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    Beyond Backpacker Tourism: Mobilities and Experiences
    Beyond Backpacker Tourism: Mobilities and Experiences
    Beyond Backpacker Tourism: Mobilities and Experiences
    Ebook383 pages5 hours

    Beyond Backpacker Tourism: Mobilities and Experiences

    By Kevin Hannam and Anya Diekmann

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    Building on previous work on backpacking, this book takes the analysis of backpacker tourism further by engaging both with new theoretical debates into tourism experiences and mobilities as well as with new empirical phenomena such as the rise of the ‘flashpacker’ and alternative destinations. Chapters include material on flashpacking, the virtualization of backpacker culture, the re-conceptualisation of lifestyle travellers, backpackers as volunteer tourists, as well as backpackers' experiences of hostels, mobilities and their policy implications. It sets a new benchmark for the study of independent travel in the contemporary world.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherChannel View Publications
    Release dateFeb 2, 2010
    ISBN9781845411909
    Beyond Backpacker Tourism: Mobilities and Experiences

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      Book preview

      Beyond Backpacker Tourism - Kevin Hannam

      Preface

      This is the third volume of the on-going research programme on backpacking developed by the Backpacker Research Group (BRG) of the Association for Tourism and Leisure Education (ATLAS). The BRG aims to act as a platform for the discussion and debate between researchers of backpacker travel worldwide. It follows on from the success of the first volume The Global Nomad (Richards & Wilson, 2004) and the second volume Backpacker Tourism (Hannam & Ateljevic, 2007) and seeks to further shape this area of tourism research.

      The idea for this particular book was initiated at a meeting at Himachal Pradesh University, Shimla, India, in March 2008, attended by members of the BRG, including researchers from the UK, Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Poland, Finland, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, the USA and Malaysia. Drafts of some of the chapters contained in this volume were presented at this three-day meeting and these generated continued discussion and updates on the nature, meaning and significance of backpacker tourism. The meeting also enabled feedback to be given to the contributors of this volume and help to develop the concept of the book. Subsequently, other authors who could not attend the meeting also submitted chapters that were refereed and accepted. At the time of writing, new meetings of the BRG are being planned and further information about ATLAS BRG activities can be found on the internet (www.atlas-euro.org).

      Kevin Hannam and Anya Diekmann

      Sunderland and Brussels, July 2009

      Chapter 1

      From Backpacking to Flashpacking: Developments in Backpacker Tourism Research

      KEVIN HANNAM and ANYA DIEKMANN

      Introduction

      The present volume is the third in a series of books that have discussed research into the development of the backpacker tourism market over the last 10 years. From drifters to backpackers, travellers to flashpackers, this introductory chapter will examine the recent research into backpacker tourism. This book, however, is not an exhaustive account of backpacker tourism research, nor is it meant to be. However, we believe that this particular volume adds significantly to the academic literature on backpacker tourism and independent travel more generally by enhancing the theoretical, methodological and geographical research on the subject. As we shall see, some of the key issues are the changing profile of the backpacker market segment, the adoption of new means of travel, the use of new technologies, as well as the creation of new spaces or enclaves.

      While it is not the aim of the present collection to provide a comprehensive literature review of the research to date on backpacker tourism (see Richards & Wilson, 2004), this introduction firstly seeks to outline some of the conceptual developments in backpacker tourism since Backpacker Tourism was published (Hannam & Ateljevic, 2007a). Secondly, this introduction provides a summary of the contributions in the present collection.

      Flashpackers, Backpackers and Travellers

      One of the key developments in backpacker tourism, in recent years, has been in terms of the notion of the 'flashpacker'. The so called flashpacker has emerged as a new and key constituent of contemporary travel and exemplifies the changing demographics in western societies where older age at marriage, older age having children, increased affluence and new technological developments, alongside increased holiday and leisure time have all come together.

