’ atten-
tion and help them form emotional and cognitive atti-
tudes/relationswith the park. Furthermore, intersemi-
otic logical relations of Comparison tend to represent
the park in space and raise interest in experiencing the
park further by elaborating familiar meanings and re-
formulating them at different levels of abstraction and
generality.
Combinations of Comparative and Additive inter-
semiotic logical relations can help design outdoor in-
terpretive panels that reflect the various communica-
tion aims of interpretive panels. The analysis of the
intersemiotic logical relations between the verbal and
visual can be a useful tool for teams that design inter-
pretive panels. The analysis not only reveals loose ends
between texts and images but also assists in strength-
ening the cohesive ties between them and creating co-
herent meanings.
Intersemiotic logical relations between the verbal
and visual resources in interpretive panels are not the
only cohesive devices in them. Intersemiotic relations
also exist on the experiential and textualmetafunction
levels that should require future attention. The ver-
bal texts and the images seem to have strong cohesive
ties not only with each other but also with the extra-
discursive features of the context in which interpretive
panels are placed. The fact that visitors control the se-
quence of information, the choice of content and the
investment of time, makes the cohesion of the verbal,
the visual and context of pivotal importance and wor-
thy of further research.
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170 | Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018
Abstracts in Slovene Povzetki v slovenšini
Akademski pogled na kulturni turizem
Tina Orel Frank in Zorana Medarić
Kulturni turizem je razmeroma nov termin, o katerem v zadnjih letih poteka veliko
razprav. Kljub temu da je predmet veliko empiričnih raziskav, ga je še zmeraj težko
opredeliti. Namen pričujoče raziskave je raziskati predvidoma zelo različne poglede
strokovnjakov na definiranje kulturnega turizma ter ugotoviti, katere so osrednje
»podskupine«, ki so v teoriji opredeljene kot del kulturnega turizma. S tem name-
nombomopreučili nedavno objavljene znanstvene prispevke s tega področja in ugo-
tavljali, kako kulturni turizem opredeljujejo strokovnjaki. V prispevku bomo tako
iskali podobnosti in razlike med njihovimi definicijami ter njihove poglede na to,
katere podskupine lahko opredelimo kot del kulturnega turizma.
Ključne besede: kulturni turizem, analiza definicij, podskupine kulturnega turizma
Academica Turistica, 11(2), 101–110
V iskanju odnosa z morjem: urbana krajina in kozmopolitski spomin
v sodobni Odesi
Emilio Cocco
Morje ni povsem na radarju družboslovja. Vendar se stvari spremenijo, ko se morje
in kopno dotakneta inmorje odmeva v živih družbenih odnosih. V nekaterih prime-
rih se srečanja z morjem odvijajo v obliki utelešenih procesov imaginacije, ki pov-
zročijo produktivne disonance.Moja raziskava želi razkriti trenjamed disonantnimi,
utelešenimi imaginacijami lokalnih prebivalcev in turistov v izjemni »krajini sanj«
– v postkozmopolitskem pristaniškemmestu Odesa. V letih 2008–2010 sem opravil
terensko raziskavo z intervjuji in anketami, katere cilj je bila primerjava rabe pomor-
skih imperialnih zapuščin Trsta in Odese. Po skoraj desetletju sem se vrnil v »biser
Črnegamorja«, da bi bolj poglobljeno raziskal odnosemed turizmom in rabami koz-
mopolitskega spomina v tem postsocialističnem ukrajinskem pristaniškem mestu.
Moji podatki so kombinacija sekundarne statistike, etnografskega dela in kvalitativ-
nih podatkov iz prve roke, tako avdiovizualnih kot intervjujev, zbranihmed aprilom
2017 in junijem 2018, vključno z dvotedenskim bivanjem v Odesi. Po preliminarni
obdelavi podatkov ugotavljam, da so turistični odnosi v sodobni Odesi pogojeni z
dvojnim prizadevanjem tako gostiteljev kot gostov, ki iščejo poseben odnos z mor-
jem.Morje in obrežje služita kot privilegirano razgledišče za urbane gledalce (turiste
in prebivalce) in tudi kot nujni posrednik za vzpostavitev odnosa z mestom in nje-
govo multikulturno preteklostjo.
