GEOGRAPHICAL CONSCIOUSNESS

AND TOURISM EXPERIENCE

Yiping Li
University of Hong Kong, China
Abstract: Scholars of many persuasions have recognized the experiential features of
geography, such as the consciousness arising from the spatial and temporal bonds between
people and places. Until recently, however, tourism researchers have largely overlooked
those features. In partial response to this omission, this article presents a phenomenological
exploration of leisure tourism experience. By describing the lived experiences of Canadian
tourists traveling to and within China on two separate package tours, this article discusses if
and how geographical consciousness inuences the tourists' experiences. Its main purpose is
to provide insights for research and application. Keywords: geographical consciousness, tra-
vel experience, life world, tourist trap, phenomenology, tourism authenticity. 7 2000 Elsevier
Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Resume: La conscience ge ographique et l'expe rience du tourisme. Des chercheurs
repre sentant beaucoup de points de vue ont reconnu les particularite s expe rientielles de la
ge ographie, par exemple la conscience qui surgit du lien spatial et temporel entre les
personnes et les endroits. Jusqu'a ces derniers temps, les chercheurs en tourisme ont
largement oublie ces caracte ristiques. Un peu en re ponse a cette omission, cet article
pre sente une exploration phe nome nologique de l'expe rience du tourisme d'agre ment. En
de crivant les expe riences ve cues de deux groupes de touristes canadiens qui ont visite la
Chine en voyage organise , l'article examine comment et a quel degre la conscience
ge ographique inuence les expe riences des touristes. Le but principal est d'ouvrir de
nouvelles perspectives pour la recherche et pour les applications. Mots-cles: conscience ge o-
graphique, expe rience de voyage, monde de la vie, pie ge a touristes, phe nome nologie,
authenticite du tourisme. 7 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
INTRODUCTION
There are rich studies on experiential features of geography, such
as those on the experiences of places, spaces, and landscapesboth
pleasant and unpleasantthat people have, regardless of whether
they know geography as a formal science (Billinge 1977; Buttimer
1976; Seamon 1979; and Tuan 1977, 1989, 1993). These experiences
are the substance of involvement in the world, and constitute the
phenomenological basis of geographical consciousness (Relph 1990;
Ven Passen 1957). As Dardel points out, ``the geographical science
Annals of Tourism Research, Vol. 27, No. 4, pp. 863883, 2000
7 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved
Printed in Great Britain
0160-7383/00/$20.00
Pergamon
www.elsevier.com/locate/atoures
PII: S0160-7383(99)00112-7
Yiping Li is a geographer and researcher with a concentration in sociocultural, political,
and economic aspects of tourism and recreation. Currently he is Lecturer at the University of
Hong Kong (Department of Geography and Geology, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong, China.
Email
<
liyiping@hkucc.hku.hk
>
). Specically, his interests in tourism and recreation cover
socioeconomic trends and impacts, international development, geography and urban culture,
and planning and management of resources.
863
presupposes a world that can be understood geographically and also
that man can feel and know himself to be tied to the Earth''
(1952:46).
Geographical consciousness has been recognized by many. For
example, Relph (1976, 1990) seeks the geographical patterns
regarding the immediate experience of life. Lowenthal (1961)
argues that everyone is a geographer in a world practically geo-
graphical. This world is a ``life world'': the sum total of a person's
rst-hand involvement with the world in which the person typically
resides (Buttimer 1976). This ``life world'' theme also embraces the
core of Tuan's studies (1977, 1989, 1993) on experiences of space,
place, surface phenomena, and aesthetic experiences of nature and
culture. However, until recently this consciousness has been largely
overlooked in tourism research, despite the distinct geographical
nature of tourism. Hence in order to examine the inuence of geo-
graphical consciousness, this study phenomenologically explores the
leisure tourism experience of 39 Canadian tourists to and within
China on two separate package tours. The goal is to advance
research and practice in this important eld.
PHENOMENOLOGY OF TOURISM EXPERIENCE
Three interwoven concepts inform the main purpose of this
study: tourism experience, geographical consciousness, and phenom-
enology. There have been opposing denitions of tourism experi-
ence. For example, Boorstin (1964) denes it as a popular act of
consumption, and a contrived, prefabricated experience of mass
tourism. In contrast, MacCannell (1973) believes it to be an active
response to the difculties of modern life, arguing that tourists are
in search of ``authentic'' experiences in order to overcome the dif-
culties. However, they both attempt to dene the experience with
the notion that it has certain signicance for individuals and for
their societies. Their denitions also initiate the debate about the
negative and positive effects of modern leisure tourism (Furnham
1984; Graburn 1989; Sutton 1967). This debate subscribes to a com-
mon experience for all tourists as if their needs were consistent,
regardless of the different social and cultural backgrounds constitut-
ing those needs. It is Cohen (1979) who launches the argument that
different people need different experiences, which cast different
meanings for tourists and their societies.
