‘Travelling down memory lane’: personal memory as a generator of tourism

Abstract

Journeys undertaken to revisit places associated with one's own life history, including travel in pursuit of happy childhood memories and return trips to places of personal tragedy, are conceptualized as a distinct form of tourism, labelled ‘memory trips’ or ‘personal memory tourism’. The research is theoretically anchored primarily within the field of memory studies and draws from scholarly literature on identity, authenticity and experience. A phenomenological research approach, involving interviews is combined with author-centred methodologies, notably reflexivity, auto-ethnography and self-experimentation. The combination of the interviews, which showed that many participants had undertaken such journeys, and the self-experimentation leads to insights about the constructedness of the touristic experience and how awareness of a concept can influence perceptions of a journey. Findings moreover show that memory trips were often undertaken with a significant other, or even for the sake of that other, hence suggesting a motivation connected with issues of identity and consolidation of the self. Popularizing the concept of personal memory tourism can create greater awareness of an individual's travel behaviour and experiences and potentially generate a more conscious desire to undertake such journeys, especially amongst ageing tourists. This opens up new avenues for tourism marketing, product development and other benefits for the industry.

Keywords:

• memory
• tourism
• return travel
• heritage
• identity
• revisiting
• memory trip
• personal memory tourism
• memory sites
• experience

Acknowledgements

I wish to thank all interviewees for their participation in this research and their frankness in sharing with me very personal experiences and memories. I'm also grateful to the anonymous reviewers of this paper who provided constructive suggestions and valuable intellectual input.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sabine Marschall

Sabine Marschall is associate professor in Cultural and Heritage Tourism at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa. Her research focuses on cultural heritage, commemoration, memory and tourism. Her most recent book, Landscape of Memory: Commemorative Monuments, Memorials and Public Statuary in Post-apartheid South Africa, was published by Brill in 2010.