The ubiquity of computation in daily life has had decisive influence on
the imaginative aspects of tourism. Online knowledge of the world is
readily available through mapping services, social media, travel blogs,
and online reviews. From booking and Googling, to posting and
reminiscing: all stages of one's trip can be guided and augmented by
increasingly connective, personalized, and optimized algorithmic
systems.
In the face of this informational abundance, hypermediated tourism is
fixated on access to authenticity. Peer to peer accommodation offers
tourists a chance to "live like a local." Professional bloggers instruct
not just on where, but on how to travel. Review websites aggregate the
feedback of millions into "objective," data-driven authentication of
destinations. And virtual technologies take users to places they could
not dream of reaching physically.
Based on a comparative ethnography of touristic blogs and vlogs, review
websites, and video game environments, Scripted Journeys presents a
critical analysis of touristic practice in digital ecologies. This
hypermediated tourism engages technology as a harbinger of
self-possession and waywardness, yet produces its own forms of digital
dependence. The resulting "scripted journeys" internalize a tension
between authenticity as autonomy and control, and the implicit
compliance of making use of technological extensions.