Challenging Connectivity During Nature-Based Tourism: (Dis)connection at Banff National Park

Global mobility coupled with digital technologies raises new issues regarding human relations, which can now be continuously maintained even when people are separated by a great distance. By making use of digital photography and their smartphones, tourists now have the opportunity to capture and instantly share intangible memories with their loved ones or the rest of the world. In this context, a new form of tourist practice is emerging: disconnecting from all forms of information and communication technologies (ICT) in order to escape daily life. National parks seem to offer the perfect space for people to get “away from it all”, as the wilderness is becoming increasingly important within the tourism industry precisely because it symbolises a break from the routines of daily life. Here, I explore how tourists’ use of social media includes new strategies to capture the materiality of the wilderness and, in the process, creates new ways of engaging with it. Furthermore, I show how representations of this engagement with nature and “the wilderness” are produced in a very particular way in order to be shared with the rest of the world while still conforming to the imaginary as produced by social media and simultaneously reproducing it. The aim of this contribution is to understand how the ubiquity of ICT produces new ways of experiencing the wilderness. This study relies on an extensive investigation of tourist narratives and performances produced in Banff National Park in Alberta, Canada

Smart tourism destination in smart cities paradigm: a model for Antalya

Smart tourism destination (STD) concept has taken serious attention as a result of the smart city initiatives. Technology connects all organizations, entities, activities, and elements. Tourism is a multidimensional service system covering different actors and organizations. When a tourism destination gets smarter, the tourists’ needs and demands are expected to be fulfilled more efficiently to create a better tourist experience. This paper aims to examine the content of smart tourism destination and its link with smart city addressing a model for Antalya as a candidate for a smart tourism destination.No sponso

‘Alternative Hedonism’:Exploring the Role of Pleasure in Moral Markets

Fair trade’, ‘ethical’ and ‘sustainable’ consumption emerged in response to rising concerns about the destructive effects of hedonic models of consumption that are typical of late capitalist societies. Advocates of these ‘markets for virtue’ sought to supplant the insatiable hedonic impulse with a morally restrained, self-disciplining disposition to consumption. With moral markets currently losing their appeal, we respond to the tendency to view hedonism as an inhibitor of moral market behaviour, and view it instead as a potential enabler. Drawing upon the concept of ‘alternative hedonism’ (Soper, 2007, 2008, 2016, 2017), we illustrate how consumers experience both morality and pleasure concurrently; show how they attempt to reconcile these aspects of the experience; and elucidate the implications of so doing. Using the moral market for ethical tourism as an exemplar of ‘alternative hedonism’, we identify three ‘self-managing strategies’ – moderating, abiding and levelling – that re-structure the moral order of consumption in meaningful ways and with profound outcomes. In the context of anxieties about personal, social and ecological consequences of consumption, we show empirically how self managing strategies reify a less contradictory framing of consumption by tapping into alternative cultural discourses on morality. We discuss the consequences of these strategies, highlighting how they may legitimize and sustain consumption via moral markets despite the reproduction of social inequality and ecological threats