Discovering the ‘heart’ in heartland tourism

ABSTRACT

The emergence of the Singapore heartland as a tourist environment is explored. The ‘heartland’ refers to suburban residential neighbourhoods, often sited away from mainstream attractions and iconic landmarks, and seldom visited by mass tourists. The increasing trend of visitors to the heartlands and companies offering heartland tours is studied. Applying the concepts of ‘frontstage’ (featuring mainstream attractions) and ‘backstage’ (offering alternative sites), the production and consumption of heartland spaces are interrogated. The notion of ‘tourism place making’ is also introduced as we look at how tour companies attempt to ‘make places’ in the heartlands that appeal to visitors, and how tourists in turn ‘place make’ as they experience the landscapes. We argue, however, that there are limits to place making. Just as tour companies are incapable of transforming spaces into affective landscapes of tourism, likewise travellers encounter cultural shocks and other difficulties that mitigate against their place attachment. Further research on tourism place making in non-mainstream sites is required if we are to fully appreciate the complex relations between tourism, people and places.

KEYWORDS:

• Tourism
• frontstage
• backstage
• place making
• Singapore

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The list in Table 1 is based on secondary research on tour companies and packaged tours offering HDB sites as of August 2019.

2 It would be interesting to know how local residents feel about being watched by tourists, and in turn how tourists feel about being watched by locals. This ‘mutual gaze’ (Moaz 2006) and their ethical implications are beyond the scope of the present study but is a topic worthy of further investigation (see ‘Conclusion’ of this paper).

3 Respondents were able to select more than one response to this question. Although 28.3 % responded that they prefer to sign up for tours to prominent tourist sites, we should not interpret this to mean over 70 per cent would prefer heartland tours. The general lack of awareness of such tours means only a niche group of interested tourists exists. With the average length of stay in Singapore at 3.4 days in 2019, the chances of visiting the heartlands remain slim for most visitors.

4 ‘Hawker Centres’ refer to food centres; the ‘void deck’ refers to the empty space on the ground-level of HDB flats. Today, some void decks comprise eateries catering to nearby residents.

5 How place-making plays out in a non-commercial setting such as couch-surfing will be interesting to study. Without obligation to fulfil a tour guide’s script or promote a particular government policy, the interactions between hosts and guests might be different from that of commercialized tour. Whether this gets the tourist closer to the illusive Stage 6 is open to question. We thank a reviewer for highlighting this point to us.