Tourism Authenticity: A Necessary Shift in the Experience Economy - Essay Sample

Introduction

Authenticity has, over time, captured the attention of the tourism industry in the experiences of tourists. The concept of tourism authenticity has evolved into a complex, unquantifiable and almost not possible to be defined as well as managed. The shift from service and product distribution to customer experiences has resulted in significant changes in the tourism and leisure industry. In the modern world, the transformation is referred to as the experience economy where consumers are more interested with memorable and unique experiences. The organizations are therefore forced to adapt to the changes in the tourism and leisure industry to be able to deliver activities that will create memorable experiences to their customers. The purpose of this text is to discuss the authenticity within the leisure experience critically.

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According to MacCannel (1989), pursuance for authenticity plays a fundamental role in motivating tourists. The ability of organizations to create a sense of connection and commitment to their consumers creates a memorable experience which in turn results in repeat custom. According to Pine and Gilmore (1998), the use of services to create a stage by an organization is what lead to the occurrence of memorable events which in turn builds a customer experience (Harper, 1986). The core value of every company revolves around better management of customer experiences which plays a vital role in the success of the company. However, developing and managing customer experience is a challenge to organizations due to its subjective nature. It is, therefore, necessary for companies to have a deep understanding of the organization perspective as well as the consumer market (Zhu, 2012).

Authenticity in tourism is used equivocally, and it describes a local subject or markets a target. Authenticity is frequently used to describe things like products, language, artwork, rituals, festivals as well as architecture, among other things that are produced and made according to tradition or custom. According to Wang (1999), authenticity can be classified as constructive, existential or objective. Wang argues that actual authenticity relates to originals and is associated with the process of objectively verifying the originality of products under consumption. The authentic tourist experience is created as a result of the use of original and real products that are verifiable by specialists. Authenticity insinuates that the originality of the events and cultural objects is genuine, false, real or fake. In tourism, the application of authenticity concerns the features of the traditional products which relates to objective authenticity (Knutson, 2001). The attribute of authenticity requires the product to be natural in terms of the production process and local use. Therefore authenticity can only be found in the pre-modern way of life, and this is what motivates tourists to search for the ancient culture which is not found in their home nations.

Objective authenticity is also used in tourism, sight and marker. MacCannel provides a perspective on the interrelation between a tourist, marker and view. In his discussion of the tourists' semiotics, he defines marker as information concerning an absolute sight. Therefore, the tourists use semiotics to look for signifiers that are made known to them by media. Wang (1999) discussed authentic objectivism with the help of MacCannel and Boorstin work. The perspective of MacCannel differs from that of Boorstin in terms of authenticity, where Boorstin talks about the tourists who consumed inauthentic cultural products. Wang also uses the concepts of Tom Selwyn, which include "hot" and "cool" authenticity. The idea of Selwyn hot authenticity relates to the authentic Self of Brown. The "authentic Self" results from the shift from the "authentic other" in the search for the holiday experiences. Brown (1996) viewed the authentic Self as a search for a good time and memorable experiences. Cool authenticity relates to the tourist quest for information to have a better understanding of a specific consumption. On the other hand, hot authenticity is more applicable to the analysis of existential authenticity.

According to Sharpley, tourism authenticity has two different meanings. The first definition describes tourism authenticity as the physical quality of a particular thing such as an artefact, building or metal, which relates to cultural foundations that are pre-modern (Glover, 2006). The second definition describes tourism authenticity as a socially and intangible constructed perception of cultures and societies destinations that involves various methods of travel and tourism experience. However, Wang argued that it is not good to limit tourism authenticity to originals which led to further development of constructive authenticity. Constructive authenticity discussed by Wang relates to the subjective projection of the idea of gazed objects by the tourists (Kaufmann et al., 2009). It is constructed socially under the relativistic and pluralistic framework. Various authorized agencies, as well as tourists, create different types of authenticities of the gazed targets from their political, social and experiential worlds. Therefore, what is genuine is described as subjective, symbolic or relative. Unlike objective authenticity that is relevant to objectivism, constructive authenticity is pertinent to subjectivism.

