After studying in the Bachelor of Tourism Management for over two years I finally got to attend classes that relate to that subject and one of the first definitions we had to read about was “Definition of tourism”. There have been many different ideas of how to define what a tourist is definition from the United Nations which states “A visitor (domestic, inbound or outbound) is classified as a tourist (or overnight visitor) if his/her trip includes an overnight stay, or as a same-day visitor (or excursionist) otherwise” (United Nations, 2010) was approved the World Tourism Organization in 1963. Reading about these definitions got me thinking to myself ‘Am I a Tourist?’
This question might be a bit silly at first because it obviously depends on the situation I’m in but this question I was mainly considering about a trip I took to Iceland earlier this year, shortly before the Covid-19 pandemic started spreading around the globe. During this trip I was able to see most of my family and friends for the first time in over a year and I was able to go back and explore the nature that Iceland has to offer, very interesting to visit these places again after being in British Columbia for a while, it helped me gain a new perspective on what my home country has to offer. We spent most of our time travelling around the country in my dad’s spare car, in the south at my family farm as well as headed up north to explore.
During this trip I was fulfilled all the requirements of a tourist, however, I was not doing the same things as most tourists such as paying for a hotel, paying for guided tours, visiting museum or other activities that most tourists take part in. I borrowed my dad’s car the same way as when I didn’t have a car before I moved to Canada, I stayed in a spare room with a family member, at my family farm or at a small cottage owned by a family member whilst travelling, and travelled to places that I knew about rather than popular tourism locations. Despite fulfilling the definition of a tourist, I don’t feel as if I was a tourist because I was just visiting home country. So that leads to my initial question, am I a tourist?
But my Finnish partner who was not just visiting their home country, what about her?
