Tourist Studies

The purpose of this study is to delve into the range of ways that acceptable public discourse and reconciliatory language impact Rwandan memorial space and its various stakeholders. The goal is to interrogate the dissonance between the more commonly researched practices of Rwanda genocide tourism industry (the curated and controlled narratives formulated within the national memorial and its satellite sites) and that of the banal, every day, and even disavowed sites (such as unmarked burial and crematorium sites) of genocide that carry an immense amount of meaning within local communities. By looking at national genocide sites, as well as their “forgotten echoes” strewn across the Rwandan countryside, it is clear that multipurpose (and multi-meaning) use of public/private space in Rwanda problematizes simplistic unificatory narratives used by the government and international community.

This study adopted an interpretive approach in understanding the development of the package tour industry in China and the Chinese tourists’ behavioral changes in consuming package tours, via two data sources—in-depth interviews with senior tour guides and tour operators, and content analysis of OP task sheets collected over a span of 30 years’ time. The findings revealed that substantive changes had taken place in all aspects including group structure, destination selection, itinerary, core tourist activities, supporting arrangement, personnel, and peripheral items of the package tours. The result has also shed light on the future trends and the challenges ahead, especially in the post-COVID era. Implications to tour operators and tourism marketers are discussed.

Volunteer tourism is an increasingly popular activity in different parts of the world. The main purpose of this study is to investigate the experiential value of Chinese college students in volunteer tourism. Participant reports were used for qualitative research to explore the experiential value of 57 Chinese students participating in the AIESEC Global Volunteer Program. Research results based on the Interaction Ritual Chains Theory show that “role identification,” “authenticity”, and “interactivity” are the main experiences of interactive rituals. This research distinguishes five dimensions of volunteer tourism experiential value: emotional value, conversational value, cognitive value, esthetic value, and symbolic value.

Within nature-based tourism research, authenticity has received a great deal of attention in relation to existential authenticity and in examining the authenticity of experiences. Yet very little research exists that explores the ways in which tourists perceive wildlife as more or less authentic, as objects in nature-based tourism discourses. This qualitative case study research explores visitors’ perspectives in relation to polar bear tourism in Churchill, Manitoba (in situ) and at the Assiniboine Park Zoo’s ‘Journey to Churchill’ exhibit (ex situ) in Winnipeg, Manitoba. The ‘Journey to Churchill’ exhibit was built with the intention of representing aspects of the landscape, wildlife and town-site found in and around Churchill, Manitoba. These two sites provide a unique opportunity to compare in situ and ex situ nature-based tourism experiences, since the sites have similar elements such as wildlife species, landscape features and other contextual factors (such as environmental issues and cultural influence). The findings from this research suggests that perceived authenticity of the polar bears, more than the experience, contributes to the construction of learning experiences about climate change. We review the work of authenticity in nature-based tourism and suggest a rethinking of the work of authenticity for both educators and operators in nature tourism. This research has important implications for better understanding how visitors construct their perceptions of authenticity of wildlife and the implications for the ways in which wildlife tourism experiences and authenticity narratives are constructed in Anthropocene tourism.