Always at the core of tourism, however, are a series of subjective, emotional
experiences that actually begin with the first decision and opportunity to travel.
Such experiences vary considerably but all tourists seek them, and have them,
whether we are considering young tourists getting drunk in the streets of Ibiza, or
tourists confronting the Himalayas, or the Mona Lisa for the first time. In this way,
in the context of tourism at least, it becomes more meaningful to avoid speaking of
discrete breaks between modernity and post-modernity (Harvey, 1989), or any
discrete shifts from so-called ‘mass tourists’, to what Feifer (1985) terms, ‘posttourists’.
Though there have clearly been economic and social structural shifts in
both the way that tourism is produced and consumed, and there are useful
frameworks we can use to understand the shifting meanings of tourism – in real and
symbolic terms – it is also important to note the continuity around the nature of
tourist experiences.