Cohen denes tourism experience as the relationship between a
person and a variety of ``centers'' by illuminating that the meaning
of the experience is derived from a person's worldview, depending
on whether the person adheres to a ``center''. The latter is not
necessarily geographically central to the life-space of the person. It
is ``the individual's spiritual center, which for the individual symbo-
lizes ultimate meaning'' (Cohen 1979:181). Thus, Cohen believes
that this experience reects some stable patterns of motivations
both differentiating and characterizing various modes of tourists'
activities. These are linked to the ``privately'' constructed worlds of
GEOGRAPHICAL CONSCIOUSNESS 864
tourists and represent patterned ways of satisfying a wide range of
personal needs, from pleasure to the search for meaning. Later on
Hamilton-Smith (1987), Nash (1996), Page (1997), Pearce (1982),
Ryan (1993, 1997), Smith (1989), Urry (1990), and Yiannakis and
Gibson (1992) allude to Cohen's modes of tourism experience in
their studies. A general denition of it may be drawn from the com-
monality of their studies. That is, tourism experience is a multifunc-
tional leisure activity, involving either entertainment or learning, or
both, for an individual (Ryan 1997).
The learning involved, in general, is a natural process occurring
mostly incidentally (Kalinowski 1992). It is an experiential learning
in an individual's spatial interaction with the destination, taking
place in the individual's geographical consciousness. This, in a most
general term, is the experience of spaces, places, and landscapes
both pleasant and unpleasant that people have, regardless of
whether they know anything of geography as a formal science
(Billinge 1977; Buttimer 1976; Seamon 1979; Tuan 1977, 1989;
1993). This consciousness is the substance of an individual's involve-
ment in the world, and also involves the emotion, the mind, and the
total self of the individual (Relph 1990; Smith 1982; Ven Passen
1957). It arises from the spatial and temporal bond between people
and places, which has been explored by many geographers. For
example, Sauer (1925) sees the land with the eyes of its own inhabi-
tants. Wright (1947) seeks ``geosophy''geographical knowledge
based on all points of viewsin the place of imagination in geogra-
phy. Lowenthal views humans as ``artist and landscape architect,
creating order and organizing space, time, and causality in accord-
ance with our perceptions and predilections'' (1961:260). The stu-
dies of personplace bond by those scholars weave a discernible
thread in geographical science. That is, this reality is not at rst an
``object'', and geographical space is not a blank waiting to be colored
and lled in. Some inquiry objects, such as sense of place and land-
scape, are not formalizations of a disciplinary perspective, but are
root experiences that derive from a prescientic ``geographical con-
sciousness'' (Relph 1990). Therefore, this knowledge, should also be
linked to forms of human experience that touch it in its immediacy,
such as art, literature, and history, working with and through huma-
nities. This requires geographers to possess skills of expression, rep-
resentation, and careful description: the method of phenomenology
(Buttimer 1976; Mercer and Powell 1972; Pickles 1986; Relph 1990;
Smith 1979).
The term ``phenomenology'' comes from two Greek words: phaino-
menon (an appearance) and logos (reason or word), hence it names a
reasoned inquiry that discovers the inherent essences of appear-
ances (Stewart 1990). An appearance is anything of which one
is conscious, and phenomenology is concerned with the question
of consciousness. Thus, anything that appears to consciousness
is a legitimate area of phenomenological investigation.
Phenomenologists reject natural sciences' quantitative methods of
treating consciousness as an object because this is not an object
YIPING LI 865
among others in nature and because there are conscious phenomena
that cannot be dealt with adequately by means of the quantitative
methods of experimental science (Spiegelberg 1965).
Phenomenological inquiry starts with the content of consciousness
(whatever that content may be) as valid data for investigation
(Stewart 1990). It does not concentrate exclusively on either the
object or subject of experience, but on the point where being and
consciousness meet.
Therefore, the phenomenological method has undeniable advan-
tages in studying tourism experience. First, it is a human topic and
its study requires a method such as phenomenology that does not
limit its investigations only to the materialistic realities. Second,
because experience is a ``felt perception'', each individual must
impart personal observation of the phenomena being experienced.
When receiving this information, an investigator needs to exhibit
exibility, as she/he may confront unknown data (Thevenaz 1962)
of various perspectives on tourism experiences. The introspective
approach of the phenomenological method will enable the investi-
gator to identify its underlying dimensions. However, the method
has been largely overlooked in tourism research (Dann and Cohen
1996). The few studies that probe into the phenomenological side of
tourism are theoretical and speculative (Cohen 1979; Mannell and
Iso-Ahola 1987), or only focused on the periphery of the subject,
such as some research of wilderness experiences (Duenkel 1994;
Morrison 1986; Potter 1993). Therefore, using a phenomenological
method will partially ll out this omission in tourism research.
Study Method
Phenomenological inquiry focuses on human experience, which
requires that the topics of interest be approached through their pre-
sence in conscious awareness (Polkinghorne 1989). For instance,
instead of viewing the body as an organic object, it studies the ex-
periences people have of their bodies. In experience, events appear
as meaningful, both the appearance of worldly objects or happen-
ings and personal thoughts or feelings. Experience is meaningfully
ordered; however, its structure and order are difcult to describe.