Ključne besede: Odesa, kozmopolitstvo, morje, turizem, urbana krajina
Academica Turistica, 11(2), 111–116
Judovski turizem v Berlinu in nemška javna pokora za holokavst
Anne M. Blankenship
Skozi generacije so člani judovske diaspore bojkotirali nemške izdelke in ne bi niti
v sanjah stopili na tla naroda, ki je umoril šest milijonov njihovih ljudi. Toda danes
Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018 | 171
Abstracts in Slovene Povzetki v slovenšini
ameriški Judje niso nič manj verjetni obiskovalci Nemčije kot nejudovski Američani
in v Berlinu živi tisoče izraelskih Judov. Moja raziskava zastavlja vprašanje, kako
nemška vlada in zasebna turistična industrija, obravnavata judovski turizem v Ber-
linu, in ocenjuje odzive judovskih obiskovalcev na njihovo izkušnjo Berlina. Poleti
2018 sem intervjuvala štiri vodnike in številne turiste, opazovala interakcije ljudi z
mestnimi spomeniki holokavstu in z drugimi judovskimi prizorišči, sodelovala v vo-
denih ogledih z judovsko tematiko ter izvedla »netnografsko« analizo več kot deset
tisoč ocen na TripAdvisorju. Ta kvalitativna raziskava je pokazala, da je veliko Judov
vznemirjenih pred obiskom Nemčije in doživijo čustven pretres na kraju samem,
vendar jih množica spomenikov in muzejev, posvečenih holokavstu, povečini pre-
priča, da je Nemčija privržena izobraževanju in opominjanju prebivalcev na nemške
zločine v preteklosti ter zavezana izboljšavi odnosov z globalno judovsko skupnostjo.
Potovanja turistov vplivajo na krepitev njihove judovske identitete in obenem omo-
gočajo pomiritev travmatične zgodovinske izkušnje judovskega ljudstva s sodobnim
nemškim narodom. Članek ponuja kratko analizo nemškega povojnega trženja, na-
menjenega nedomačim Judom, opisuje z judovstvom povezane prostore v Berlinu
in, pred predstavitvijo sklepov, razkriva odgovore judovskih turistov v Berlinu.
Ključne besede: judovski turizem, Nemčija, Berlin, temačni turizem, holokavst,
memorializacija
Academica Turistica, 11(2), 117–126
Vpliv mednarodnega festivala na odnos obiskovalcev do različnih kultur
Yao-Yi Fu, SuoshengWang, Carina King in Yung-Tsen Chu
Interakcija z ljudmi iz drugih držav lahko razširi naše poznavanje kulturne raznoli-
kosti in nam omogoči mednarodni uvid. Kulturno razumevanje je mogoče razširiti
na več načinov, eden izmed njih je udeležba na mednarodnih festivalih. Medtem ko
raziskave na področju festivalov hitro naraščajo, je odnos obiskovalcev do različnih
kultur relativnomanj raziskan. V pričujoči študiji je bila uporabljena lestvica odnosa
obiskovalcev za preučevanje vedenjskih, kognitivnih in/ali čustvenih komponent, ki
sestavljajo odnos do raznolikosti. Raziskava se je osredotočila namerjenje frekvence
obiskov, na dolžino obiska prireditve, na participacijo na podobnih prireditvah, na
kulturne interese ter na prekomorske potovalne izkušnje, ki lahko posamezno pri-
spevajo k opazovanim razlikam v odnosu obiskovalcev. Namen obiskovalcev, da se
po obisku tega festivala odpravijo na prekomorsko potovanje, je bil ravno tako upo-
števan. Anketa je bila izvedena v enem od mest srednjega zahoda zda, na vzorcu
195 obiskovalcev festivala, od tega jih je 176 prispevalo uporabne podatke. Ugotovi-
tve kažejo, da imajo mednarodni festivali pomembno vlogo pri dvigu ozaveščenosti
obiskovalcev ter spoštovanju in sprejemanju različnih kultur. Pogostost obiskov, dol-
žina obiska prireditve in osebni interes za kulture imajo pomemben vpliv na stališča.
Te ugotovitve so relevantne za bodoče raziskovalce in organizatorje dogodkov.
