Package holidays and budget tourism. Oh no, ‘not a dreadful, sunburnt package holiday’!!.

Micheal John law investigates the package holiday in his book, ‘A World Away: The British Package Holiday Boom, 1950–1974’ (2022). 1950s- 1/16 British people went on holiday abroad, which rose to 1/ 10 by end of 50s. 1950-1974 significant as period of change in british holiday styles. Increase in  working class and middle class people flying abroad/ package tours. From belgium, netherlands, ireland to the med. Package holidays provided an insulating experience for those who wanted to go abroad for the first time (In 50s, to do this alone, would need a significant amount of cultural capital). 

Restless generation patrick rivers- describing the changing nature of the british holiday maker in med. The Med, hither to the reserve of poets, painters, invalids and the idle rich suddenly became the playground of Birmingham and Bermondsey. People who have become resigned to a denial of achievement within a society which extolled it, discovered that for two whole weeks they could live as they would like to live the whole year round. The duller their lives, the greater was the desire for stimulation, and the more desperate was the urge to taste the good life and emulate the lucky ones. Common view? Quite a few were writing in newspapers and books like this. Rivers' argument against mass travel as having a spoiling effect on the countryside. Quite a few writers used disease metaphors, incursion, vulgarity, ignorance, and saw package holidays as inauthentic.  Idea of the Working class as ‘mass’ has quite old origins. Victorian period- if you live in identical housing, you have identical views.


AUTHENTICITY as a recurring concept through which scholars comprehend the complexity of an individual's experience overseas. BUT, What counts as ‘authentic?’ Kaylan schwarz- authenticity is a social construction, rather than real or objective thing. How people conceive authenticity is to do with where they place boundaries. Tourism studies- authenticity is a projection onto what and who is being toured. Ascribed to other places, people, drawn from a combination of personal beliefs and expectations, travel advertisements, popular media representation, stereotyped imagery.

‘Tourist’ often used pejoratively. Travelers strive towards authenticity and package tourism only undermines this goal. Seen negatively, characterised as crude, self indulgent, satisfied with highly commodifed generic tourism products.

Tell us more about western ways of seeing than the places or people being gazed upon. Reverse the gaze- what is an authentic UK experience.