RESOURCES
RESOURCES: PAPERS & PRESENTATIONS
| Author : | Jennifer Small |
|---|---|
| School/Work Place : | University of Technology Sydney, Australia |
| Contact : | jennifer.small@uts.edu.au |
| Year : | 2012 |
While there has been a developing interest in mobilities amongst tourism scholars, the notion of immobilities has often been ignored. Yet, there are many people who do not participate in tourism or, if they do, only experience partial mobility. Taking a Critical Tourism approach, this paper examines the experiences of tourists with vision impairment and the intersection of their mobilities with those of their sighted guides on a Traveleyes tour of Italy. The research methods were autoethnography and questionnaire survey. The findings suggested that mobilities were facilitated in the partnership. For those with vision impairment, facilitation of mobility allowed them to enjoy some of the rights to citizenship and quality of life experienced by those who are sighted. At the same time, mobilities could also be constrained. The observation of social barriers that affected the experience, combined with the evident embodiment of the tourist experience, suggested the appropriateness of “embodied ontology” as a means for understanding the tourist experience for tourists with vision impairment.
