ABSTRACT
In a contribution to a recent collection of papers that explore the relationship between tourism and consumerism, in particular the emergence of the mass consumption of tourism and its subsequent social, economic and environmental consequences, Hall (2011: 301) concludes by asking the question: ‘Why have so many people increasingly come to believe that consuming … [leisure and travel] … will somehow make them happier and improve their life?’ In other words, he suggests that, although the specific reasons why people engage in tourism (that is, tourist motivation) have long been addressed in the academic literature, there remains more limited understanding of how or why tourism, as a specific and increasingly pervasive form of contemporary consumption, has come to be considered more generally as a potential source of happiness and well-being. This is not to say that this issue has been completely overlooked; for example, the link between tourism and the ‘good life’ is explored in a recent text (Pearce et al. 2011). However, by drawing attention to the assumed, or expected, contribution of tourism to personal well-being or happiness, Hall (2011) is not only asking a question of tourism consumption in particular that has long been considered by philosophers, sociologists, economists and others more generally – that is, can wealth be equated with happiness (Douthwaite 1999; Graham 2009)? He is also, albeit inadvertently, responding to the statement made some two centuries ago by Thomas Jefferson (1743–1826), the third President of the United States, that ‘Traveling makes a man wiser, but less happy’.