      The flashpacker has thus been variously defined as the older twenty to thirty-something backpacker, who travels with an expensive backpack or a trolley-type case, stays in a variety of accommodation depending on location, has greater disposable income, visits more 'off the beaten track' locations, carries a laptop, or at least a 'flashdrive' and a mobile phone, but who engages with the mainstream backpacker culture. Or more simply defined on Travelblogs.com (2009) as, backpacking 'with style' or even, backpacking with 'bucks and toys'. It is also seen as 'doable' with children in tow — with one flashpacker couple recently advertising the birth of their 'flashbaby' while on their travels (Flashpackingwife.com).

      Indeed, Jarvis and Peel (this volume) cite The Future Laboratory, who in 2004 identified 'flashpackers' as older travellers on career breaks who 'can afford to splash out on some of life's luxuries when the going on the road gets tough' (The Future Laboratory, 2004: 13). More recently, this phenomenon has been explicitly highlighted by the backpacker industry, as a major hostel company advertises: 'Looking to treat yourself but, considering the current economic climate, afraid to splash out? With some of the luxury hostels listed you can pamper yourself without breaking the bank...' (Hostelworld.com, 2009).

      By contrast, the work by Cohen (this volume) also reminds us of a different phenomenon — the lifestyle tourist who, like the earlier 'drifter', still spends the majority of his or her life indefinitely 'on the road' engaged in the backpacker culture. For both the flashbacker and the lifestyle traveller, however, it has to be recognised that new technologies have transformed the ways in which they travel and engage with their home-place and their social ties, as Paris (this volume) demonstrates. Nevertheless, it should also be noted that the backpacker tourism market is still dominated by many younger and less affluent tourists who spend most of their time in what have become mainstream and even institutionalised backpacker enclaves in 'traditional' destinations.

      Structure of the Volume

      The present volume, thus, complements the aforementioned two previous books. It adds new theoretical dimensions in terms of a focus on mobilities and experiences and also broadens the scope of the research geographically. Indeed the present volume includes, alongside the traditional backpacker destinations of Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, research in lesser known backpacker destinations, such as Norway, Tanzania and Mongolia. The book also engages present research of how backpacker tourism feeds into other forms of tourism, such as volunteer tourism (Chapter 9) and heritage tourism (Chapter 11).

      Many of the chapters draw upon ethnographic field research methodologies, such as participant observation and in-depth interviews with travellers or a combination of these methods with documentary sources. However, some chapters use quantitative survey methods to identify specific sub-segments and behaviours of travellers (Chapters 3 and 4). While the first five chapters set the broader conceptual framework, the subsequent chapters deliver mainly empirical profiles with a particular focus on experiences in different countries and continents.

      Following this introduction, in Chapter 2, Mark Hampton critically reflects upon his own experiences of being a backpacker himself, as well as researching other backpackers. In so doing, he charts the development of backpacker tourism from the 1980s up to the present with the appearance of 'flashpackers'. In the first section of his chapter, he explores his own experiences of two major trips through Asia as a backpacker and in the second part, he reflects on himself as an academic tourist — who actually gets paid to travel — through the prism of several research trips to South East Asia as a researcher doing fieldwork.

      In Chapter 3, Jarvis and Peel focus explicitly upon the flashpacker phenomena, which they define in terms of older backpackers with higher levels of disposable income, travelling on a career break. In their study, they describe how 'upmarket backpacking' has developed through changing demographics and motivations. Furthermore, they seek to examine the ways in which the flashpacker market segment, with their particular travel behaviour and expenditure patterns, may present a niche opportunity for sustainable tourism development in the Fiji Islands. They conclude that policy makers within host destinations such as Fiji need to recognise the emergent diversity within the general backpacker market segment and to find ways of supporting the local industry in addressing the new demands associated with 'flashpacking'.

      In Chapter 4, Cody Paris approaches the flashpacker phenomena from another perspective. He looks into how backpacker tourism has harnessed recent innovations in communication technology and, in particular, how online social communities have added a virtual component to the diverse mobilities of backpackers. While the physical mobilities of backpackers are still as important to the backpacking experience, new virtual moorings have developed that allow backpackers to be fully integrated in their multiple networks and also to maintain a sustained state of co-presence between their backpacker culture and their home culture. Furthermore, Paris argues that the backpacker ideals of independence, freedom and physical travel are all enhanced by the virtual mobility of backpackers. Based upon data from a self-administered online questionnaire, his chapter explores the various roles that communications technologies play before, during and after backpackers travel.

