An insight into the product culture as a commodity for tourism, with the British National Tourist Organisation perspective

Maccarrone-Eaglen, A

Abstract

The complexity of the notion of culture has been the object of multidisciplinary studies attempting, with difficulties, to attribute definitions, boundaries and classifications to this polyhedric concept expressed in symbolic representations. Culture may signify unity whilst presenting a variety of components. The tourism industry treasures culture as a product to attract visitors through international promotions. This study is based on a case study strategy, adopting the British National Tourism Organisation, VisitBritain, as a unit of analysis. It was found that, as a product, culture maintains its ‘singularity and plurality’ making the identification of its structure equally complex. Moreover, in becoming a commodity, culture is partially traded as some of its components carry intrinsic values for the culture holders and as the manipulation of symbolic representations of culture might present the risk of misrepresentation of the product and its authenticity, therefore commodification of culture is fully unattainable.

Citation

Maccarrone-Eaglen, A. (2005, October). An insight into the product culture as a commodity for tourism, with the British National Tourist Organisation perspective. Presented at Recent Developments in Tourism Research, Faculty of Economics, University of Algarve, Faro

• Presentation Conference Type: Other
• Conference Name: Recent Developments in Tourism Research
• Conference Location: Faculty of Economics, University of Algarve, Faro
• Start Date: Oct 1, 2005
• End Date: Oct 3, 2005
• Publication Date: Oct 1, 2005
• Deposit Date: Oct 18, 2017
• Publicly Available Date: Oct 18, 2017
• Additional Information: Event Type : Conference