Abstract

Currently, expanding Chinese outbound tourism attracts significant practical research effort utilizing various conceptual approaches in many countries. In this Review Article, J. Zhang and Shelton note that this form of tourism to New Zealand is notably increasing and the nature of the experience is accordingly changing from group coach travel to FIT. In their critique, J. Zhang and Shelton argue that despite the increased and careful scrutiny of both the tourism industry and the tourism studies academia on this development, most of the analytic effort (such as that on push/pull factors) is founded upon a dominant and unchallenged Western discourse around self and subject. They maintain that the term “subject position” might be a concept that is common across the broader social sciences but is uncommon in outbound tourism research itself. In this Review Article, the authors are interested in the extent to which, in a Chinese cultural setting, Western formulations of self and subjectivity are actually appropriate, and, they question whether “Chinese outbound tourism to New Zealand” indeed acts to produce the ordered subject. In this light, they critique the very demand that New Zealand becomes China Ready, and they contend that, before their arrival, the Chinese outbound tourist to New Zealand already will have been hailed by a set of subjectivities operating in China, which will act to significantly disorder their touristic performances. Thus, Zhang and Shelton suggest that New Zealand policymakers and tourism product providers must understand these multiple and discursive subjectivities, which are likely to be barriers for any prescriptive reading of the individual tourist. This review is thus intended to help both operational practitioners and field researchers realize that New Zealand—and, indeed, each and every large international destination—must produce compelling/relevant/satisfying supply-side subject positions that may profitably be mapped onto such individual tourists both before and during their visits.

Published in

Tourism Analysis
2015, Volume: 20, number: 3, pages: 343-353
ISBN: 19433999 10835423

UKÄ Subject classification

Human Geography
Other Humanities not elsewhere specified


Publication identifier

DOI: https://doi.org/10.3727/108354215X14362097173837

Permanent link to this page (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/109082