Therefore, the essential task of phenomenological method is to pro-
duce clear, precise, and systematic descriptions of the meaning that
constitutes the activity of consciousness in human experience
(Giorgi 1975; Polkinghorne 1989). In other words, the essence of the
phenomenological method is to describe the meaning of an experi-
ence from the worldview of those who have that experience, and as
a result attach a meaning to it (Kvale 1996; Ray 1994; Stewart
1990). The method aims at a deeper understanding of a subject by
descriptively illuminating its underlying structures. Its goal is to
describe, rather than to explain the phenomenon in question.
However, descriptive ``words may be imprecise, ambiguous, or open
to multiple interpretation''. To do a sound phenomenological study,
GEOGRAPHICAL CONSCIOUSNESS 866
researchers must be explicit about their data gathering and analysis
procedures (Howe and Jackson 1985:219; Riley 1993).
Data Gathering. The major data for this study were based on 39
Canadian tourists' experiences on two separate package tours to
and within China. Questionnaire surveys and unstructured long
interviews were used to collect the data. Participant observation was
also used to see the tourists' experiences as they unfolded. Three
different questionnaires were developed before, between, and after
the two trips. The rst one, designed before the two trips, was dis-
tributed to all the tourists. It was semi-structured with an
``informed consent form'', helping the respondents understand that
their participation would remain anonymous. It also requested po-
tential long-interview participants to provide their demographic in-
formation. From the rst trip, ve tourists were selected for long
interviews. The second trip was taken four months afterwards, and
a new questionnaire was developed, based on the analysis of the
interviews on the rst trip, for the survey on the second trip. The
result of this survey was also used for cross-examining all the long
interviews once their analysis was nished. Of the 18 questionnaires
distributed, 11 were completed and returned. Two more long inter-
views were also conducted on this trip, with unstructured questions
similar to those of the rst trip.
The long-interview participants were considered ``coresearchers''
rather than ``subjects'' as a phenomenological study is to establish a
supportive context in which people can build on each other's
insights (Seamon 1979). It is generally agreed upon that the num-
ber of coresearchers vary depending on the nature of the study:
between one and ten are recommended (Becker 1986; Kaam 1966).
However, it is also imperative to keep in mind that sampling theory
is not a basis for selecting them since a phenomenological research
aims not to statistically generalize but to understand human experi-
ence (Valle and Halling 1989). All the seven coresearchers (Table 1)
Table 1. Seven Coresearchers' Proles
Case
Number
Gender Age Occupation Ethnicity Marital
Status
Resident
Location
in Canada
1 Female 26 Social worker Anglo Single Waterloo
2 Female 51 Student
(Retired business woman)
Danish Married Ottawa
3 Male 47 Airport Controller Anglo Married Ottawa
4 Male 62 Retired civil servant Franco Married Ottawa
5 Male 47 Journalist Anglo Common-law
relationship
Toronto
6 Male 44 Teacher
(Adult education)
Anglo Married Toronto
7 Male 69 Retired engineer Anglo Married Hamilton
YIPING LI 867
were selected because they were willing to participate and their pro-
les t the sampling requirements for choosing them (Becker 1986;
Kaam 1966). These long interviews were audio taped by a portable
cassette recorder, and transcribed later for analysis. The analysis
was cross-examined using the results of the second questionnaire
survey, with the information such as the tourists' purposes of the
overseas trip, expectation of the guides, pre- and post-trip knowl-
edge of destinations, as well as their expectations of the specic
China trips. Then, the third questionnaire was developed based on
the cross-examination, to collect all their post tourism reections in
China. This instrument was sent to all the seven participants a few
months after the trips. Six of them completed the questionnaire.
The analysis of the long interviews was cross-examined again by the
results of the third questionnaire survey. Because the ve core-
searchers of the rst trip did not write the second questionnaire,
they were also asked to write it along with the third one. The use of
those two questionnaires was to ensure, to a certain degree, that
their perception of tourism experience can be representative.
The initial contact with the coresearchers began right after the
tours had arrived in Beijing (the rst city of visit for both trips).
The rst questionnaire was distributed to all the 39 tourists by slid-
ing it underneath their hotel-room doors in order not to disturb
them after a long trans-Pacic ight. It clearly stated the purpose
of the research, helping the tourists decide whether to participate
as coresearchers. It also enabled the researcher to establish rapport,
develop participation interest, gain their consent for interviews, and
collect their demographic information.
The purpose of developing interest and establishing rapport was
to minimize constrained answers. As the participants may perceive
the researcher to be an expert and thus reluctant to offer their
opinions (Riley 1993), ``self-exposure procedures'' (Lincoln and
Guba 1985) were used to reduce the power differentials between
them. For example, the researcher attempted to share personal
background information with the participants in ``idle chatter''
(Douglas 1985; Riley 1993) to initiate conversations. Then he used
simple descriptive questions to help the coresearchers draw upon in-
formation of past experiences, such as their own life history and
previous trips, before talking about other issues. ``Why'' questions
were generally avoided to reduce protective responses, as they imply
a request for justication of responses and engender defensiveness
(Patton 1990; Pollio, Henley and Thompson 1997; Riley 1993).
