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= Post-tourism =

Post-tourism is theoretical concept of conscious traveling. This ideology has been developed to counter the potential negative consequences of mass tourism.

Origin
The concept of post-tourism has been developed in response to new needs and preferences of customers in the era of postmodernism. Post-tourism derives its ideas from pivotal postmodernism concepts: lack of “certainty” and structuralism. The term “post-tourism” was coined by Maxine Feifer in 1985, and developed by John Urry in 1990, to describe new countercultural social group, which has developed contrary to highly-consumerism and highly-commercialized tourism movement. In effect, a conglomerate of ideas has been constructed, which were to counter the harmful consequences of global and mass tourism.

Statistics concerning conventional tourism
Mass tourism is characterized by such a numbers:


 * Tourism covers 9 % of world's GDP
 * Every 11th employee work in tourism business
 * The number of international tourists (overnight visitors) reached 1,138 million in 2014
 * In 2013, international tourism receipts reached US$ 1,197 billion

Tourism is a huge part of a world's economy, but still has both possitive and negative consequences. Post-tourism proposes some methods and ideas, which are to prevent cultural authenticity from negative consequences of mass tourism.

Criticism towards tourism mainstream
Objections towards mainstream tourism concern the form in which the travel – as an idea – is undertaken. Post-tourism rejects and condemns stigmatizing foreign countries with the term “exoticism”. The rush for exoticism and oriental experience results in expectations of how the locals should act and behave. Of course, the locals are putting a lot of effort to keep the tourists attracted. In effect, locals fulfil tourists' expectations. It results in losing the rest of the so desired “authentic experience”.
 * 1

Post-tourism argues that mainstream tourism sustains the colonial pattern of cultural superiority. The wealthy residents of northern countries are the one who visit the poor south. Colonialism is about making states dependent, in the political and economic sense,on the metropolis. This situation lasts, until the dependent state manages to create the product, that makes country competitive. Post-tourism claims, that traditional travel business just like colonialism makes poor countries dependent on wealthy ones – instead of focusing on stable sources(agriculture, industry) of economic growth, they choose easier income – from tourists. As a result, poor countries become dependent on money from the northern tourists, and to make those tourists to come back, locals provide them with more and more of so-called “authentic experience”, rarely connected with the real local culture.
 * 2

Core tensions
Post-tourism seeks to make tourists aware of the consequences which are connected with travelling. Post-tourists are conscious about the effect of visits in other society. They are ready to take responsibility for arisen problems. They treat those who they visit as partners, not as the agents providing entertaining experience. Post-tourists are against the Europocentric model of understanding the world – during travel they do not act as the ones from a better world. They try to understand and appreciate local culture. They do not come with the vision of how the “exoticism” should look like. Post-tourists are characterized with some sort of irony. They understand, that need for authentic experience would never be fulfilled, because every  interference(including their own visit) is a disorder of this authenticity.

Application

 * One of the key resources available is the website www.post-turysta.pl. Authors gathered around this website have contributed over 30 articles concerning the idea of post-tourism. This website is designed as a platform for gaining knowledge and sharing opinion about conscious travelling. Geographers, sociologists and political scientists - are all trying in the pages of www.post-turysta.pl to answer the question of – how to be a better tourist, and how competently to discover other cultures.


 * With subsides from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Poland www.post-turysta.pl lead number of workshops concerning the issue of post-tourism. One of the target of this project was to reach the people from group that are potentially excluded, which is why the workshops were conducted in small and medium towns all across Poland.