At home away from home: visitor accommodation and place attachment

Abstract

Second-home owners often establish deep connections with their dwellings, and the broader landscapes of which these dwellings are part. In this research, we consider whether, and to what extent, visitors to commercial tourist accommodation also experience feelings of place attachment and home. These issues were investigated via a case study approach, centred on a youth hostel located in a high-amenity coastal area of New Zealand. The hostel's publicly available visitor books were analysed to draw out expressions of people-place relationships, as well as key demographic information. Five themes were identified in visitors' written reflections: repeat visits; home experience; identity and feeling; escape; and social landscape. Like the second home, the hostel provided a set of experiences considered very distinct from the typically city-based primary home, centred on a sense of freedom, relaxation and proximity to nature. It was paradoxically regarded as a place to seek change as well as familiarity. We conclude that for first-time visitors home-like experiences appear to be stimulated by social encounters and the physical environment, while for returnees they are underscored by familiarity and endorsement of identity over time.

The challenge of proximity: the (un)attractiveness of near-home tourism destinations

“…The extensive scholarship on second-home tourism points to a tendency to mix touristic needs and activities with everyday life environments (Marjavaara, 2008;Mottiar & Quinn, 2003;M€ uller, 2011). The second-home tourism contexts highlights how tourist experiences are possible physically very close to home, while at the same time demonstrating the importance of building place attachment and a sense of familiarity through tourism, at places other than one's main residence (Wildish, Kearns, & Collins, 2016). In sum, subjectivities of proximity and distance are central to one of the main paradoxes of tourism.…”

Examining Structural Relationships among Brand Experience, Existential Authenticity, and Place Attachment in Slow Tourism Destinations

“…However, this relationship had no clear conclusion so far in prior studies. Some studies argued that perceived authenticity could be impacted by place attachment [14,15], while other studies suggested the opposite relations [4,[18][19][20]. Few studies have focused on how to utilize the authentic experience to make tourists more attached to a destination.…”

Swiss second-home owners’ intentions of changing housing patterns

“…This also stems from the common view on relatively weak affective bonds with place among mobile individuals (Cuba and Hummon, 1993), confronted with the general reluctance towards further re-location among those expressing strong place attachment (Tuulentie and Heimtun, 2014). Since "modernity has changed society to a state of great mobility where people have social networks beyond their local area" (Aronsson, 2004, p. 75), however, the notion of a second home presupposes sharing place attachment in two or more (multiple) distinct locations: permanent and holiday home(s) (Wildish et al, 2016).…”