Data Analysis. The long interview transcripts were rst read
through, in order to gain a feel for the language and perspectives of
the coresearchers. In this process, their life world was also revealed
through a comparison of their conversations with their demographic
information. Preliminary understandings of their experiences were
then written in the margins. The transcripts were then re-read, on
a line to line basis. Signicant statements that refer specically to
events, such as ``learning in travel'', ``a cultural shock incident'',
GEOGRAPHICAL CONSCIOUSNESS 868
were selected. Those statements were then re-read with the intent
of fragmenting the raw data into component parts. Each discrete
part was categorized afterwards by a label describing each com-
ponent. For example, the label of ``l+t'' would suggest ``learning in
travel'', and the label of ``cse'' would represent ``a cultural shock ex-
perience''.
Labels were grouped into sets of relationships, and subsumed
under conceptual categories when they assisted in contributing to
one. Then all labels were compared for possible connections and
combinations. For example, labels of ``cse'' and ``pls'' representing
``cultural shock experience'' and ``problems of learning situation'',
were combined and relabeled as ``ltp'' representing ``learning in tra-
vel and its problems''. The conceptual categories were then com-
pared across each individual interview to sort out the core ones that
have a pervasive presence in the data (Riley 1993; Strauss 1987;
Strauss and Corbin 1990). Those core categories were compared
again across all the long interviews to identify common themes of
the data (Colaizzi 1978; Riley 1993). For example, themes such as
``travel leads to personal growth and development'', ``interaction
and processing of experience'', and ``establishing a bond with the
`other''' were identied because they occurred regularly across all
the interviews. In order to increase the rigor of the study, those
common themes were cross-examined by the results of the second
and the third questionnaire surveys. This exercise not only led to
some deduction and combination of the existing themes, but also
induced some new ones. The common themes were nalized after
the cross-examination, and then placed into natural groups to inte-
grate the long interviews into a thorough description of individual
tourism experience.
Member Check. According to Lincoln and Guba (1985), it should be
the coresearchers who determine whether the analysis is an accu-
rate reection of their conversations. Thus a ``member check''
(Colaizzi 1978; Lincoln and Guba 1985; Riley 1993) should be per-
formed to have the participants examine the correctness of the
description of their experiences. In this study, however, only ve out
of the seven transcript analyses went through a ``member check''
because the other two stated clearly after the interviews that they
would rather read the nal research report if possible. The ``mem-
ber check'' was done through either email or regular postal mail
communications. If it was performed through postal service, self-
addressed and postage paid envelopes were provided to ensure that
the nal ``re-interview'' les be returned.
Tourists' Experiences
The study reveals that the coresearchers have certain similar ex-
periences despite their differences. Table 2 shows the similarities
and differences by suggesting the frequency of an experience with
corresponding numbers. For example, ``7'' would suggest an experi-
YIPING LI 869
ence for all the participants, and ``4'' would suggest an experience
for four of them. Table 2 was cross-examined by the results of the
second and the third surveys, producing a summary of their shared
experiences (Table 3). However, it is worth noting that the long
interviews and the questionnaires did not limit the investigation
Table 2. Differences and Similarities in Coreseachers' Experiences
Tourism Experience Co-1 Co-2 Co-3 Co-4 Co-5 Co-6 Co-7
Global importance and personal need 7 7 7 7 7 7 7
Mind broadening through tourism 7 7 7 7 7 7 7
Understanding the difference 7 7 7 7 7 7 7
Need for mutual understanding 7 7 7 7 7 7 7
Toward a deep sense of morality 7 7 7 7 7 7 7
Establishing purpose of travel 7 7 7 7 7 7 7
Seeing the self through the ``other'' 6 6 6 6 6 6
Seeing things beyond the surface 6 6 6 6 6 6
Being selective in taking packages 5 5 5 5 5
Getting out of the tourist trap 5 5 5 5 5
Education for an individual 4 4 4 4
Satisfaction enhanced by learning 4 4 4 4
Positive effect on personal career 4 4 4 4
Learning in travel and its problems 3 3 3
Frustrating and stimulating learning 3 3 3
Desire to learn more with satisfaction 3 3 3
Enjoying the thrilling moments 3 3 3
Positive experience enhances satisfaction 3 3 3
Negative experience affects future travels 2 2
Mixed feeling toward change 2 2
Instant gratication in travel 1
Seeing and reading history 1
Understanding the present in history 1
Entertaining and purposeless learning 1
Frustrating and valuable culture shock 1
Immediate contact with the reality 1
Chance of testing information 1
Field of applying knowledge 1
Limitation of formal learning 2 2
Tourism's dependence on education 1
Egocentric motivation of travel 1
Using professional knowledge in travel 1
Scratching the surface to learn 1
Knowledge is the power 1
Seeking authentic experiences 1
A guide is the ticket to a good trip 1
Using the tourism infrastructure 1
Difference of a tourist and a traveler 1
Being critical of negative things 1
Meeting strangers and making friends 1
Facing disappointment 1
GEOGRAPHICAL CONSCIOUSNESS 870
only to the coresearchers' experiences in China. The ideal of this
study is to understand, not to generalize, by examining specic tour-
ists' views of their past, present, and future trips. Therefore, phe-
nomenological description not only reects an understanding of
their experiences on the two trips, but also their reection/expec-
tation of past/future occasions.
