Elite mobilities: the semiotic landscapes of luxury and privilege

Abstract

Tourism is immensely powerful in (re)organising large-scale inequalities and privileges. In the rapid expansion of ‘luxury tourism’ we find a wing of this truly global culture industry openly committed to the symbolic production of elite status, distinction and privilege. Our visual essay here offers a series of multimodal, multi-voiced statements arising from a research project that explores and critiques the lavish semiotic economies and strict interactional orders of these ‘new’ elite mobilities. Mimicking the fleeting encounters of super-elite travellers themselves, we undertook a series of ethnographically grounded but patently frugal sorties into five different spaces (or modes) of luxury travel. Drawing on our own fieldwork material and quoting the visual rhetoric of advertisers, we trace the normative production of an ostensibly enclavic landscape that imagines (or re-imagines) limitless aspirations and unbounded pleasures for all consumer-citizens regardless of their power or wealth.

Keywords:

• elitism
• luxury
• tourism
• class
• symbolic capital
• space/place

Acknowledgements

It has been our impression that, from our first attempts to undertake this programme of research on super-elite or so-called ‘luxury’ travel, we have constantly met with a mixture of entrenched resistance (‘this is not an appropriate topic for funding’) or naïve ridicule (‘oh, research indeed!’). The wry remarks we quickly understood; the institutional reluctance, however, took a little longer to work out. We now recognise that, for all sorts of practical and political reasons, there is sometimes a steep challenge for academics wanting to turn their critical, investigative attention to the powerful, the rich, the elite. These are, of course, the people who pay to remove and protect themselves from unwanted attention. As Tom Nakayama and Robert Krizek express it: ‘When we try to pin it down, the center always seems to be somewhere else’. Therein lies the true privilege of elite mobility. It is for this very reason that we are especially grateful for the research grant and subsequent fellowship Crispin was awarded by the University of Washington's Royalty Research Fund and the Simpson Center for the Humanities. Crispin is also grateful to Jerry Baldasty who, as chair of Communication at the University of Washington, backed this project in key ways. For their on-the-ground support, we thank the Head of Public Relations at the Burj al Arab and the Train Manager of the Orient Express. Thanks to Cundard Lines and All Nippon Airways for permission to use their ads. Every reasonable effort was made to trace copyright holders and we are pleased to be able to quote the advertisements for the purposes of our scholarly analysis and critique. Last but not least, our very special thanks go to Shannon Palmer and Paul Ford for their design support.

Notes

1. Information from: Guardian (2001). See also Guardian (2007).

2. Image on p. 1: Looking down into the atrium of the Burj al Arab hotel.

3. Image on p. 6: Looking up at the Dale Chihuly installation in the lobby of the Bellagio hotel.