Social networking sites and the web 2.0 are growing massively. Several projects, from Facebook to MySpace are drawing more and more people in. I just recently signed up for facebook myself, to become a member of a network that was set up in there as an organzing tool for a real life network at Uni. But will we really use it, I am not sure. Despite their popularity no one really seem to be quite sure yet, whether facebook and myspace will transform social organization or honestly are just a huge waste of time.
This is totally different, from my perspective, in a specific set of servises, in which the rationale for networking is to allow the members to benefit from mutual hospitality across a web-based global community. It is highly intresting to assess Web 2.0 relevance to travel.
Signing up in Couch-Surfing or Hospitality Club, the two main providers in this field will avail you with 1000s of open invitations to stay as people’s guests, free of charge, on a couch or sofa, in a guest room or at least camp in the garden. I became acquainted with the systems last year and used it extensively recently on a trip through California. I have to say, I am a fan!
I met very friendly people in San Franzisko, Santa Barbara and in LA, they not only took me in but also showed me around, offering their insights into the local restaurant szene and bars as much as their lives.
Looking at it with a bit more perspective it quickly becomes obvious how intresting the issues is for travel and tourism studies. Hospitality Club (HC) is the older version, dating back to 2000 and has by now over 300.000 members in all continenets. Couch-Surfing (CS) started bit later, but quickly grew to over 250.000 today. These numbers don’t seem significant when compared to general tourism statistics. Yet there groth rates are amazing and there is not an end in sight. How does it function?
I entered HC first, last summer and then tried in on a short trip to Bratislava. I contacted a few people as offered in the list and got feedback from one member. She said her housemate wouldn't want to allow her to have people stay this time, but she was willing to show me around in Bratislava. Happily I accepted and we met and she showed me around, giving me insights into the town and her take on the cities situation that I would have missed without HC.
What makes the voluntary exchange intresting to tourism studies is the challenge is poses to the hospitality industry. As one user puts it: “"Who wants to sit in a lonely hotel?" Staying in annoynous and expensive housing is not necessarily convinient. Moreover it seems that despite calls for "post-tourism" and its claim that all tourists today relate with some ironic distance to the world of travel, HC and CS show that people still invest heavily into the idea of authentic travel experience and are actively looking for alternatives to commodified tourist scapes.
Moreover the extensive community and networking functions that the web provided are themselves restructuring the social realities of travel. Communities from in these sites are not remaining virutal, but realized themselves in festivals and camping events, organized in several places and of different geographical scope. A CS member from Leeds recently invited me to a Leeds members meeting in Hydepark in my neighborhood. And so through the help of a global networking page I might end up making friends just blocks away from my house.
Research should be undertaken into these sites and their communities as they are actively transforming the way travel works. I will keep my eyes open and hope that I see you soon on HC and CS.
Showing posts with label N.E.T.. Show all posts
Showing posts with label N.E.T.. Show all posts
Thursday, 26 July 2007
Wednesday, 23 May 2007
"'Voluntourism' becomes popular"
and more commerically exploited. Newpaper articles and online reports about voluntourism and voluntourists have surely increased in recent months.
A short query shows this. Publications like desertnews conclude in April this year conclude "that consumers are becoming more interested in vacations with a voluntarism aspect".
Also the LA Times observes that "Whatever the reason, more tourists — such as college students on spring break, jet-setting luxury travelers and retiring baby boomers — are using their vacations to volunteer". Whatever the reason....well, we want to know.
The recent surge in interest in voluntourism goes back to the Tsunami Catasrophy in Thailand in Winter 2004 that triggered the involvement of tourists into relief efforts. What initially was a spontaneaus reaction of travelers and tourists to help in a situation of need soon transformed into a new form of organized travel. The NGO Tsunami Volunteer Centre (TVC) in Thailand provides an example of this process.
Even before the hype that the theme of voluntourism experienced, academic research has approached voluntourism. After serveral empirical studies, Stephen Wearing wrote a book about the voluntourism in 2001 in which he assumed that voluntourists are developing their selves in their practise. A little later Sally Brown and Xinran Letho discussed that there we two different tendencies in the term Voluntourism, one sifginifing the fact that volunteer work often involved travel, the other that travel sometimes, and as they argued increasingly, involved a bit of volunteer work. (Brown and Letho 2005) This second tendency can also be described as a commericalization of the voluntourism. Brown and Letho are entirely optimistic about this new development. They imagine the implementation of elements of volunteering into mainstream tourism will "create authentic cultural experiences unlike any other in the industry" while "enabling every traveller to become an embassador of peace". But they open little room for the reflection of historical continuity of international charity practises in western culture. Methodologically their focus on the travellers involved in the practises ignores the reflection of the larger political economy in which tourism is taking and creating place. The commercialaztion of an individual desire to do good might provide a satisfying experience for both the traveller and the industry. Yet the local impact, the reaction of local participants in the exchange remains unreflected. Importantly than in the study of Voluntourism should focus on the bio-political production of subjectivities, the systems of assistance and dependence that evolve and how "meaningful" international travel exists in both a historical and contemporary international system of post- and neo-colonial powerstructures. A more critical approach to Voluntourism is indeed needed.