It is also critical to note that for two reasons the investigator can-
not conveniently tuck away the personal behind the professional in
providing this description. First, the description is based on the data
collected from the long interviews, each of which was a dialogical
process structured by both the person being interviewed and the in-
vestigator. Second, the interview questions were unstructured and
open-ended. To describe the conversations needs linguistic trans-
formation of the selection into more precisely descriptive terms.
This would include shifting from the subjects' original language
given in the raw data to descriptions in the words of the investigator
(Kaam 1966). ``Linguistic transformation is carried out by means of
the ordinary human capacity to understand the meaning of state-
ments'' (Polkinghorne 1989:52). Therefore, the inter-subjectivity of
the long interviews and their verbal description requires both the
readers and the investigator to be aware that the latter's gender,
age, race/ethnicity, and biography could position him in the descrip-
tion. All of these might inhibit or enable insights throughout this
research. The following describes the coresearchers' shared experi-
ences. It is hoped that an understanding of their shared experiences
will provide insights for tourism research and business practice.
Table 3. Signicance of Tourism Experience and Transformation of a Social Being
a
The Signicance of Tourism Experience
Travel Leads to Personal Growth and Development
Global importance and personal need
Mind broadening through travel
Education for an individual
Satisfaction enhanced by learning
Positive effect on personal career
The Transformation of a Social Being
Interaction and Processing of Experience
Establishing purpose of travel
Seeing things beyond the surface
Being selective in taking packages
Getting out of the tourist trap
Establishing a Bond with the ``Other''
Understanding the difference
Need for mutual understanding
Toward a deep sense of morality
Seeing the self through the ``other''
a
Coresearchers' Shared Experiences.
YIPING LI 871
Signicance of Travel Experience. The coresearchers were motivated
to travel by the desire for a good time and wishes such as seeing
more of the world, learning about other cultures, or experiencing
places known by reading. Driven by those motivations, they would
consciously or unconsciously get into learning situations when tra-
veling. The learning might not be pleasant, as it was experiential
and occurring incidentally. However, they did feel afterwards that
experiential learning opened their eyes to a broader picture of
world lives. Thus, tourism experience is signicant for an individual,
particularly in an era when cultures and economies are increasingly
integrated into a globalized system.
The coresearchers agreed that the fundamental appeal of tourism
experience is its role in making accessible the basic knowledge
about the nature of human life on a global scale. Coresearcher 2
conveyed:
Travel is about learning the very basics of life. We are all humans,
we share common concerns, and we have the same basic needs.
We need to know others' needs and wants to gain insights for our
own life.
Her view, pushed further by coresearcher 5, is that ``travel is not
only about the interaction of peoples, but also the integration of
world nations'', which is ``the practical weapon to stop the wars'' in
coresearcher 4's opinion. The global importance of cultures makes
tourism experience signicant for personal growth and develop-
ment, as explained by coresearcher 6 with his three reasons for tak-
ing the tour of China:
The rst is intellectual, because it's hard to think of yourself as an
educated person if you know nothing of the Chinese thinking. The
second is political. I have been critical of Western capitalism most
of my adult life. This is not to say that I think any of existing
forms of socialism is perfect, but I've found great Western inspi-
ration for challenging injustice by looking to the experiments in
socialism. The third is economic. The changes from planned econ-
omy to market economy, and the move of many Chinese from
China to Canada, are economic processes. I think it's hard to
understand the economy, certainly of Vancouver, or of Toronto,
without understanding how Chinese people do business.
It seems that these participants were attempting to gain a sense of
harmony with the life that is increasingly integrated into the global
system. They chose travel as the means to achieve the harmony
because this, pointed out by coresearcher 3, is ``a great education
for an individual''. This opinion is also reected in Chris Ryan's
(1997) view that leisure tourism possesses the potential for cathartic
experiences because it is an entertainment business involved with
learning. These experiences may not have a life-changing effect, but
do nevertheless have certain signicance for tourists' personal
growth and development.
GEOGRAPHICAL CONSCIOUSNESS 872
Transformation of a Social Being. Leed's view of the social transform-
ations of tourism may help further understand the coresearchers'
views on the signicance of this experience:
Closely examined, the social transformations of travel strongly
suggest that social being in general derives from nothing more
than the mutual identications, categorizations, and recognitions
in which people normally engage (Leed 1991:263264).
What Leed suggests is that these transformations are closely re-
lated to the origin of identity, the ways in which a person's selves
are dened. That is, without an ``other'', there would be no ``self'',
and identity is done with ``mirrors''. The ``mirrors'' were frequently
used by the coresearchers in their experiences when their identities
were constantly reected in their recognition and observation
between ``self'' and ``other'', as well as in their interacting and pro-
cessing experiences before/after a specic trip.