      In Chapter 5, Scott Cohen develops an alternative argument to the flashpacker thesis in his examination of contemporary 'lifestyle travellers'. He argues that within the backpacker market, there exist a small proportion of individuals for which travel is not a cyclical break or transition to another life stage. Instead, for these individuals, leisure travel can serve as a way of life that they may pursue indefinitely. Drawing upon lifestyle theories, in this chapter he conceptualises these individuals as 'lifestyle travellers', a less pejorative term than 'drifter' (Cohen, 1972) or 'wanderer' (Vogt, 1976).

      The next two chapters highlight the ways in which backpackers utilise important spaces and enclaves in order to create significant experiences. In Chapter 6, O'Regan conceptualises the importance of the backpacker hostel for the framing of backpacker 'performances'. His approach is based on the idea that hostels are historically, discursively, symbolically and materially part of the backpackers lived 'socio-spatial practices'. He examines hostels as a key symbol of backpacker travel itself, where individuals perform and interact, create narratives and build an identity. The 'backpacker hostel' has thus become central to the reproduction and development of backpacking, linking multiple spaces and times together.

      James Johnson broadens this analysis in Chapter 7 to include the spaces of travel itself, building upon ideas of mobilities in backpacking research. He focuses on backpackers travelling 'off the beaten track' around central and eastern Europe. He investigates, in particular, the backpacker spaces on train journeys and explores the tactics of backpackers to create and maintain privacy on public trains. Through ethnographic 'thick description', Johnson also notes the backpackers' bodily responses to the feel, speed and conditions on board trains. He concludes that like the space of a backpacker enclave, travel space is also 'dynamic' and there are considerable overlaps in experiencing moments of travel and of dwelling. Using the train to sleep off a hangover or to meet new travel partners provide just two among many examples of how moments of moorings and mobilities inform one another.

      Similarly, 'off the beaten track' Claudia Bell in Chapter 8 examines budget backpackers visiting Mongolia. Like Johnson, she also focuses upon embodied experiences and corporeal movement, including the physical sensuous responses that tourists must adapt to as they travel. Indeed, based on her own ethnographic travel experiences, travel writing as well as travel blogs, Bell highlights the limits of the backpackers' 'comfort zones' in a country like Mongolia, where only very limited tourism development has taken place.

      The sexuality of backpackers has largely been ignored in the research until now. Hence, in Chapter 9, Linda Myers explores the motivations for, and personal development through, travel for lesbian backpackers in New Zealand. From her in-depth interviews, two themes emerged from these women's travel experiences in New Zealand, namely, the need to escape the heterosexual world and its social constraints, on the one hand, and the importance of distinct lesbian spaces, on the other hand. She argues that New Zealand was chosen as a destination by the interviewees because it has specific provision for gay women in the form of accommodation and tours, it was a location that offered freedom, peace and safety and it was perceived as being gay friendly.

      In Chapter 10, Kath Laythorpe examines how backpackers engage with volunteer tourism — a growing phenomena in the 21st century. This research analyses the motivations, expectations and experiences of considerable numbers of backpacker-volunteers travelling in Tanzania. Through interviews and participant observation, Laythorpe reflects on the advantages the backpacker-volunteers gain from their experiences. She concludes that the opportunity to combine both backpacking and voluntary work in these destinations is becoming increasingly common. Volunteer tourism offers the younger backpacker an institutionalised experience that can be contrasted with the more flexible and less constrained backpacking travel. The volunteer accommodation often provides a suitable enclavic space from which to explore and experience the culture of the area in a way that is often more intense than that of the average backpacker, but with the added safety net of a travel organisation providing reassurance and security.

