Utilising collaborative autoethnography in exploring affinity tourism: insights from experiences in the Field at Gardens by the Bay

This chapter considers how a collaborative autoethnographic (CAE) approach informed and lent insight into our research. The research explored how affinity tourism can ignite interest in the not-so-familiar and through the familiar connect visitors with the foreign or exotic in a destination. In the process, it focused on the case of the Gardens by the Bay in Singapore (The Gardens) and CAE and so, allowed for use of ‘reflexivity’ to explore and examine how the phenomenon of affinity tourism plays a role in enhancing the efficacy of attractions as tourism resources. The concept of affinity refers to tourists’ activities that involve elements that are familiar to tourists. These recognisable aspects conjure notions of a shared or similar cultural understanding and draw tourist to attractions, events or destinations. By engaging a CAE approach that is grounded in reflexivity, this chapter presents accounts of the experiences of two people who employed CAE as a way to explore and understand how they as people of one culture (Australian) could connect with and learn about the culture of ‘The Other’, in this case Singaporean. It explains how engagement with a coresearcher who encountered the same tourist activity and experienced it in similar or different ways opens up opportunities for new insights about The Other. Use of participant observation, photographs and diary notes assisted in crafting of narratives, which when shared and probed contributed to exploration of the expectations and perceptions of the authors themselves as tourists and as researchers in their endeavours to engage with The Other. In so doing, this chapter advances knowledge about methodological approaches in exploring tourists’ experiences and affinity tourism and contributes to a growing interest in reflexivity as a valuable and valid tool for conducting tourism research. It shows the contribution, credibility and limitations which CAE can bring to tourism research