Advancing tourist gaze research and authenticating the native-visitor: introduction to a special issue honoring work by John Urry

Abstract

Purpose – This introductory paper aims to offer a rudimentary model that describes the antecedent recipes for creating native-visitors. The paper describes what is unique and valuable about the seven articles that follow in their descriptions and explanations of the behavior of native-tourists. This special issue is to honor the originality and value of the contributions of tourism research’s leading critic, John Urry. Design/methodology/approach – The paper presents a paradigm that includes eight profiles of tourists identified by low/high conjunctions of knowledge, training and authentication of performances of tourism places. The study calls for a normative stance that tourists should develop a sense of obligation to learn before visiting to enrich understanding of what they are seeing and to reduce the negative outcomes of the tourist gaze. The method includes describing the unique and valuable contributions in each of the seven following articles in the issue. Findings – The analysis and outcomes are viewable best as propositions from a thought experiment. The seven articles that follow the introduction are appropriate data for a meta-review of the development of new meanings of tourism generated from the concept of native-tourist. Research limitations/implications – This study may spur necessary additional work to confirm that native-tourists do interpret performing tourist places differently and more richly than naïve tourists. Originality/value – The article is high in originality in establishing the benefits from studying native-tourists as unique contributors to clarifying and deepening the meanings of tourism drama enactments.