      Chapter 11 by Gareth Butler on Norway is the last chapter that looks at backpackers' experiences. Norway is perhaps an unusual setting in which to study backpackers, however, because of the high costs of travel in Norway, many tourists utilise the backpacker infrastructure such as hostels. Nevertheless, Butler analyses backpackers in Norway in terms of their personal heritage ties, their experiences of the vast, wild Norwegian landscape and their use of Norway as a 'platform' for exploring the rest of Scandinavia.

      The next two chapters take a different perspective on the backpacker travel industry by focusing upon the supply management side rather than on the experiences of the backpackers per se. In Chapter 12, Peter Welk argues that the mainstreaming of backpackers and the mainstreaming of backpacker businesses go hand in hand. For a long time, the management of businesses in the backpacker industry was dominated by lifestyle entrepreneurs, who had been backpacking themselves in the past and saw an opportunity to combine their passion for the traveller scene with making a living. More recently, Welk argues, this pattern has been changing rapidly with many managers of backpacker businesses now 'dropping down' from the corporate world and introducing branding into the previously somewhat anarchistic backpacker business community. He shows how backpacker destinations can be created by corporates and how the original backpacker culture may be replaced by purposeful planning, blurring the distinctions between conventional tourism and backpacker travel. Welk argues that such backpacker destinations are increasingly commercially promoted, as is illustrated in his case study of the Town of 1770 in Australia.

      Chapter 13 by Robyn Bushell and Kay Anderson looks again at the backpacker/flashpacker tourism industry in Sydney, Australia, focusing on the increasingly complex definitional and management challenges. Following the authors of the other chapters in this book, they highlight the changing diverse profile of backpackers. They examine Australia's policies of providing travellers with a temporary work visa, who then may reside in one place for several months. As a consequence, residential and backpacker tourist experiences become entangled, leading to some significant cultural clashes as the former regard the latter with some disdain.

      Chris Rogerson closes the volume in Chapter 14 with an analysis of the strategic planning of backpacker tourism for an emerging destination in the context of the global backpacker tourism market. Only recently has South Africa recognised the strategic significance to promote this kind of budget tourism in the country. Rogerson highlights the development of backpacker tourism policies, the growth and structure as well as organisation of the emerging backpacker industry, including the appearance of planning initiatives at national and sub-national levels of government through surveys with backpackers and interviews with key stakeholders.

      Conclusion

      Theoretically, many of the chapters in this volume have engaged with Hannam and Atelvejic's (2007b) call for an engagement with the new mobilities paradigm to provide analyses of backpacker tourist's experiences. With a broad range of case studies and geographical distribution, many chapters demonstrate comparable developments in the backpacker tourism market segment in recent years. With the advent of the contemporary flashpacker, the backpacker industry has continued to evolve both commercially and institutionally. Yet, as some chapters show, there remains a tendency for some backpackers to go beyond and to seek remote places for self-discovery and physical challenges. Moreover, these chapters also demonstrate the ways in which backpackers continue to engage with other forms of tourism.

      Chapter 2

      Not Such a Rough or Lonely Planet? Backpacker Tourism: An Academic Journey

      MARK P. HAMPTON

      Introduction

      Much of the literature on backpackers is written from the perspective of the outsider, the researcher, the university-based academic working in the field who immerse themselves in the world of the backpacker. Some work is broadly positivist, but there is an increasing interest in using ethnographic-type approaches to understanding backpacker tourism. Some academic writers have noted, in passing, their own experiences as backpackers, but as with much tourism research, this tends to be 'one-shot' type fieldwork, case study-based, and although interesting and gives useful insights, has some limitations. This chapter is an attempt to interweave my own personal narrative as a former backpacker with the way in which the phenomenon, and its study, has continued to evolve over recent years; thus it takes the form of an explicitly reflective academic journey. In this, it has some similarities to autoethnography, where the writer metaphorically steps into the text. However, I am in good company as Hutnyk (2008) noted recently in his blog:

      The diary, a memoir, notebooks, letters from the field — the ephemeral residue of the research process of anthropology has increasingly attracted attention, become raw data for cultivation, sifting the soil.