For example, all coresearchers attempted to interact and process
past experiences to achieve satisfaction, and these worked as ``mir-
rors'' reecting the ``yes'' and the ``no'' for their future experiences.
Those ``yes'' and ``no'' represent the past experiences to be repeated
or avoided for future travels. Being experienced world tourists, they
all had sorted out the ``yes'' and ``no'' from past experiences, evi-
dent in that they all wanted to avoid the ``inauthentic'' experience
manipulated by the tourism business: ``the tourist trap''. They also
understood, however, that in the age of mass tourism it was unrea-
listic to completely avoid ``the tourist trap'', thus having to use the
tourism infrastructures for individual needs, explained by core-
searcher 1:
On a package tour, the rst thing I get upon arrival will be a
hotel. It's like a home. Then I can explore gradually, further and
further, because I can continually come back to this home base
. . . the more time you spend nding things out, you waste your
time. If someone else helps you, you have the information and you
can do it.
If getting out of ``the tourist trap'' to ``explore further and further''
into a destination consists of part of a satisfactory experience, this
may indeed be a means of changing selves, with the obtained deeper
knowledge about ``other''. This self-changing effect is reected in
their constantly rediscovering ``self'' while seeing ``other'' during
travel.
Establishing a Bond with the ``Other''. Coresearcher 1 could not help
re-adjusting her view of her home media after realizing that the
projected portrait of ``other'' had led to her misjudgement of the
locals. Finding the selfhood in the recognition of others was ``a sav-
ing grace'' for coresearcher 5. He believed in travel's contribution to
making successful tourists into actors, writers, and poets.
Coresearcher 4 felt that he should not take his wealthier life for
granted after seeing the poverty in developing countries. By seeing
the life of ``other'', number 2 felt that she could draw insight for
YIPING LI 873
her own life. Coresearcher 3 constantly compared what he saw
during travel with familiar things at home. Number 1 believed that
one could pick up pieces of knowledge available on a trip, then t
them into one's knowledge base to make oneself a better person.
The above examples show the signicance of understanding the
differences of ``other'' for the coresearchers' tourism experiences.
This understanding would contribute to world peace and harmony,
as pointed out by coresearcher 6, a teacher and researcher of adult
learning:
Whatever problems tourism has, if we look at the informal travel
experiential learning, we nd it contributes to life-long learning
that contributes to global peace and harmony. If I'm open to
learning, your difference becomes a resource. Otherwise your
difference may become a threat to me.
CONCLUSION
An understanding of the coresearchers' shared experiences shows
that travel is joined with other dimensions of living: the socioeco-
nomic, interpersonal and spiritual worlds, which in sum comprise an
individual's geographical consciousness. Understanding this re-
lationship between tourism experience and geographical conscious-
ness points to wider patterns of meaning in regard to tourists'
behavioral and experiential relationships with the destination, par-
ticularly those of how ``body subject'' relates to ``lived space''
described by Seamon (1979). According to Seamon, underlying
people's everyday movements is an intentional bodily force mani-
festing automatically but sensitively, such as feet carefully working
their way to a destination, or an arm reaching for an object. He
terms this intentional bodily force body subject. Because of this, an
individual knows at any moment how to relate a normal daily ex-
perience to familiar objects, places, and environments. Thus, it is
necessary to conceive of a lived space: a space organized in terms of
a corporeal scheme and constituted by means of bodily movements
such as actions in response to specic situations (Zaner 1971). For
example, coresearcher 1 wanted to have some ``independence'' on
her ``dependent'' package tour of China:
I would like to have some afternoons or evenings off, say, walking
from our hotel to just anywhere, and nd somewhere. I would like
to go to local bakeries and look in, wandering what this is and say,
``let's buy it and nd out what the taste is''. That to me, is travel.
However, she might not try to be ``independent'' until she had
developed a sense of a lived space of China. Without this sense, she
would not have the intentional bodily force: the body subject, which
would guide her, automatically but sensitively, to explore China
independently. As she conveyed previously, the benet of an orga-
nized tour was having help from someone else. Otherwise, she
would spend more time nding things out, and waste her time.
Therefore, to study a tourist's experience of a destination, it must
GEOGRAPHICAL CONSCIOUSNESS 874
be recognized that this is grounded rst of all in the body of the
tourist, in her/his geographical consciousness. This recognition has
a signicant implication for tourism research.
Theoretical Implications
Recognizing the signicance of geographical consciousness for
tourism experience may help to understand tourist's ``freedom of
choice'' and ``cognitive bias'' in travel. Tourism is a social, cultural,
and economic phenomenon, as well as a personal experience (Li and
Hinch 1997; Squire 1994). The general trends in both society and
thinking affect a tourist's understanding of the nature of tourism.
However, the experience of tourism requires a physical body. While
a society may create a context for a tourist to experience, the diver-
sity of views held within it imputes an importance to the tourist.
