‘What’s on your Bucket List?’: Tourism, identity and imperative experiential discourse

Abstract

Examples include British journalist Helen Fawkes (www.helenfawkes.wordpress.com), British teenager Alice Pyne (www.alicepyne.blogspot.co.uk), American Susan Spencer-Wendel (author of 2013 memoire Until I Say Goodbye: My Year of Living With Joy), and British cancer patient Stephen Sutton, who has raised over £5m for The Teenage Cancer Trust (www.facebook.com/stephensstory).

Review of critical discourse analysis in tourism studies

“…Being deterministic and narrowly visioned is criticized, which leads to the failure of the recommended development approach. In addition, discourse from the popular concept of “Bucket List” was investigated by Thurnell‐Read () to explore the effect of “Bucket List” on tourism marketing, and the result confirmed the usefulness of such a concept in introducing worthy and desirable travel experience.…”

Tourists' reflections on sustainability in a biosphere reserve landscape

“…Future research could also explore how BR tourism could be understood as what Richards () describes as symbolic consumption enhancing status. Thurnell‐Read () argues that the value of tourism is dependent on specific cultural ways of assigning value and status to travel, which in turn validate and legitimate the travel as being desirable. In the case of BR tourism, this could entail that the consumption that enhances status generates a sort of BR specific capital connected to sustainable development.…”

The seven sins of hunting tourism

“…As a western cultural idiom, bucket list experiences are a big theme in tourism with countless articles promoting places to see, things to do, try, consume and experience “in your lifetime”. Bucket lists cater to dreams of life-fulfillment, often through the medium of spending lots of money “in the pursuit of happiness” ( Thurnell-Read, 2017 ). The bucket list trope is similar to last chance tourism in that they both cater to opportunistic and hurried desires; although, last chance tourism is about ‘before they die’ and the bucket list is ‘before I die’ - operating on a more egocentric level.…”

“…The bucket list trope is similar to last chance tourism in that they both cater to opportunistic and hurried desires; although, last chance tourism is about ‘before they die’ and the bucket list is ‘before I die’ - operating on a more egocentric level. The idea “that travel experiences offer self-fulfillment and are a measure the success or meaningfulness of one's life” ( Thurnell-Read, 2017 p.58) is reflected in hunting where “every hunter dreams about shooting the ‘big’ one at least once in his life.” ( Komppula & Gartner, 2013 p.175). Research shows that entire countries have been labelled ‘bucket list destinations’ for hunters, like South Africa, Kenya and Tanzania ( Lemieux & Clarke, 2009 ).…”

“…The bucket list trope may appear to be personal but, is a narrative that is being used by the tourism industry to “present the accumulation of specific tourism experiences as a necessary task” ( Thurnell-Read, 2017 p.65) in order to show others that you have ‘lived well’. Hence, the bucket list aims both at self-actualization, and conspicuous consumption; it has internal and external functions.…”