Transformations in destination texture: Curry and Bollywood romance in the Swiss Alps

Abstract

This article takes heterogeographical approaches to understand Bollywood-induced destination transformations in Switzerland. Positioned within the theoretical field of mediatized mobility, the study contextualizes Bollywood-induced tourism in Europe the concept of texture. Textural analysis (based on Lefebvre's trialectics of space) combines the analysis of material performances and communicative representations converging in the production/consumption of tourism spaces. The article contributes threefold. First, it reviews the phenomenon of nonwestern popular cultural tourism through the theoretical lens of mediatized mobility. Second, the article offers methodological reflections on textural analysis and strategies to capture the entanglements of popular cultural representations and performances simultaneously. Third, through an analytical deconstruction of Bollywood's imaginaries and disruptive new tourism practices in Switzerland, it discusses the placemaking potentials and challenges of concurrent narratives in cosmopolitan tourism destinations.

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“…Richards (2018), identified the following well-developed subsectors of cultural tourism: cultural heritage tourism, film-induced tourism, and literary tourism. These three themes also emerged within our article search (Barber, 2018;Domínguez-Quintero, González-Rodríguez, & Paddison, 2018;Gyimóthy, 2018;Io, 2018;Vinodan & Meera, 2018, Yu & Xu, 2018) however, sometimes the above-mentioned terms were used interchangeably with the term 'cultural tourism' and not as a subgroup. For example, Yu and Xu (2018, p. 292) examine 'the moral aspect of literature and literary/cultural tourism'; in this case, literary tourism is equated with cultural tourism.…”

Cultural Tourism froman Academic Perspective

“…Richards (2018), identified the following well-developed subsectors of cultural tourism: cultural heritage tourism, film-induced tourism, and literary tourism. These three themes also emerged within our article search (Barber, 2018;Domínguez-Quintero, González-Rodríguez, & Paddison, 2018;Gyimóthy, 2018;Io, 2018;Vinodan & Meera, 2018, Yu & Xu, 2018) however, sometimes the above-mentioned terms were used interchangeably with the term 'cultural tourism' and not as a subgroup. For example, Yu and Xu (2018, p. 292) examine 'the moral aspect of literature and literary/cultural tourism'; in this case, literary tourism is equated with cultural tourism.…”

Exploring the hospitality-tourism nexus: Directions and questions for past and future research

“…Moreover, as tourism becomes the dominant economic activity in a destination, it begins to transform the hospitality characteristics of place in terms of the food, drink and entertainment services catering for visitors and locals. For example, Gyimóthy’s (2018) work showed that ‘local’ foods were supplemented by what residents perceived to be ‘foreign’ foods, which were preferred by the tourists who visited the destination. Arguably, the presence of familiar foodstuffs, drinking practices or entertainment venues (e.g.…”