Live a residential experience during holidays or how Riad Guest Houses promote the connexions with Marrakech as a touristic destination
Journal Title: ESSACHESS - Journal for Communication Studies - Year 2009, Vol 2, Issue 2
Abstract
The study of the town of Marrakech allows one to map the evolution of touristic housing, as well as the different ways of viewing the world attached to these accommodations. One can divide them into three big categories. Hotel clubs make up the first, unrated hotels the second, and Riad Guest Houses (RGH), the third. The three aforementioned categories represent three distinct stages in the evolution of touristic practices, with the later stages being characterized by a rejection of the now disparaged status of “touristâ€. Hotel clubs are synonymous with mindless mass tourism while unrated hotels are generally patronized by cleverer backpacker and/or adventurer types. The third category is representative of a new generation aspiring to blend in to the point of becoming residents. While mass tourism is plainly associated with a dehumanized economic presence, the wish to adopt the status of resident can be read as a desire to legitimate one’s presence in the country, as well as to show one’s human and sensitive side. However, these changes have not yet managed to expunge from collective representations the figure of the tourist as a dim-witted and ridiculous putz – the “voyage idiotâ€. The reason for this is that the tourists themselves do not question this representation, especially not those who wish to distance themselves from it. Indeed they use it as a way to promote their own alternative touristic practices, symbolized by the unrated hotel and the Riad Guest House.
Authors and Affiliations
Stéphanie LEROUX| Docteur en géographie, Université Picardie Jules Verne, Amiens, Laboratoire HabiterProcessus Identitaires, Processus Sociaux ; associée à l’Université Cadi Ayyad, Marrakech, Laboratoire d’Etudes et de Recherche sur la Montagne Atlasique
Keywords
Related Articles
- EP ID EP9040
- DOI -
- Views 343
- Downloads 22
An experimental situation of TV images reception. The use of the EARS device
Resorting to experimental situation offers the possibility to study media messages reception. In particular, Real Time Response Systems allow investigations that don’t need words: researchers don’t have to ask peop...
Memory transition between communicating agents
What happens to a memory when it has been externalised and embodied but has not reached its addressee yet? A letter that has been written but has not been read, a monument before it is unveiled or a Neolithic tool buri...
Is secrecy a barrier for intelligence studies?
This articles aims to highlight the issues, challenges and constraints of intelligence studies considering the notion of cryptic space, understood as a “secret space of communication within which the individual is ex...
The Impact of Social Media on Press Freedom in Greece: Benefits, Challenges and Limitations
The purpose of the essay is to put light on the expansion of social media in news broadcasting in Greece, highlighting their impact on press freedom and freedom of expression. Taken for granted that the media in Greece...
To each participatory sciences. Conditions for a participatory biodiversity observatory at the Arcachon Bay
This paper considers the social and scientific requirements for a citizen science monitoring programme on biodiversity in Arcachon Bay (France). The sociological study reveals tensions between different conceptions of...