A short query shows this. Publications like desertnews conclude in April this year conclude "that consumers are becoming more interested in vacations with a voluntarism aspect".
Also the LA Times observes that "Whatever the reason, more tourists — such as college students on spring break, jet-setting luxury travelers and retiring baby boomers — are using their vacations to volunteer". Whatever the reason....well, we want to know.
The recent surge in interest in voluntourism goes back to the Tsunami Catasrophy in Thailand in Winter 2004 that triggered the involvement of tourists into relief efforts. What initially was a spontaneaus reaction of travelers and tourists to help in a situation of need soon transformed into a new form of organized travel. The NGO Tsunami Volunteer Centre (TVC) in Thailand provides an example of this process.
Even before the hype that the theme of voluntourism experienced, academic research has approached voluntourism. After serveral empirical studies, Stephen Wearing wrote a book about the voluntourism in 2001 in which he assumed that voluntourists are developing their selves in their practise. A little later Sally Brown and Xinran Letho discussed that there we two different tendencies in the term Voluntourism, one sifginifing the fact that volunteer work often involved travel, the other that travel sometimes, and as they argued increasingly, involved a bit of volunteer work. (Brown and Letho 2005) This second tendency can also be described as a commericalization of the voluntourism. Brown and Letho are entirely optimistic about this new development. They imagine the implementation of elements of volunteering into mainstream tourism will "create authentic cultural experiences unlike any other in the industry" while "enabling every traveller to become an embassador of peace". But they open little room for the reflection of historical continuity of international charity practises in western culture. Methodologically their focus on the travellers involved in the practises ignores the reflection of the larger political economy in which tourism is taking and creating place. The commercialaztion of an individual desire to do good might provide a satisfying experience for both the traveller and the industry. Yet the local impact, the reaction of local participants in the exchange remains unreflected. Importantly than in the study of Voluntourism should focus on the bio-political production of subjectivities, the systems of assistance and dependence that evolve and how "meaningful" international travel exists in both a historical and contemporary international system of post- and neo-colonial powerstructures. A more critical approach to Voluntourism is indeed needed.
Informal Economies
We focus on aspects of the exchange taking place in tourism outside the frameworks of formalized regularization, for example public and private law.
Mission Statement
Issues of global distribution, social justice and environmental concern increasingly surround international tourism and travel. Not only are such issues defining new forms of tourism, they are also shaping far more fluid patterns of production and consumption. Processes of regulation, rationalisation and re-structuring are being re-cast in line with the highly complex and dynamic formation of informal structures, communicative practices, junctures and ruptures in a touristic world that escapes modernist notions of political economy. Destinations are being defined beyond the material notions of the nation-state, traditional mobilities are being challenged, motivations tested, and new forms of exchange are emerging in line with inter-and intra generational ethical thinking, and alternative political approaches to development.
A new weblog, based at the Centre for Tourism and Cultural Change (CTCC) at Leeds Metropolitan University, has been devised to interrogate the ‘new economics of tourism’ (N.E.T) – to transcend the narrow boundaries of contemporary tourism economics. N.E.T is a tool for networking and exchange between scholars and students reflecting on aspects of the new economics of tourism. From the operation of informal economies in tourism, to the alternative economics of exchange in ‘Volun-tourism’; from film and digital media’s post-geographical definition of destinations, to the individual bargaining of loss and gain in the expectation and practice of the journey, and the role of dreamscapes and virtual worlds in the tourist exchange, N.E.T seeks to provide a forum to explore original, alternative and challenging practices of, and approaches to, global tourism in the material, intangible and symbolic sense.
Contributions are invited from an international, multi-disciplinary range of scholars and institutions. N.E.T provides a convenient and illuminating proximity of breaking international news and lasting reflections on the issues addressed and serves as a global networking tool and as a resource for stakeholders in the expanding field of exchange and transformation that characterises global tourism. Proposals to contribute and participate are welcome.
A new weblog, based at the Centre for Tourism and Cultural Change (CTCC) at Leeds Metropolitan University, has been devised to interrogate the ‘new economics of tourism’ (N.E.T) – to transcend the narrow boundaries of contemporary tourism economics. N.E.T is a tool for networking and exchange between scholars and students reflecting on aspects of the new economics of tourism. From the operation of informal economies in tourism, to the alternative economics of exchange in ‘Volun-tourism’; from film and digital media’s post-geographical definition of destinations, to the individual bargaining of loss and gain in the expectation and practice of the journey, and the role of dreamscapes and virtual worlds in the tourist exchange, N.E.T seeks to provide a forum to explore original, alternative and challenging practices of, and approaches to, global tourism in the material, intangible and symbolic sense.
Contributions are invited from an international, multi-disciplinary range of scholars and institutions. N.E.T provides a convenient and illuminating proximity of breaking international news and lasting reflections on the issues addressed and serves as a global networking tool and as a resource for stakeholders in the expanding field of exchange and transformation that characterises global tourism. Proposals to contribute and participate are welcome.
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