From Pausanias to Baedeker and Trip Advisor: Textual Proto-tourism and the Engendering of Tourism Distribution Channels

Key aim of this paper is to provide an interdisciplinary look at tourism and its diachronic textual threads bequeathed to us by the "proto-tourist” texts of the Greek travel author Pausanias. Using the Periegetic, travel... [ view full abstract ]

Key aim of this paper is to provide an interdisciplinary look at tourism and its diachronic textual threads bequeathed to us by the "proto-tourist” texts of the Greek travel author Pausanias. Using the Periegetic, travel texts from his voluminous Descriptions of Greece (second century AD) as a springboard for our presentation, we intend to show how textual strategies employed by Pausanias have been received and adopted/ adapted by recent travel writing. First, we examine the first extensive series of travel guides by Karl Baedeker, a seminal author who “guided” several famous modernist authors on their tourist peregrinations at the turn of the previous century. Then, we illustrate how Pausanias’ writing was preserved, “translated,” and furthered not only by Baedeker and his contemporaries, but also in current travel and tourism distribution of information in vastly popular textual platforms such as the editions and media network of The Lonely Planet, and Trip Advisor, one of the seminal, e-platforms that represent the so-called “Digital Tourism.” Based on the underlying textual principles guiding travel information provided to us by the above sources, we then filter them through various tourism distribution channels. Interestingly, the interaction between travel texts along with travel information and distribution channels produces generic hybrids, that is, travel texts providing information, a combination of travel arrangement services throughout centuries. These texts are unique in their inspiration and construction yet guided by the same principles aiming at involving and engaging the tourist into the journey. They provide information for prospective tourists, by bundling tourism products together and also by establishing mechanisms that enable consumers to make, confirm and pay for reservations.