Ključne besede:mednarodni festivali, etnične skupine, odnos obiskovalcev, različne
kulture
Academica Turistica, 11(2), 127–141
172 | Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018
Abstracts in Slovene Povzetki v slovenšini
Čaj za turiste: kulturni kapital, reprezentacija in izposoja v čajni kulturi
celinske Kitajske in Tajvana
Irena Weber
Čaj je verjetno ena izmed najbolj razširjenih pijač na svetu. Prežeta je z različnimi
zdravilnimi, kulturnimi in simbolnimi značilnostmi. Čaj igra pomembno vlogo pri
izgradnji sodobnih nacionalnih in regionalnih identitet, ki so za turiste prezentirane
in reprezentirane v obliki čajnih hiš, muzejev, čajnih poti, vodenih izletov in degu-
stacije čaja. Na podlagi etnografskega opazovanja z udeležbo v Šanghaju, Hangžuju,
Taipeiju in Pinglinu se članek ukvarja s primerjalno analizo čajne kulture, njene rabe
in reprezentacije v kulturnem turizmu, s poudarkom na identitetnih naracijah spe-
cializiranih čajnih muzejev, čajnih hiš in čajnih tržnic, in sledi kulturnim reprezen-
tacijam ter tokovom sodobne kulturne izposoje v umetnosti čaja.
Ključne besede: kultura čaja, turizem, Kitajska, Tajvan, kulturni kapital
Academica Turistica, 11(2), 143–154
Antropološki portret doma, spremenjenega v turistični vir
Helena Tolić
Članek predstavlja del raziskave, izvedene na Radunici, ulici v Splitu, na Hrvaškem.
Njegov glavni namen je predstaviti in poimenovati procese, ki so se odvili v lokalni
skupnosti, zlasti povezavo in dinamiko sprememb, ki jih povzročajo turistične de-
javnosti domačinov. Cilj je pokazati, kako čustvena navezava na dom in njegova
uporaba za vir dobička vplivata na in spreminjata vsakdanje življenje v skupnosti.
Na podlagi nestrukturiranih intervjujev, opazovanja z udeležbo in fenomenološkega
pristopa sem ugotovila, da turistične dejavnosti na Radunici, poleg finančne koristi
kot najugodnejšega učinka turizma, znatno spreminjajo vsakdanje življenje in kul-
turo domačinov, s tem, ko spreminjajo pojmovanje doma ter čustvene navezanosti
na dom. V tem pogledu postane trajnost lokalnih skupnosti vprašljiva, hkrati je turi-
stični dejavnosti povzročena postranska škoda. Glavna predpostavka je, da turizem
ni negativna sila, ki uničuje skupnosti, vendar mora biti načrtovan in nadzorovan
tako, da služi lokalni skupnosti in ne obratno. Cilj tega članka ni predstaviti pozitivne
ali negativne vplive turizma, temveč osvetliti nekatere slabosti turističnih dejavnosti
v lokalnih skupnostih in nakazati smeri rešitev.
Ključne besede: turizem, turistična dejavnost, lokalna skupnost, Radunica,
ublagovljenje, turistifikacija
Academica Turistica, 11(2), 155–160
Prepletanje besedilnega in slikovnega na primeru interpretacijskih tabel
v naravnem parku
Šarolta Godnič Vičič, Nina Lovec in Ljudmila Sinkovič
Interpretacijske table obiskovalce seznanjajo z značilnostmi naravnega parka ter z
drugimi vsebinami, s katerimi se srečujejo med obiskom naravne dediščine. Njihov
cilj je povečati obiskovalčevo ozaveščenost in razumevanje kraja. Poleg tega, da imajo
Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018 | 173
Abstracts in Slovene Povzetki v slovenšini
izobraževalno vlogo, pripomorejo k boljšemu doživetju obiskovalcev in k večji ka-
kovosti kraja naravne ali kulturne dediščine, zlasti ker so informacije na njih na vo-
ljo ves čas in za vse obiskovalce. Interpretacijske table so različne vede obravnavale
kot vrsto komunikacije ali vrsto turističnega produkta in pri tem izpostavile vidike
njihove uporabe, strategije za privabljanje in zadrževanje pozornosti obiskovalcev,
učinkovito konceptualno oblikovanje tabel, njihovo učinkovitost pri izobraževanju
in izboljšanju doživetja obiskovalcev. Pričujoči prispevek se osredotoča na interpre-
tacijske table, ki so postavljene v naravnih parkih. Interpretacijske table sporočilo
oblikujejo z združevanjem verbalnega (tj. besedila) in vizualnega sporočila (npr. fo-
tografij, zemljevidov, ilustracij). Z analizo intersemiotičnih logičnih odnosov med
njimi želimo razkriti načine prepletanja besedilnih in slikovnih elementov interpre-
tacijskih tabel in ustvarjanja kohezivnih vezi z vzpostavljanjem logičnih medseboj-
nih odnosov.
