Tourism valorisation: digitally enhanced tourist value practices and the geographies of inequality

Tourists' role in place valorisation processes is increasingly recognised. Not only do tourists play an important role in adding or subtracting value to places of attractions through their presence and practises during their visit, they also engage in value judgements through acts of evaluations, in particular via new online platforms. Such practices receive increasing scholarly attention but remain mostly undertheorized. Building on the concept of tourism valorisation and drawing from recent sociological research on valuation we widen the conceptual understanding of the ways in which tourists influence the value of places. This allows us to identify three conceptual dimensions of valorisation in tourism, namely practices that augment or reduce value (tourist valorisation), judge value (evaluation) and harness value (value capture). These findings allow us to address important questions prompted by the effects of tourism valorisation, in particular how and to what extent tourists and tourism contributes to geographies of inequality. Paying specific attention to the role of digital technologies, we embed their effects and impact in the wider conceptual discussion. New technologies enhance the ability of tourists to valorise and evaluate with specific geographical consequences, but also provide new avenues for value capture in the form of digital enclosures. Our findings enable a more theoretically grounded analysis of how digitally enhanced tourism influences the geographies of inequality.

摘要

游客在地方增值过程中所扮演的角色越来越被认可。游客不仅通过到达现场以及游览实践对增加或减少景点价值发挥重要作用, 他们还通过评价行为尤其在新的线上平台上的评价对景点进行价值判断。游客的这些实践越来越受到学者的关注, 但大多仍未理论化。在旅游增值概念的基础上, 借鉴最近关于价值评估的社会学研究, 我们拓宽了对游客影响地方价值方式的概念理解。这使我们能够确定旅游增值的三个概念维度, 即增加或减少价值的实践(游客增值)、判断价值(评估)和利用价值(价值获取) 这些发现让我们能够解决旅游增值效果所引发的重要问题, 特别是游客和旅游业是如何以及在多大程度上造成了地理上的不平等。我们特别重视数字技术的作用, 将它们的影响和冲击嵌入更广泛的概念中进行讨论。新技术提高了游客增值与评价产生特定地理效果的能力, 但也提供了以数字围栏形式获取价值的新途径。我们的研究结果有助于对数字技术武装的旅游业如何影响不平等地理进行更有理论依据的分析。