"There is a place where the dreams live" : portrayals of the South Sea in German language tourist brochures

Abstract

The promotion of places for tourism involves the projection of selective sets of images. Destinations often shape their cultural realities to match successful marketing images. Tourism and its promotion, therefore, generate transformations of a physical and symbolic nature. Beyond their manipulative and stereotyping promotional role, tourist brochures are agents in the ongoing commodification of natural and cultural environments. Tourism-related commercialisation is often viewed as a degenerative process. An alternative perspective acknowledges the risks involved yet also focuses on opportunities to promote cultural identity. Taking such a situational approach, I critically read eighteen German language travel catalogues. The South Sea's core place image emerges as the enduring dream of a feminised, exotic yet comforting paradise. This Fernweh dream occupies the outermost margin of eurocentric symbolic and geographic imagination. My analysis confirms the identity strengthening elements of ritual, myth and utopia as being core symbols of Central European holiday culture. For South Pacific service cultures, I note the risks inherent in perpetuating a romanticising, sexist, essentially neo-colonial place image, exemplified by the patronising portrayal of local women as available objects of male sexual desire.