The objective of this article is to study the new tourism lexicon created by experts to name modalities that represent the tourist's motivations for choosing a destination. First, the terminological set for the analysis is established and classified according to the generic attractor of the destination that motivates the choice. Next, the conceptual variation of the terms is analyzed and the semantic relationships between them are examined. It is concluded that, within the framework of an experiential management of tourism, the terms that represent the various motivations update the conceptual network of denominations as specific facets of the attractors are highlighted to build the image of the destination.
Keywords : tourism, terminology, neologisms, conceptual variation.
The progress experienced by the tourism sector within a liberal society, oriented towards individual satisfaction, has led to the creation in the field of a series of terms related to modalities that focus on the tourist's motivations. Tourism management and marketing processes, both institutional and business, have favored the dissemination of these terms in the media, which helps to establish the technical nature of the language of the sector, so often questioned as a language of specialty. As Calvi and Mapelli (2011: 10) point out, neologisms and the stable use of textual genres are factors that have favored the inclusion of the language of tourism among specialized languages. This categorical lexicon that is formed and the emergence of new genres for the promotion of tourist destinations support the development of the language to represent tourism in a different perspective than the one known. This situation would also be related to the idea that the sector can be resized as an industry by invigorating the specialized language, which would justify the interest of both experts and tourism promotion actors in transmitting the terminology.
The objective of this article is twofold:
1) to determine the new lexicon of tourism that calls modalities according to the tourist's motivation for the choice of destination;
2) analyze the conceptual variation of these terms of the sector, considering the motivations in relation to the attractions of the destination that are selected for their representation.
The different tourism classification criteria result in different typologies2; we focus on motivation3 as a criterion to establish our corpus of analysis, although it is not easy to isolate it from others, with which it often overlaps. Thus, we will see that in the denominations by motivation, such as, for example, agrotourism, the motivation of the experience in rural areas is intertwined with another criterion such as the development model (impact on the environment), since the term integrates the notion of the preservation of rural space. In a previous work (Sánchez Manzanares 2020), in which we addressed the development of terminology in relation to the sustainability of tourism (ecological tourism, sustainable tourism, green tourism, alternative tourism, etc.), we have separated the categorization of the motivation of this another categorization in which it can be subsumed.
In the FAS model (Factors, Attractors and Support Systems), developed within a project in which the World Tourism Organization collaborates and whose conception dates from 2002, three dimensions are identified in the structure of a destination, which are specify as follows (Osorio 2005: 101–104):
1) Factors or Resources:
– Natural resources: water; Earth; climate.
– Human resources: human capital; cultural traditions, myths, legends; labor conditions (structure and situation) of the work environment.
– Capital resources: existing financial capital; physical capital/infrastructures (airports, ports, roads, railways); potential to attract foreign capital.
2) Attractors:
– Natural attractors: 1) natural spaces; 2) beaches; 3) itinerant activities in nature.
– Cultural attractions: 1) historical legacy; 2) events; 3) lifestyle of the local population.
– Artificial attractors: 1) tourist entertainment and leisure offer; 2) organization of events; 3) shopping malls, stores, etc.
3) Support or support systems: include the set of infrastructures and processes designed to serve tourists: hotels, including restaurants; transportation; complementary services (health, security, tourist information, etc.).
The so-called attractors of the destination are those that determine the different types of tourism that concern us, since, as Fayos-Solà, Muñoz and Fuentes (2011: 41) point out, they are the main motivations of the tourist. These attractors are processed in the tourist products, so that Fayos-Solà (2004: 220) speaks directly of attractive tourist products, in which there is an elaboration of the primary resources to motivate the trip, and among them he points out: “experience in nature” (sun and beach, natural park, adventure, sports), “cultural experience” (city, museum, events and sports, sites), “economic activity” (business, commercial meeting, event types).