Social morals are individually interpreted, so the experience of
being a tourist is one that engages all the senses . . . To under-
stand the tourist experience requires not only a consideration of
perceived needs and actualities of the beach and the great out-
doors, but also the noise and dins of the disco and the sweat of the
massage parlour. (Ryan 1997:25).
Therefore, this experience may be represented by diverse behaviors,
because social contexts are pluralistic in nature, offering tourists
with freedom of choice: many opportunities for expressing different
behaviors. For example, coresearchers 1 and 6 would like to have
more ``independent'' activities on the ``dependent'' package tour of
China, such as going on their own to the local bakeries, shops, and
restaurants. On the other hand, elderly people, such as coresearch-
ers 4 and 7, would visit local galleries, teahouses, open markets, and
schools with the tour group at a leisurely pace. Both can occur,
albeit at different times, and there seems little in common between
the two behaviors. One contains the potential for aggression, and
the other is a re-enactment of a more genteel past. However, both
sets of behaviors arise from a need for socialization with the locals
to have an ``authentic'' experience. Evidently, the tourists' needs
are few, while their expression of the needs are many (Ryan 1997).
It is the freedom of choice that confuses, and leads to a cognitive
bias excluding other strata of tourism experience that can also be
``authentic''. The neglect of freedom of choice and cognitive bias
probably is an important cause for some mistaken notions regarding
authenticity.
According to Selwyn (1996), there is an unresolved problem in
research: the nature of tourism authenticity. On the one hand,
there is MacCannell's (1973) assertion that tourists search for a
sense of authenticity to reclaim that which has been lost by an iso-
lating and fracturing postmodern life. Cohen (1989) develops this
sense in his claim that, because ``educated drifters'' share senses of
alienation, they are drawn to the authentic. Both senses, however,
represent the same mistaken notion that authenticity is the luxury
of the ``elite'' tourists' constant feeling of alienation from ``self'' and
YIPING LI 875
dream about the traditional, primitive, and exotic life styles of
``other''. Even if the traditional is no longer so, changing with the
penetration of tourism, there still needs to be ``staged authenticity''
that provides ``pseudo-events'' (MacCannell 1973) representing the
exotic ``other''. The ``other'' still needs to present a self-image of
being ``primitive'' to explorer-type of tourists (Cohen 1989).
However, considering the cognitive factors that cause freedom of
choice and cognitive bias, one would question whether tourism auth-
enticity could also be non-traditional, ``civilized'', and constantly
changing.
Freedom arises out of limitation (Seamon 1979). A person may
want to get out of ``the tourist trap'' in order to have the ``authentic
experience'' wished for. However, she/he may also have to depend
on the tourism economy to achieve the wants:
Without the tourist infrastructure, I wouldn't be able to nd my
way. It's the language barrier, culture complexity, and short time.
But I need some space away from the group. By the end of the day
I would walk out of the hotel to see the city by myself. When I
started to walk back yesterday, I could see a policeman coming
home taking off his belt. I could see a soldier coming home taking
off his hat. I could see a shop assistant coming home putting a
jacket over her uniform dress. I felt that I was where the people
lived, which was nice.
The above is a coresearcher's description of one of his tourist activi-
ties on the ``dependent'' package tour of China. The body subject
(his intentional bodily force for exploring the destination indepen-
dently) and the cognition (the realization of potential difculties in
using the force) are both present in this experience. He wanted to
be independent, yet was not strong enough to deal with the
``language barrier, culture complexity, and short time'' on his own.
In the end, he had to revert back to the regular route: taking a
package tour, and making the tourism infrastructure for his individ-
ual use.
The above example also suggests that cognition or cognitive fac-
tors in the experience should be balanced with the general oper-
ational routines of the tourism economy in order to achieve
satisfaction in travel. Cognition in most general terms is a true
state of understanding of a phenomenon (Johnston, Gregory and
Smith 1988). In a more specic term, it is an innovative force by
which one can do other than he/she had in the past, for example, a
tourist can imagine his/her life being different and then work to
make that image a reality (Seamon 1979). However, thinking about
doing differently does not necessarily lead to a different action.
Cognition may lead a tourist to imagine an ``authentic'' experience.
The same cognitive factor may also help the tourist understand
that, in reality, her/his image of an ``authentic experience'' is hard
to achieve, as reected by the above example. Therefore, a tourist's
cognition has to be balanced with the regular operational routine of
the tourism economy in order to achieve satisfaction in this experi-
ence. A means of weighing the operational routine of the industry
GEOGRAPHICAL CONSCIOUSNESS 876
against one's cognitive factors would also help describe a better
degree of balance between tourists' dream of authenticityan exo-
tic, remote, and primitive destinationand its rights of develop-
ment and change with the penetration of tourism economy.
Regarding this balance, one coresearcher gave some insightful
advice:
Otherwise we take the traditional China. We put a plastic bubble
over it, preserving it perfectly for tourists to look at, but it basi-
cally is not the real China now . . . We should be interested in
something unique, but for it to be truly unique, it is not a product
or a souvenir. It is an authentic human experience. For it to be
genuine, real, authentic human experience, it will change.
