Writing for the anti-tourist? Imagining the contemporary travel magazine reader as an authentic experience seeker

TLDR

Contemporary travel magazine feature writing has received little academic attention, despite its persuasive power to mediate foreign cultures and potentially drive positive social change. The article seeks to analyze 12 internationally published contemporary travel magazine pieces to advance theory on how texts mediate tourism identities. The authors applied critical discourse analysis to these 12 articles. The analysis uncovered a tourist‑versus‑traveller dichotomy and a promise of authentic cultural experiences that cast both writers and readers as anti‑tourists, prompting authors to write sensitively and thoughtfully about foreign cultures—though some still exhibit harmful stereotyping and commodification—overall reflecting a move toward globally conscious and socially responsible travel writing.

Abstract

Contemporary travel magazine feature writing has received little attention in the academic literature to date, despite the fact that these writers have a persuasive power to mediate foreign cultures and destinations and could potentially act as agents of positive social change. In this article, 12 internationally published and distributed contemporary travel magazine articles have been subjected to a critical discourse analysis contributing to the theory of the mediating power of texts with respect to the conceptualization of tourism identities. Two prominent tourism discourses emerge, the tourist-versus-traveller dichotomy and the promise of authentic cultural experiences, which portray both the writer and the imagined reader as an anti-tourist (perhaps denying their contribution to the tourism industry). The findings suggest that these writers have an imagined archetypal anti-tourist reader in mind, who seeks authentic experiences that are immersed in traditional customs. These discourses lead these authors to write sensitively and thoughtfully about foreign cultures, although some still reflect harmful cultural stereotyping and commodification. In general, however, it appears that these contemporary travel writers are heeding the scholarly call for more globally conscious and socially responsible travel writing.