Theconstruction of global tourism spaces: The construction of global tourism spaces


The spaces of flows : The spaces of flows Global travel spaces: Airports Airline cabins Transit lounges Hotels Non-places?


Placeless mobility: Placeless mobility Daniel Boorstin: The lost art of travel “nothing to see but the weather...” “I had flown not through space but time” . “Passage through space unnoticeable...robbed of landscape” “Each Hilton hotel is indistinguishable...‘a little America’ ...you have the comforting feeling of not being there” “don’t know where you are unless you look out window


Slide4: Modernization theory Spatialization of modernity Mobility = agent of modernity American tourist=> modernization Travel spaces connecting “places” American tourism frontier modernity


Slide5: globalizing modernity local tradition


Slide6: US: Building the postwar global tourism economy Eliminating boundaries The Marshall Plan and tourism to Europe International airlines and tourist fares The jet plane revolution


Time-space compression: “crossing global distances and connecting places” Time-space compression


global travel spaces:the spectacle of mobility: global travel spaces: the spectacle of mobility


Eero Saarinen’s TWA terminal at JFK airport, New York (1961): Eero Saarinen’s TWA terminal at JFK airport, New York (1961)


“a place  of movement and transition”: “a place of movement and transition”


Slide11: “as if inside a flying machine”


Slide12: Dulles Airport, Washington DC


mobile lounges: mobile lounges -The airport as a machine of movement -Designed to efficiently move travelers from entrance to planes


LAX “Themed Building”: LAX “Themed Building”


Making (American) tourism global: Making (American) tourism global Cold War: modernization efforts in the ‘Third World’ Tourism: agent of econ. development US hotel and airline companies expand globally


Slide16: At the “frontier of modernity” Modern international hotel in Istanbul: “a little American” A product of the Cold War (1955)


Modernist architectural design:: Modernist architectural design: Aesthetized technological efficiency Stands out from landscape at the territorial frontier of modernity, but A dematerialized (not an enclave) plate glass, transparent form... Open form, no private spaces a “machine for viewing” at the frontier of modernity a model of modernity, a map of the future Drawn from Annabel Jane Wharton’s Building the Cold war: Hilton International Hotels and Modern Architecture.


At the frontier:American/global modernityframes the traditional/ local: At the frontier: American/global modernity frames the traditional/ local


Global transformations: 1960s-1970s: Global transformations: 1960s-1970s Economic expansion of Europe and Japan The end of the “dollar standard” Vietnam War/Third Worldism/1968 Failures of modernization theory The crisis of Fordism/flex. prod., oil shocks => retrenchment and the relative decline of US hegemony


End of the global tourism frontier: End of the global tourism frontier Most of the globe accessible to mass tourism 1968: US seeks to limit travel abroad “The ugly American” Ecological/cultural impact of mass tourism End of tourism promotion as development Airline hijackings, Airline deregulation Intl. Tourism=> staged, commoditified, enclave


Globalization: 1980s-1990s: Globalization: 1980s-1990s A new vehicle for expansion of US power: neoliberalism, market reform, privatization.. The end of the cold war Free markets, not modernization Developing world integrated into global markets Promoting the deterritorialization of capitalism


The transformation of tourism: The transformation of tourism More reflexive tourists New frontiers=> new market segments: ecotourism, adventure tourism,... “Places” as products: cities, theme parks Tourism as consumerism Americanization no longer = modernization and shifting frontier


Collapsing global travel spaces: Collapsing global travel spaces “the end of territorial distance” No territorial frontier of tourism Places as products Consumerism rather than mobility defines tourism Ex. consuming “places”


Slide24: “Americanization” deterritorialized => ...while international tourism becomes a theme for tourism in the US A McDonald’s in Saudi Arabia Paris Hotel, Las Vegas Luxor Hotel, Las Vegas


Travel spaces become places: Travel spaces become places Because of increased mobility, the experience of traveling is no longer about crossing territory Global tourism spaces no longer defined by territorial mobility Travel “democratized” and routine => Hotels and airports remake themselves as destinations


Hotels as destinations: Hotels as destinations “post-modern” architecture: The Bonaventure Hotel => New styles of luxury hotels


The new culture of airports: The new culture of airports “epicenters of post-nationalism” Shopping malls-with-planes Themed airports Airport cities Growth poles Denver Airport: a “locational” theme Shopping at Schiphol airport, Amsterdam Working at an airport café


The encounter lounge: The encounter lounge Retro-themeing LAX


Post-9/11 travel spaces: Post-9/11 travel spaces New American discourse: Airplanes as weapons American tourists as targets Foreign tourists as terrorists 30% drop tourism=>US Global mobility = threat Towards spaces of security


American spaces abroad: “The new $83 million U. S. consulate outside Istanbul satisfies important security concerns but also seems a remote crusader castle.” --US report on Public Diplomacy “...looks like a maximum security prison” --Tom Friedman American spaces abroad


Possibilities for a cosmopolitan tourism?: Possibilities for a cosmopolitan tourism? “the ambiguous effects of speed” --William E. Connolly Places matter, but not as measures of modernity, closed political identities, or objects of consumption Pluralization within territories more critical than mobility or localization Global travel as means towards hybridization between “places” Mobility only one means to connect pluralized locations, but not a means to impose transformation/modernization