Practical Signicance
This study has demonstrated that tourism experience is inti-
mately joined with a tourist's cognition such as geographical con-
sciousness. Cognition is not only signicant for achieving
satisfaction in this experience, but also for establishing a bond
between ``self'' (tourists) and ``other'' (hosts), which may contribute
to a tourist's personal growth and development. Therefore, it should
be understood that tourism experience is not merely a commercial
activity. It is also an ideological framing of history, nature, and tra-
dition (MacCannell 1993), constituting experiential learning.
Therefore, it should also be understood that this learning takes
place in geographical consciousness. Those two understandings have
practical signicance for tourism development.
First, geographical consciousness manifests in tourism experience
as the spatial and temporal bond of personplace between tourists
and destinations. It is represented by the fact that the operational
routine of the industry, the social reality of the destinations, and
the cognition of the tourist all inuence the experience. Thus, an
authentic experience does not necessarily mean the search for an
exotic, remote, and primitive ``Shangri-La'', but perhaps also a
desire for experiencing the vibrant life of the destination, including
development and change. This is (or should be) appreciated by the
tourism industry for resolving the tension between tradition and
modernisation of a destination.
Second, this study has shown that tourism experience represents
a discourse of learning that knowledge can be gathered through
understanding and collecting differences of ``other''. Those differ-
ences are novelty and strangeness experienced by a tourist in the
quest for ways of satisfying a wide range of personal needs, from
pleasure to the search for meaning (Cohen 1979). The industry
needs to appreciate that tourism contains a cultural capital that can
be collected, and possesses a potential of educating the tourists
while entertaining them. As tourists have to rely on the tourism
economy to collect the cultural capital, the industry should encou-
rage, or may even manipulate the process, through its representa-
tives such as travel agents and tour guides, to increase accessibility
YIPING LI 877
to the capital. Therefore, the industry should situate tourism in
other realms, such as adult education, recommending more alterna-
tives such as educational tours, for the benet of both tourists and
the industry itself.
Third, from the coresearchers' shared experiences, it becomes
quite evident that the educational dimension of tourism may lead
them, at different points, to move along a continuum toward the
awareness of a personal bond with destinations. Therefore, an ex-
perience transition model (Figure 1) may be proposed. This model
suggests that learning in tourism experience begin with the antici-
pation and planning of a particular trip. After the trip to the desti-
nation the tourist starts her/his on-site experiences such as
sightseeing, dining, or buying souvenirs. Then the tourist returns
home, where her/his impressions of the experience are recollected
and evaluated. This process is inuenced, and may be manipulated,
by the industry, because it is this entity that facilitates the experi-
Figure 1. Tourism Experience Transition Model
GEOGRAPHICAL CONSCIOUSNESS 878
ence. In the meantime, the tourist's judgements of the valuable
aspects of the past experiences are ltered through the recollection
and evaluation process. Those valuable aspects are parts of the past
experiences that may be repeated in future travels. Therefore, this
whole process of travel experienceanticipating and planning, tra-
vel to destination, on-site experience, travel back, and recollection
and evaluationmay move towards two directions. One may be
positive and the other negative toward tourism development
depending on the performance of the industry that facilitates the
experience. For example, if the industry is merely trying to attract
a large market for economic benets, neglecting the potential en-
vironmental degradation caused by tourism, it may lead this process
toward the negative direction. On the other hand, if the industry is
truly concerned about the overall well being of its business, and
attempts to engender that concern in tourists through appropriate
policy and planning, it may lead this process to move toward the
positive direction. In whatever directions they move, however, tour-
ists' judgements, based on the recollection and evaluation of past
experiences, would provide the starting point for a new tourism ex-
perience.
Therefore, the tourism experience transition model, (Figure 1)
has practical signicance for business sectors to have a thorough
understanding of the whole spectrum of the experience in this post-
modern society whose conditions are leading people away from tra-
ditional values to new or alternative ones, particularly to a changed
postmodern condition of knowledge (Kalinowski and Weiler 1992;
Lyotard 1984). One important characteristic of the postmodern con-
dition is valuing knowledge in terms of its ``performativity'', which
emphasizes the optimizing of efcient performance by using the
knowledge. This valuing of it and of its performativity suggests that
there should be a co-implication of contemporary discourses of indi-
vidualistic learner-centeredness and trends towards the marketiza-
tion of learning opportunities (Usher, Bryant and Johnston 1997).
Therefore, one would argue, from sociocultural and psychological
points of view, that learning is probably characteristic of all people
involved in the tourism system, including tourists, operational per-
sonnel, and the locals. The industry needs to have a holistic view of
the tourism system when evaluating, estimating, and determining
tourists' wants and needs in order to develop new tour programs.
This way would help work out appropriate products both for tour-
ists' expectations of satisfactory experiences and for those, such as
travel agents and tour guides, who facilitate them.&
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Submitted 28 January 1999. Resubmitted 10 May 1999. Resubmitted 14 July 1999. Accepted
22 July 1999. Refereed anonymously. Coordinating Editor: Honggen Xiao
YIPING LI 883