From local to global (and back): Towards glocal ethnographies of cultural tourism

Researching cultural tourism, covering the gamut from global standards of hospitality to dyadic host-guest interactions, is a fascinating but challenging endeavour. Since travel-for-leisure is a multi-layered phenomenon, many studies fail to understand and explain it adequately. Using a research project in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, as an example, I demonstrate how a “glocal ethnography” approach helps to capture the details of the local cultural tourism scene while at the same time it pays attention to how that lived reality is firmly embedded in and continuously interacting with supralocal processes. Cultural tourism offers many possibilities for glocal ethnographies, especially where international tourists meet local manufacturers, retailers, and service providers in the production, representation, and consumption of glocalized tourism goods and services. I illustrate the potential as well as weaknesses of the methodology with ethnographic examples on cultural tour guiding. For those researchers wanting to conduct in-depth studies, glocal ethnography offers a valuable innovative methodology. By engaging in a genuine holistic approach, tourism scholars have a great opportunity to take the lead, thereby demystifying the common stereotype that all they are able to do is applied quantitative research.status: publishe