Ključne besede: interpretacija dediščine, interpretacijske table v naravnem okolju,
besedilno-vizualna intersemioza, intersemiotična kohezija, intersemiotične logične
vezi
Academica Turistica, 11(2), 161–170
174 | Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018
Academica Turistica Instructions for Authors
Instructions for Authors
Aim and Scope of the Journal
Academica Turistica – Tourism and Innovation Journal
(at-tij) is a peer-reviewed journal that provides a fo-
rum for the dissemination of knowledge on tourism
and innovation from a social sciences perspective. It
especially welcomes contributions focusing on inno-
vation in tourism and adaptation of innovations from
other fields in tourism settings.
The journal welcomes both theoretical and appli-
cative contributions and encourages authors to use va-
rious quantitative and qualitative research methodo-
logies. Besides research articles, the journal also pu-
blishes review articles, commentaries, reviews of bo-
oks and conference reports. Purely descriptive manu-
scripts which do not contribute to the development of
knowledge are not considered suitable.
General Guidelines and Policy of the Journal
Manuscripts are accepted in both American and Bri-
tish English; however, consistency throughout the pa-
per is expected. All manuscripts are subject to an ini-
tial editorial screening for adherence to the journal
style, for anonymity, and for correct use of English.
As a result of this your paper will be either accepted
for further consideration or returned for revision. To
avoid unnecessary errors you are strongly advised to
have your manuscript proofread.
Manuscripts should be organized in the following
order: title, abstract, keywords, main text, acknowled-
gements, references, and appendixes (as appropriate).
Reviewing. Each manuscript, meeting the technical
standards and falling within the aims and scope of the
journal, will be subject to double-blind review by two
reviewers. Authors can propose up to two reviewers
for revision of their work and also up to two reviewers
they would like to avoid.
The referees are chosen by the Editorial Board. As-
sessments by the referees will be presented anonymo-
usly to the author and, in the case of substantial reser-
vations, the article, with the list of corrections needed,
will be returned to the author for correction. The cor-
rected copy of the article with the list of corrections
on a separate page should be returned to the Editorial
Board.
Permissions. Authors wishing to include figures, ta-
bles, or text passages that have already been published
elsewhere, are required to obtain permission from the
copyright owner(s) and to include evidence that such
permission has been granted when submitting their
papers. Any material received without such evidence
will be assumed to originate from the authors.
Submission declaration. Submission of a manuscript
implies that it has not been published previously
(except in the form of abstract or as part of a publi-
shed lecture or academic thesis), that it is not under
consideration for publication elsewhere, that its publi-
cation is approved by all its authors and tacitly or expli-
citly by the responsible authorities where the workwas
carried out. The corresponding author should ensure
that all appropriate co-authors and no inappropriate
co-authors are included on the paper, and that all co-
authors have seen and approved the final version of
the paper and have agreed to its submission for publi-
cation.
Conflict of interest. All authors are requested to dis-
close any actual or potential conflict of interest inclu-
ding any financial, personal or other relationshipswith
other people or organizations within three years of be-
ginning the submittedwork that could inappropriately
influence, or be perceived to influence, their work.
Manuscript Preparation
Manuscripts should be prepared according to the style
prescribed by the Publication Manual of the Ameri-
can Psychological Association (American Psychologi-
calAssociation, 2009; see also http://www.apastyle.org).
Language and style. The first author is fully respon-
sible for the language and style in the context of the
instructions. A good scientific standard command of
grammar and style is expected.
