We tend to believe that hedonistic tourism, motivated by a desire for
sensual pleasure, is a modern creation, encapsulated in the now classic
four Ss of sea, sand, sun and sex. However, hedonistic holiday-making
has a much longer history. We saw earlier that the Romans practised
this form of tourism in their resorts. In the UK such tourism has given
rise to the term, the ‘dirty weekend’, often associated with the south
coast resort of Brighton. Here Londoners in the strict Victorian era took
their ‘partners’, or someone else’s partner, off to Brighton where they
could behave in ways which were not acceptable in London!
Paris, from the nineteenth century onwards developed as Europe’s
first capital of hedonistic tourism. Young men from affluent families
were sent there to complete their ‘education’ in the ways of the world.
This often involved visiting brothels, going to risqué shows and gambling.
However, other cities too based much of their appeal on hedonism
and pleasure-seeking. Writing about Vienna, Steward said ‘By far
the strongest component of the city’s place image were its reputation
for frivolity [and] the pleasure-loving nature of its inhabitants’
(Steward, 1996).
Hedonistic tourism has reached new peaks, though, in the current
era with the rise of the ‘sea, sun, sand and sex’ package holiday, from
the 1960s onwards. The promise of hedonistic experiences is now the
core offer of some operators such as Club 18–30, in the UK market. We
have also seen the rise of distinct hedonistic market segments in recent
years, such as the so-called ‘Shirley Valentines’, that is, Northern
European married older women who travel to the Mediterranean resorts
in search of romance with local men.