Summary. ▫ Tourism marketing as the formation of the tourist gaze and place
myths. ▫ The production of place requires symbolic and cultural work!
Place Marketing: The City
The Branding of Toronto
Definition
the tourist experience is to be understood in terms of consuming opportunities to look (the ‘tourist gaze’), a distracting or ludic looking ‘upon’ aspects of landscape or townscape
which are distinctive which signify an experience which separate them off from everyday and routine experiences
Producing the Lake District
Nothing natural about it says “beautiful tourist site” So how come it is? Answer: symbolic construction of difference though signs and images and cultural production in general. Described in the poetry of Shelley, Keats, Tennyson, and Charlotte Bronte, the Lake District has come to be seen as one of the most beautiful sections of protected land in all of England.
Summary
Tourism marketing as the formation of the tourist gaze and place myths
The production of place requires symbolic and cultural work!
The Making of Toronto for Americans
The Video
Discuss
How is this video forming the ‘tourist gaze’? Who do you think is being targeted with this campaign? What is the ‘place myth’ that Toronto Tourism is trying to “imagineer”? Is the Toronto Unlimited campaign trying to market Toronto as an event?
Challenges for branding Toronto?
No brand exists in a vacuum
Part of a province Part of a country Part of North America, ie. US Part of a competitive network of branded world cities Part of global risk spaces and events
Key to success
New Cultural Economy
Imagineering
Cities marketed as one or multiple images
‘People have become caught up in nodes and images which come not from their own individual experiences but instead which are the artificial creation of the media’
Producing the City as Culture
Cultural economy: important in urban economic health
Distinction between economic and cultural increasingly blurred: cities use culture for economic gain
Example: Musicals, sporting events, historic sites, exotic landscapes (including grey concrete suburbs) and art streets are tourist destinations and function as important income generators
City of culture
Traditional urban cultural policy: Maintenance of established cultural centres Libraries, art galleries and museums
Contemporary cities: Leisure and entertainment Atypical lifestyles: San Francisco markets hippy lifestyle as part of their culture Culture from high, to pop, to gay culture marketed
Example: Sydney, New Orleans
Gay Mardi Gras actively marketed Tourist attraction Adds to city’s sense of “tolerance”; encourage downstream tourism and investment
Growth of disposable income, massive growth in scale and scope of cultural industries
Imagineering •Selected images used to paint an ‘authentic’ version of the city •Suggests an idea of the city as a canvass in which everyone can insert themselves in their own way
Power of the Image: Marketing as Framing
Images as a frame to shape and predispose the tourist gaze
Slogans New York: The City that never sleeps London: Millennium City Pittsburgh: Stronger than steel Brighton: London by the Sea Toronto?
You belong here. New York run by the Swiss…
City as spectacle
Global spectacles Cultural globalisation Brand identity: city marketed and sold Raising international profile ‘There is a place war to host the Games to increase a city’s visibility, enhance its image and increase its competitive advantage in the global economy. Wannabe world cities compete for command functions and world spectacles. The Olympic Games are … an opportunity to be the site of a global spectacle, and hence confer international name recognition’
Spectacles used as urban promotional events Not a recent phenomenon
London, 1851: The Great Exhibition
Chicago, 1893: World’s Exhibition
Crystal Palace, 17 acres development Celebrate American business City promotion: ‘open for business’ Beautification scheme Venue created two parks from swampland
Importance of spectacle to cultural and urban change
What happens here stays here…
Kuala Lumpur
Grand Theft Auto
To drive the point home…
Conde Nast Traveller
LAS VEGAS AS CARNIVAL, TOURISM AS PLAY
THE LAST RESORT: HELL
Ad Slogans: “Go to Hell,” “You’ll be Dying to Get Here,” “Damned Good Fun”
Spectacles: Ever-flaming Fire & Brimstone, Ferry ‘Cross the Styx’
Rides: Drop of Doom, From Here to Eternity, the Bottomless Pit
Costumed Employees: Croupiers from Hell, Cocktail Waitresses from Hell, Pit Bosses from Hell; His Royal Satanic Majesty
BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE
Shops:
Needful Things
Hellmark Cards
Save My Sole Shoes
Rosemary’s Baby Shop
Devil May Care Clothing
Paradise Lost Luggage
Inferno Hot Tubs
Purgatory Pete’s Pets
Beetlejuice Julius
PLUS FOOD, DRINK, & ENTERTAINMENT
Souls on Fire Discotheque Hellraiser’s Bar Club Limbo Deathwatch Dinner Theatre (Featuring the “Corpses on Parade” Musical Revue) Faustus Follies Hard Rock and a Hot Place Beelzebubba’s Soul Food
SATIRE IS DIFFICULT IN A TOWN LIKE THIS
“This is not a good town for psychedelic drugs. Reality itself is too twisted” (Hunter Thompson, Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas) Kaleidoscopic (Jean Baudrillard) 1 1
Like Thee-Dimensional Television Like a Postmodern Shopping Mall
An Uncoordinated Theme Park Fantasy Pseudo-locales Drawing on Myth, Magic, the Exotic, Carnival, & Hollywood
Liminal spaces
Places on the Margin Liminality:
"moments of discontinuity in social space...moments of 'in between-ness', of a loss of social co-ordinates... Liminality represents a liberation from the regimes of normative practices and performance codes of mundane life...” (Shields, 1991: 83-4)
A BRIEF HISTORY
Organized Crime Beginnings: Sin (Lust, Greed, Gluttony, Sloth), Transgression, Dystopia, Excess, Inversion, Carnivalesque -- a place at the margin
Enter Howard Hughes: The Buyout of the Mobs; Corporatization; Megaresorts Mainstreaming/Theming: Hospitality Industry, Hollywood, Franchises, Family
LAS VEGAS AS FAMILY FARE?: EFFECTS OF CHANGES
More & More Diverse Tourists But Not the Family Market of Disneyworld or Even of Los Angeles People Don’t Come To Las Vegas to Gamble (anymore)
THE INFANTALIZATION OF ADULTS IN LAS VEGAS
“This looks more like a playpen for the middle class and middle aged than the city of broken dreams.”
WHY INFANTALIZE ADULTS?
Infantalization Fosters Willing Suspension of Cognitive, Rational, Adult Control
We are open for experiences
We succumb to a dreamworld of possibilities (lost to an adult)
Thus, Once Infantalized by Magic, Fun, & Fantasy, Adults Make Better Tourists
Games Adult Infants Play: Dress-up, Pig Out, Stay up All Night
Liminoid Freedom & Transgressive Desire
The Las Vegas Effect
Indulgence & Hedonism Some Gamblers Compulsive/Addicted An Invitation to Excess/Gratification Tacky, Shallow, Passive Materialism
But also
Childish play nourishes imagination, hope, & unapologetic fun Consumers have a deep need for Magic/Fantasy
CONCLUSION: Consuming the Cityscape
City as Theme Park Commercial and corporate production of Carnival.
Intense and guaranteed “experiences at the margins”
The artificial as authentic urban tourism experience
