{"title":"Tourist guides and free tours: A controversial relationship","authors":"Rosario Navalón-García, C. Mínguez","doi":"10.1177/14687976211016073","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"Like other tourism subsectors, guided tours have been affected by the emergence of the sharing economy. Although this subsector of tourism is not as well known, it constitutes an interesting scenario for studying these new business models and it is also generating debate. This article analyses the uniqueness of the tourist guide services provided through online platforms under the name of free tours. The study includes a bibliographical revision and it is carried out from a qualitative methodology based on a survey conducted among tourist guide professionals and in-depth interviews. The study analyses the point of view of professionals in the guiding sector from 11 European cities subject to common regulations. It aims to determine how they are affected by the free tours as well as to assess their relationship with this new activity, a complex relationship with many controversial elements in terms of labour, tax and organisation. It will be shown that the free tours respond to the trends of contemporary society but are not an expression of the collaborative consumption among equals, but rather an effective marketing strategy.","PeriodicalId":47199,"journal":{"name":"Tourist Studies","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.3000,"publicationDate":"2021-05-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1177/14687976211016073","citationCount":"4","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Tourist Studies","FirstCategoryId":"91","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1177/14687976211016073","RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"管理学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q2","JCRName":"HOSPITALITY, LEISURE, SPORT & TOURISM","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 4
Abstract
Like other tourism subsectors, guided tours have been affected by the emergence of the sharing economy. Although this subsector of tourism is not as well known, it constitutes an interesting scenario for studying these new business models and it is also generating debate. This article analyses the uniqueness of the tourist guide services provided through online platforms under the name of free tours. The study includes a bibliographical revision and it is carried out from a qualitative methodology based on a survey conducted among tourist guide professionals and in-depth interviews. The study analyses the point of view of professionals in the guiding sector from 11 European cities subject to common regulations. It aims to determine how they are affected by the free tours as well as to assess their relationship with this new activity, a complex relationship with many controversial elements in terms of labour, tax and organisation. It will be shown that the free tours respond to the trends of contemporary society but are not an expression of the collaborative consumption among equals, but rather an effective marketing strategy.
期刊介绍:
Tourist Studies is a multi-disciplinary journal providing a platform for the development of critical perspectives on the nature of tourism as a social phenomenon through a qualitative lens. Theoretical and multi-disciplinary. Tourist Studies provides a critical social science approach to the study of the tourist and the structures which influence tourist behaviour and the production and reproduction of tourism. The journal examines the relationship between tourism and related fields of social inquiry. Tourism and tourist styles consumption are not only emblematic of many features of contemporary social change, such as mobility, restlessness, the search for authenticity and escape, but they are increasingly central to economic restructuring, globalization, the sociology of consumption and the aestheticization of everyday life. Tourist Studies analyzes these features of tourism from a multi-disciplinary perspective and seeks to evaluate, compare and integrate approaches to tourism from sociology, socio-psychology, leisure studies, cultural studies, geography and anthropology. Global Perspective. Tourist Studies takes a global perspective of tourism, widening and challenging the established views of tourism presented in current periodical literature. Tourist Studies includes: Theoretical analysis with a firm grounding in contemporary problems and issues in tourism studies, qualitative analyses of tourism and the tourist experience, reviews linking theory and policy, interviews with scholars at the forefront of their fields, review essays on particular fields or issues in the study of tourism, review of key texts, publications and visual media relating to tourism studies, and notes on conferences and other events of topical interest to the field of tourism studies.