Abstract Book of the 6th International Conference on Tourism Management and Hospitality
Year: 2025
[PDF]
The Sound of the Tourist Landscape
Henrik Linden, Sara Linden, Michael Palkowski
ABSTRACT:
This paper explores what a tourism experience sounds like. Language. Noise. Music. Traffic. The visual culture of tourism and travel often takes precedence in research as well as marketing materials and tourist guides, but this paper explores the sound of tourism and hospitality – albeit in relation to the visual context. In this paper, we take into account various approaches to studying sound, and focus on a sample collected from popular media, social media (authenticity contra sound as backdrop/music), documentary and written descriptions (fiction, journalism, and marketing). From the “cliched” sound of a market in Marrakech, or a plane taking off, to a football derby match in Stockholm, to the intricate noise(s) of an urban park – this paper attempts to understand how the extraordinary and seemingly mundane are intertwined in the context of the sound of the tourist landscape. For example, does overtourism have a sound, and what is the authentic sound of a destination, and how is the sound represented? This paper aims to understand how various forms of sound, and “noise”, are interpreted in a tourism – and tourism marketing – context, and what role authenticity plays in the meaning-making of “place” – whether fictional, actual, or both.
Keywords: authenticity, destination marketing, representation, sound of tourism, urban sound