Tourist Bodies, Transformation and Sensuality

Abstract

As we approach the second decade of the twenty-first century now is a good time to reflect on the new politics of pleasure, choice and desire. For those who are able to engage in it (many are not, through material and socially constructed inequalities), the experience economy is designed to turn bodies on by sensual appeals. This is nowhere more evident than in the new kinds of tourism which are engaged in producing spaces which arrest and delight the senses (Thrift and May, 2001). Tourism, as it is commonly understood and practised, is a form of commoditised plea sures and these — whether tastes, touches, spectacles or sensations — are sensual and carnal. The warmth of the sun on the skin, the call of seabirds, the smell of unfamiliar food markets, the sight of a dazzling blue sea or the taste of warm fresh bread are all common memories of holiday times. We experience and enjoy the world through our senses or sense organs, we gratify and indulge our physical appetites and many seek out certain places for our holidays ‘.…because there is an anticipation…of intense plea sures, either on a different scale or involving different senses from those customarily encountered’ (Urry, 2002: 3). And yet, despite this funda mental connection between tourism encounters and our bodily senses, the corporeality of the holiday experience remains underexplored (Small, 2007).