      This chapter is structured in four parts in a broad movement over time covering the last 20 or so years in approximately chronological order. The first part explores my own experiences of two major trips to Asia as a backpacker. The second part discusses the academic tourist through the prism of several research trips to South-East Asia as a researcher doing fieldwork. The third section explores what might be called way markers on the journey, that is, I discuss some emerging issues as backpacker tourism (and perhaps its nature) changes over time; and the final part concludes the chapter with some further reflections on the possible journey ahead, and makes some suggestions for further research. Travelling, journeys, mobilities, personal stories and narrative, both grand and immediate: these are the metaphors that run through this chapter.

      With the 'Freaks' in India

      It is March 1984. With an entire year free before going to university, my 19-year-old self was setting off to travel alone around India and Nepal on a two-month trip. I set off with an old fashioned, steel-framed and rather heavy, green rucksack. At that time, the cheapest flight from London to New Delhi (apart from Aeroflot and I had heard some pretty hair-raising stories about them) was with Ariana Afghan Airways and cost £290 (around $600). In comparison, British Airways were then selling direct flights to India for around £500. I bought the tickets with some trepidation from a 'bucket shop', which is a deep discount travel agency based in London, but they arrived in good time in a thin white envelope. This was before the terms 'gap year' or 'backpacker' were at all commonplace. In fact, within India, the independent travellers were often nicknamed 'freaks' by the locals, especially the aging hippies, still then very much in evidence on the beaches of Goa and around the guest houses of Kathmandu (Iyer, 1988). They were, in a sense, the forerunners of the modern backpackers, and broadly conformed to what Cohen (1973) called the 'drifters', the remnants of the overland travellers of the late 1960s and 1970s who had pioneered (extremely) low-cost travel to, and around, Asia. Their presence had helped develop new destinations, such as Goa, Kathmandu and Kuta beach, Bali, allowing local entrepreneurs to start opening small-scale accommodation and eating places to meet this growing demand.

      The flight to India was an indirect route and took over 20 hours. The first leg was in an old Ilyushin Il-62 aircraft belonging to Czechoslovakian Airlines (a former troop carrier by the look of it) to Prague, where we boarded the somewhat battered-looking DC-10 of Ariana Afghan, then on to snowy Moscow, then Tashkent, Kabul (under Russian occupation at the time with heavily armed soldiers with Kalashnikovs, MiG fighters and bulky Antonov troop transport planes), finally arriving in the dust, heat and smells of Delhi. Once there, I mostly travelled around by rail, including a wonderful steam train journey through Rajasthan, then by coastal steamer from Bombay (now Mumbai) to Goa, and finally by bus, winding up through the Himalayas to Kathmandu.

      Even though I'd read up about India beforehand, at that time Lonely Planet was little known and I had not come across their seminal India Survival Kit. In fact, it was another traveller who highly recommended it, and so I bought my own Indian-printed copy that had pages censored with text blacked out that referred to sensitive issues such as the conflict with Pakistan and the Kashmir problem.

      Like many young travellers, I religiously kept a diary of my trip, in this case written in a couple of cheap exercise books bought from my local Woolworths department store. At present, although you still see backpackers with bent heads concentrating on writing their stories in cheap diaries in traveller cafes in Ho Chi Minh city or elsewhere, you are as likely to see them rapidly typing on a laptop with a wi-fi link to a social networking site, or texting their friends or families back home with the latest news of their adventures. However, below I narrate my own backpacker travel 'stories' or 'reflective ethnography' from these early diaries.

      Travel stories: I

      We waited about an hour for the bus & when it finally arrived — wow.

      It was a stretched VW type minibus - & crammed in it were at least 25 people! We were squeezed into the boot section & spent the ½ hour ride bent double over baskets of fish, banging our heads on the roof at every bump! What a journey! (India Diary 3, 1984)

      Backpacking in Asia: 'I'm not a Tourist, I'm a Traveller'

      We now fast-forward five years. It is now 1989 and next in the chronology after my first degree at university and some time spent working in various jobs, I took the opportunity to return to Asia before my PhD started. This trip through South-East Asia was for over four months, spanning the end of 1989 and the start of 1990. This time I travelled with my school friend Paul. Once again, air tickets were booked through a London 'bucket shop', flying to Asia with another airline, this time it was Biman Bangladesh for the trip London-Bangkok via Dhaka. Again, the journey from Europe was slow and indirect. However, this time, due to a change of airline timetable, we needed to spend two days in Dhaka before the final leg to Bangkok. Biman Bangladesh contacted us before we left England and asked if we wanted to change our flights given the unexpected stopover in Dhaka. If not, they would put us up in a modest hotel in the city. However, we were only too happy to have a fully-paid stay in the Bangladeshi capital en-route to Thailand.

