Modifying culture and identity: a deep gaze into tourists’ quotidian culture and identity modification processes

This paper aims to situate tourism within the wider context of temporary and permanent people movements and immigration as a form of permanent tourism with a deep gaze into tourists’ own national culture and even deeper gaze into the trappings of immigrants’ quotidian identity to define a modified identity. This paper offers, through auto-ethnography (AE) and confirmatory introspection (CI), a glimpse into the complex decision-making processes tourists, migrant workers and immigrants have to cope with to survive and thrive in a home “away” from their country of birth. The literature on the comparison between temporary mobility (tourism), nomadic migration (semi-permanent mobility) and permanent mobility (drifters, wanderers or denizen globe trotters) is sparse and unsystematic.

The use of AE and CI allows the researcher with several years of cognitive and affective information and easy access to data on the private, lived experiences of the author and closely related family. Having lived and worked in several countries, supplemented by experiences of visiting over 35 countries for varying periods, the researcher has direct access to a wealth of rich data related to tourism (one- to five-week trips to Europe, USA, South America, the Middle East, Africa, Australia and the Pacific Islands), semi-permanent mobility (one-year exchange work placement in North America) and permanent mobility (more than ten years of being immigrants to New Zealand).

The results show that tourists and immigrants are exposed to numerous decisions (varying in complexity and impact) before, during and after their travels that will impact on their acculturation, the genuineness of their experience and their willingness to modify their own identities, as well as the culture of the destinations they consume. Travelers have to overcome contextual and personal hurdles to achieve integration in a reasonable time. The way in which they tackle and overcome these hurdles will impact upon their modification of personal identity and acculturation.

This paper offers practical advice to tourists, immigrants and employers on becoming adaptable consumers, highly resilient survivors and highly reliable organizations – able to thrive in today’s global marketplace. This study helps marketers, tourism professionals and employers of migrants to understand the processes consumers go through to modify identity to effectively and timely fit into new environments.

AE- and CI-based research explores the tourist gaze and acculturation processes and discusses a two-directional model of modification of culture and identity. In addition, the paper highlights complex decision-making models tourists, nomads, globe trotters and immigrants use when considering alternative destinations and sought-after experiences.