In order to understand tourist products as trip motivators, we have to refer to the image of the tourist destination, due to its relationship with the intention of choosing the destination and the satisfaction when the visit takes place and due to its dynamic nature, which varies in space and time (Gallarza, Gil and Calderón 2002: 70–72). In the development of a tourism-marketing project, the following steps are distinguished for the construction of this image:
The construction of a characteristic image of a locality defines a set of ideas about it; and according to Vaz (2002) it is an action for the development of a tourism-marketing project that must be consistent with the following steps. Identification of tourist attractions, evaluation of marketing conditions and potentials, definition of priorities; delimitation of the segments relevant to the attractions; and definition of the target audience (Vaz, 2002:95). (Aires and Nicolau 2010: 249).
On the other hand, Gallarza, Gil and Calderón (2002: 63) elaborate a graph with the attributes used in studies of the image of the tourist destination (IDT); in it, they include those distinguished by Echtner and Ritchie (1993), which comprise the totality of those that appear in these studies (except the generic «Various activities»). These are what we list below: 1) landscape/environment; 2) nature; 3) cultural attractions; 4) nightlife and fun; 5) shopping facilities; 6) access to information; 7) sports facilities; 8) transportation; 9) accommodation; 10) gastronomy; 11) price/cost; 12) weather; 13) relaxation vs massification; 14) accessibility; 15) security; 16) social interaction; 17) hospitality residents; 18) originality; 19) quality of service. As we can see, the image attributes coincide with different attractors and support systems indicated in the FAS model.
With all of the above, we conclude that to build the image of the tourist destination, it focuses on both attractors and support systems. Next, we will verify that to name the modalities by motivation, only the specific attributes of the attractors intervene.
The extraordinary restructuring of tourism as a socioeconomic and sociocultural activity has generated the creation of terms to name modalities by motivation in which attractors are identified, but which are defined, not only in relation to attributes, but in contrast to conventional tourism.
When carrying out the discussion on the outstanding attributes in the terms, we have verified that their classification according to the attractors that motivate the choice of the destination is relative, since the motivation can be hybrid. For example, in educational tourism (cultural attraction) that takes place in a privileged natural environment (natural attraction) the choice is motivated by both ecological values and learning. This becomes more evident in modalities such as rural tourism (natural attraction) or ethnotourism (cultural attraction), where the cultural experience and the natural environment are inseparable. Furthermore, we could consider the influence of cultural models in modalities linked to natural attractors; Thus, health and beauty tourism (attractor) has a cultural component, since, although spas and thalassotherapy centers are conditioned by the natural resources of the place, the truth is that healthy habits and image care are part of the of the beauty ideal of our culture.
On the other hand, we have addressed the semantic relationships between terms and it has been justified that they are placed in the same category of natural attractors, for example, health tourism and thermal tourism (in a hyperonymy-hyponymy relationship), while medical tourism is separated of health tourism (in relation to partial synonymy) and is placed in the category of artificial attractors. This has to do with the conceptualization of health and its redefinition in the sector to include diverse attributes. We have also dealt with the conceptualization limits of the cultural in the term cultural tourism, since it can be restricted to the historical-artistic and monumental, or to events such as festivals, or it can be extended to any anthropological aspect of the destination. In a broad sense, cultural tourism would be a hyperonym for highly specific names, such as wine tourism, as well as others in which the motivation represented is more complex, such as ethnotourism, which is conceptualized as a type of alternative tourism.
Finally, we conclude that the terminology of modalities by motivation has undergone a relevant transformation in the first decades of the 21st century due to the evolution of mass tourism towards an experiential and personalized tourism that, moreover, is in line with the sustainable development model that it has been defended since the last years of the 20th century. The terms of modalities analyzed correspond to the diversification of motivations of the potential tourist, who plans the enjoyment of his vacation and leisure time looking for practices that involve him both cognitively and emotionally. Tourism management experts propose products in line with these new motivations and far from traditional patterns, in which the expectation is an experience or experience, and not a repetition of formulas, even though this is in some way inevitable since it is about processed products. In short, when analyzing in terms the representation of specific attributes that intervene in the construction of the image of the tourist destination, we access the various motivations for choosing a certain tourist product.
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