Constructive authenticity emphasizes the involvement of individuals such as tourists among others in the social construction, which in turn results in different types of authenticities (Beale, 2011). Therefore, tourists as purchasers of cultural attractions negotiate the significance of the presented objects. Sharpley use of the word authentic is as a strategy for marketing holidays, especially in Africa and Asia. Sharpley argued that authentic as a marketing tool intends to capture the expectations of tourists rather than the real thing existing in the cultural attractions (Severt, Tesone and Murrmann, 2006). This is the point at which the suppliers such as the public agencies, attraction managers as well as tour operators get involved in the social production of genuine cultural products. Wang argues that cultures are relational and dynamic, which makes them be understood only in a socio-cultural setting. He emphasizes that customs are generally invented socially, which in turn results to lack of static and an absolute origin. He argues that tourism authenticity is in the tourists' eyes that have the relativistic and pluralistic paradigms. In constructive authenticity, the tourists play a significant role in determining their views. In his discussion, Wang argues that authenticity is protruded through the beliefs, preferences, western consciousness, as well as the expectations of the tourists. Western-typed authenticity and subjectivist authenticity contradicts each other in terms of tradition invention power that has the highest level of relevancy in the tourism industry. Both the objective authenticity, which relates to originality and constructive authenticity, which depends on the view of tourists fails to explain the tourism phenomenon adequately. Lack of sufficient explanatory power to better capture the wonder of tourism led to the development of existential authenticity.

Wang described existential authenticity as an extension of the conventional theoretical concept where a tourist only looks at a toured object. Tourism activities that relate to nature have nothing to do with the visited objects. Tourists focus more on being involved in the consumption process to search for their authentic self. Existential authenticity entails sensual feelings such as entertainment, excitement, relaxation and recreation, among others. Self-making as well as touristic activities such as making new friends and creating family ties all add up to create existential authenticity, which means being true to oneself. Existential authenticity is pertinent to personal feelings, unlike its conventional form. Therefore, being authentic can only be realized within an individual, and different people have various types of authenticity. Pearce (2005) proves that the liminal process which is responsible for activating personal feelings has three main stages (Bruner, 1991). The first stage is a normal state which includes own experiences such as being at home. The second stage is a threshold phase which involves transitioning of the tourist's life and is abnormal. At this phase, the existence and life possibilities are expanded and include activities such as marriage which has a spiritual significance. The third stage is a post-threshold phase which consists of going back to the original state of ordinary everyday life.

In this view, an existential authenticity is an approach from new self-concept. Wang (1999) has two perspectives of existential authenticity. The first perspective is that authenticity is intrapersonal and involves both self-making and sensual feelings (Selwyn, 1989). The second dimension of existential authenticity emphasizes both touristic activities and family ties. Therefore existential authenticity is related to the exploration of both human and individual attributes. Reisinger (2006) concluded that existential authenticity is the state of being in touch with one's inner being and understanding one's self as well as having a sense of identity. It is the ability to live according to one's self and experiences without living according to world concepts and abstractions (Kleiber, 2012). It is the state of being authentic to one's self and creating meaning through suffering, acting creatively and experiencing love.

However, authenticity is not a permanent state; instead, it involves different situations of back and forth in the life of a tourist. Therefore, the temporary state of authenticity results in no inauthentic or authentic tourists. Reisinger (2006) argues that the state of being genuine or inauthentic is characterized by the situation, resoluteness and possession. The ability to recognize possibilities and choose what is not shared with others is viewed as a possession. The skill and the determination to claim what an individual possesses is considered to be resoluteness. The situation is defined as the extraordinary experience unusual to an exceptional circumstance. Ryan (2002) argues that Wang's discussion of existential authenticity relates to Maslow's self-actualization that involves individuals' motivation to fulfil their potentiality in life. Ryan explained that there is a higher possibility that the state of one's self and self-actualization be situated in contrived places. Olsen (2002) criticized Wang's discussion for failing to analyze the emic of tourist experiences that are socially organized.

Authenticity Phenomenological Approaches

A phenomenological approach relates to the study of experience structures and consciousness, as well as how individual experience things. Postmodernism and modernism social theories offer both a post positivistic and a positivistic ontology (Wang and Alasuutari, 2017). Though the two social approaches create a platform for explaining changes in the social structure, they failed to integrate the authenticity of the changing tourism nature successfully equally. The reason is that each theory promotes two different competing and paradoxical theoretical concepts (Niemeyer, 1965). A difference in the theoretical views creates an unattainable conceptual difficulty in explaining the role played by authenticity in tourism experience. Acknowledging the fact that there are still some diverging views of the two social theories that can never be theoretically unified creates the need...