      On the flight in another elderly DC-10, amid the majority of Bangladeshi passengers, there were about a dozen Europeans and around half of us were backpackers heading for Thailand, comprising people mostly in our 20s and early 30s and a roughly equal mix of men and women. However, the other Europeans turned out to be a very different type of tourist indeed. They were all men, late middle-aged, and it became clear that they were in fact sex tourists (Opperman, 1999; Ryan & Hall, 2001; White, 2008). Some were dressed in tracksuits, and one even had a shirt open to the chest showing a gold medallion, and they were all heading for the infamous red light areas of Bangkok and Pattaya using the cheapest airline possible. Unfortunately for them, they had not been contacted by the airline about the extra two days enforced Dhaka stopover albeit with a free hotel and meals included. Their reaction was interesting to say the least. This group of British men just sat in the hotel smoking cigarettes and drinking glasses of cold Seven-Up and Coke and bemoaning the fact that Bangladesh was a Muslim country and that alcohol was impossible to get at this hotel. For the rest of us, we could not wait to dump our rucksacks at the hotel and get out exploring the city, first by pedal rickshaw, and later by chartering a small skiff on the river.

      Once in South-East Asia, we travelled overland through southern Thailand, Penang (Malaysia) down through Sumatra, Singapore, back via Malaysia and then on to northern Thailand (Sukathoi, Chang Mai and the North-East river border with Laos). Later, I would think about this route and discuss it with my colleague, Amran Hamzah, as comprising part of the 'classic' early 1990s backpacker route (Hampton & Hamzah, 2008). Unlike my India trip five years earlier, this time I had bought the Lonely Planet guidebook — South-East Asia on a Shoestring ? the so-called 'yellow bible' for backpackers. Lonely Planet by then was becoming very well-known as the alternative and trendy travel guide that we backpackers needed to have with us. As before, I kept a travel diary in several exercise books. These two excerpts give a flavour:

      Travel Stories II

      ... as I've been trying to scribble these scattered thoughts, my attention keeps being distracted by the inevitable hello meester or where you from? Here, as in many cafes, urchins come up & pester you about a shoeshine. Difficult with sandals! (SE Asia '89–90, Diary 2)

      Travel Stories III

      Travel's fun, there's no question, but I hope it doesn't get too serious!

      If, as I wonder, there's a sub-culture developing, I hope the better qualities like helping others out with info. etc & the good things of the travel mind-set stay uppermost. Otherwise it'll be no different to the tourists (YUK), we all despise & laugh at. Same, same but different — maybe? (SE Asia '89–90, Diary 2)

      'You get Paid to Go There?' Academic Tourism

      By the mid-1990s I was established in my first lecturing post at a British university and I found that my own interest in backpackers was itself changing. Although I still enjoyed visiting South-East Asia as a backpacker myself whenever I could save up the money to return, I found that I had a growing professional interest in starting to think about what impact backpackers might be having in less developed countries (LDCs). As I began what was to become later formalised in my academic writings as a 'literature review', I was struck by how little academic research existed at that point. What little literature I could find made a rather a short list comprising the seminal work of Cohen (1973, 1982a), Loker-Murphy and Pearce (1995), Pearce (1990), Riley (1988) and Rodenburg (1980). There was clearly much work still to do in understanding the backpacker phenomenon. My interest grew in attempting to discover more about backpackers in the field, and so I applied for some funding from my university to pilot backpacker research. This turned out to be the first of what would eventually become a series of journeys to South-East Asia as

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