Chapter 5: Journeys of Self-development

‘I hate tourist traps. I would rather be around locals and enjoy a destination as seen by people who actually LIVE there’. This quote from Michael, an American creative tourist who stayed with and took tango lessons from a local artist in Buenos Aires, reflects the anti-touristic rhetoric that is often found in creative tourists’ travel accounts. Those who participate in creative tourism seem to oppose themselves to mainstream cultural tourists who belong to a ‘crowd of sheep just going everywhere’, as stated by a working artist in Whiting and Hannam’s (2014) study (p. 69). This anti-touristic sentiment mirrors a much-debated distinction in the tourism literature, which is the one between the tourist and the traveller. One early description of the Western tourist is provided by Boorstin (1964) who articulates tourists as ‘superficial nitwits’ (Cohen, 1979, p. 19). In a similar fashion, Onfray (2007) assimilates the tourist to someone who is satisfied with superficial experiences, whereas the traveller is said to be eager to grasp the subtleties of the world that she/he visits from the inside. This distinction is not unimportant as the term ‘tourist’ implies a trivial hedonistic pursuit while the ‘traveller’ connotes a certain interest in self-development.