ABSTRACT
A performance turn is taking the main stage in much contemporary tourism theory. It critiques in particular the ‘tourist gaze’ for reducing tourism to solely visual experiences – sight seeing – and neglecting other senses and bodily experiences involved in these doings of tourism (see also Edensor and Falconer, Chapter 9 of this volume). The ‘performance turn’ highlights how tourists experience places in more multi-sensory ways – touching, tasting, smelling, hearing and so on – as well as the materiality of objects and places and not just objects and places as signs. This chapter discusses the turns’ main features in the context of spatial and place-based studies of tourism, while reviewing some ethnographic studies of tourism employing performative metaphors.