Text formatting. Please, use the automatic page num-
bering function to number the pages. Use tab stops or
other commands for indents, not the space bar.Use the
table function, not spreadsheets, to make tables. Use
Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018 | 175
Academica Turistica Instructions for Authors
the equation editor or MathType for equations. Whe-
never possible, use the si units (Système international
d’unités).
Thetitlepage should include the title of the article (no
more than 85 characters, including spaces), full name
of the author(s), affiliation (institution name and ad-
dress) of each author clearly identified; linked to each
author by use of superscript numbers, corresponding
author’s full name, telephone, and e-mail address.
Abstract. The authors are obliged to prepare two ab-
stracts – one in English and one (translated) in Slo-
vene language. For foreign authors translation of the
abstract into Slovene will be provided.
The content of the abstract should be structured
into the following sections: purpose, methods, results,
and conclusion. It should only contain the information
that appears in the text as well. It should contain no re-
ference to figures, tables and citations published in the
main text, and should not exceed 250 words.
Beneath the abstract, the authors should supply
appropriate keywords (3–6) in English and in Slovene.
For foreign authors the translation of the abstract into
Slovene will be provided.
The main text should contain a coherent and logi-
cal structure preferably following the imrad format
(Introduction, Methods, Research [and] Discussion).
However, other structures are also welcome (e.g. In-
troduction, Development and Conclusions) as long as
the text maintains its logical structure and focus. Ac-
knowledgments are optional.
The length of the articles should not exceed 9,000
words (including tables, figures, and references), dou-
ble spaced, using Times New Roman font sized 12.
Tables. Each table should be submitted on a sepa-
rate page in a Word document after References. Each
table shall have a brief caption; explanatory matter
should be in the footnotes below the table. The table
shall contain means and the units of variation (sd,
se, etc.) and must be free of nonsignificant decimal
places. Abbreviations used in the tablesmust be consi-
stentwith those used in the text and figures.Definition
symbols should be listed in the order of appearance,
determined by reading horizontally across the table
and should be identified by standard symbols. All ta-
bles should be numbered consecutively (Table 1, Table
2, etc.).
Figures. Captions are required for all Figures and shall
appear on a separate manuscript page, beneath table
captions. Each figure should be saved as a separate
file without captions and named as Figure 1, etc. Files
should be submitted in *.tiff or *.jpeg format. Pho-
tographs should be saved at at least 300 dpi. Line art
images should be saved at 1200 dpi. Lettering (sym-
bols, letters, and numbers) should be between 8 and
9 points, with consistent spacing and alignment. Font
face may be Serif (Minion) or Sans Serif (Myriad).
Line width should be 0.5 point or greater. Any extra
white or black space surrounding the image should be
cropped. Ensure that subject-identifying information
(i.e., faces, names, or any other identifying features)
is cropped out or opaqued. Prior to publication, the
author(s) should obtain all necessary authorizations
for the publication of the illustrative matter and sub-
mit them to the Editorial Board. All figures should be
numbered consecutively (Figure 1, Figure 2, etc.). The
journal will be printed in black and white. If the pa-
per contains graphs, we would appreciate that you also
e-mail them in a separate Excel file.
References
References should be formatted according to the Pu-
blication Manual of the American Psychological Associ-
ation (American Psychological Association, 2009).
The list of references should only include works
that are cited in the text and that have been published
or accepted for publication. Personal communications
and unpublished works should only be mentioned in
the text. References should be complete and contain all
the authors (up to six) that have been listed in the title
of the original publication. If the author is unknown,
start with the title of the work. If you are citing a work
that is in print but has not yet been published, state all
the data and instead of the publication year write ‘in
print.’
Reference list entries should be alphabetized by the
last name of the first author of each work. Do not use
footnotes or endnotes as a substitute for a reference
176 | Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018
Academica Turistica Instructions for Authors
list. Full titles of journals are required (not their abbre-
viations).
Citing References in Text
One author. Tourism innovation specific is mentioned
(Brooks, 2010). Thomas (1992) had concluded . . .
Two authors. This result was later contradicted (Swar-
brooke &Horner, 2007). Price andMurphy (2000)
pointed out . . .
Three to five authors, first citation. Laroche, Bergeron,
and Barbaro-Forleo (2001) had found . . . It was
also discovered (Salamon, Sokolowski, Haddock,
& Tice, 2013) . . .
Three to five authors, subsequent citations. Laroche et
al. (2009) or (Salamon et al., 2011).
Six or more authors.Wolchik et al. (1999) or (Wolchik
et al., 1999).
If two references with six or more authors shorten
to the same form, cite the surnames of the first author
and of as many of the subsequent authors as necessary
to distinguish the two references, followed by a coma
and et al.
List several authors for the same thought or idea
with separation by using a semicolon: (Kalthof et al.,
1999; Biegern & Roberts, 2005).
For detailed instructions please see the Publica-
tion Manual of the American Psychological Association
(American Psychological Association, 2009, Chap-
ter 6).
Examples of Reference List
Books
American Psychological Association. (2009). Publica-
tion manual of the American Psychological Associ-
ation (6th ed.). Washington, dc: Author.
Swarbrooke, J., & Horner, S. (2007). Consumer beha-
viour in tourism. Oxford, England: Butterworth-
Heinemann.
Journals
Laroche,M., Bergeron, J., & Barbaro-Forleo, G. (2001).
Targeting consumers who are willing to pay more
for environmentally friendly products. Journal of
Consumer Marketing, 18(6), 503–520.
Wolchik, S. A., West, S. G., Sandler, I. N., Tein, J.–
Y., Coatsworth, D., Lengua, L., . . . Griffin, W. A.
(2000). An experimental evaluation of theory-
basedmother andmother-child programs for chil-
dren of divorce. Journal of Consulting and Clinical
Psychology, 68, 843–856.
Newspapers
Brooks, A. (2010, 7 July). Building craze threatens to
end Lanzarote’s biosphere status. Independent. Re-
trieved from http://www.independent.co.uk/
environment/nature/building-craze-threatens-to
-end-lanzarotes-biosphere-status-2020064.html
Chapters in Books
Poirier, R. A. (2001). A dynamic tourism develop-
ment model in Tunisia: Policies and prospects. In
Y. Aposotolopoulos, P. Loukissas, & L. Leontidou
(Eds.),Mediterranean tourism (pp. 197–210). Lon-
don, England: Routledge.
Conference Proceedings
Price, G., & Murphy, P. (2000). The relationship be-
tween ecotourism and sustainable development: A
critical examination. In M. Ewen (Ed.), cauthe
2000: Peak performance in tourism and hospitality
research; Proceedings of the Tenth Australian Tou-
rism and Hospitality Research Conference (pp. 189–
202). Bundoora, Australia: La Trobe University.
Paper Presentation
Thomas, J. (1992, July). Tourism and the environment:
An exploration of the willingness to pay of the ave-
rage visitor. Paper presented at the conference To-
urism in Europe, Durham, England.
Theses andDissertations
Sedmak, G. (2006). Pomen avtentičnosti turističnega
proizvoda: primer destinacije Piran (Unpublished
doctoral dissertation). University of Ljubljana, Lju-
bljana, Slovenia.
Working Papers
Salamon, L. M., Sokolowski, S. W., Haddock, M. A., &
Tice, H. S. (2013). The state of global civil society vo-
lunteering: Latest findings from the implementation
Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018 | 177
Academica Turistica Instructions for Authors
of the un nonprofitt handbook (Comparative Non-
profit Sector Working Paper No. 49). Baltimore,
md: Johns Hopkins University.
Web Pages
Croatian Bureau of Statistics. (2001). Census of popu-
lation, households and dwellings. Retrieved from
http://www.dzs.hr/Eng/censuses/Census2001/
census.htm
For detailed instructions please see the Publica-
tion Manual of the American Psychological Association
(American Psychological Association, 2009, Chap-
ter 7).
Manuscript Submission
The main manuscript document should be in Micro-
soft Word document format and the article should be
submitted to http://pkp.turistica.si/index.php/test/
index
Please make sure that you do not leave any trace of
your identity in the submitted files. Otherwise, your
identity can be accidentally revealed to reviewers and
your manuscript might be rejected.
We are introducing new manuscript submission
system. The first responses from the authors are posi-
tive, but we still apologise for any inconvenience.
For technical assistance please contactmitja.petelin
@turistica.si and for additional information regarding
article publication contact the Editorial Board at
academica@turistica.si
178 | Academica Turistica, Year 11, No. 2, December 2018