Slow travel: issues for tourism and climate change

Abstract

This paper analyses the eclectic evolution of slow travel, examines key features and interpretations, and develops a slow travel framework as an alternative way of conceptualising holidays in the future. The paper focuses on slow travel's potential to respond to the challenges of climatic change: travel currently accounts for 50-97.5% of the overall emissions impact of most tourism trips. In-depth interviews with self-identified slow travellers illustrate and underpin the concept and note that slow travellers form a continuum from "soft" to "hard" slow travellers. The paper explores time as a social institution, timeless time and fragmented time, travel as an integral part of the tourist experience, and the links between tourism and the travellers' self-identity and lifestyles. Special attention is given to people and place engagement, to behavioural choice and decision-making psychology, and to the role and growth of web communities. Slow travel is shown to require both holiday type/style choices and travel mode choices. Walking, cycling, travel using bus, coach and train all facilitate slow travel, while air and car travel do not. Slow travel prompts a reassessment of how tourism interfaces with transport.

Consumer behaviour in tourism: Concepts, influences and opportunities

“…This issue merits further attention, as do the situational factors that may hinder ethical consumption; this represents a knowledge gap in tourism, but also in the CB literature more widely (Bray et al, 2011). Further work is thus needed on the availability of ethical tourism alternatives, such as forms of slow travel (Dickinson, Lumsdon, & Robbins, 2011), and the structural factors impeding consumers in the uptake of more sustainable travel behaviour (e.g. high rail costs versus low-cost airline fares).…”

Tourism as connectedness

“…For example, journeys to destinations (Dickinson, Lumsden, and Robbins 2011), meeting strangers at train stations (Hibbert, Dickinson, Gössling, and Curtin 2013) or virtually online (before, during or after travel) through web travel forums or social media (Gössling and Stavrindini 2015) are all opportunities for connectedness.…”

Development of Slow Tourism Challenge and Operation Architecture: A Case Study on Green Island, Taiwan

“…Nonetheless, avoiding taking airplanes would restrict the choice of tourism and result in the conflict between travel decisions. Dickinson et al (2011) proposed the factors of environmental awareness, activity pattern, and tourist experience in choosing tourism patterns and classified slow travelers as "hard slow travelers" and "soft slow travelers". Hard slow travelers stressed more on environmental awareness than on activity patterns and tourist experiences, while soft slow travelers focused more on activity patterns and tourist experiences, in spite of avoiding engaging in high carbon emission activities and behaviors.…”

“…According to the classification of slow travelers by Dickinson et al (2011), most consumers participating in slow tourism in Green Island are Soft Slow travelers. In other words, such consumers emphasize the experiences in the activities, in addition to slowness and low-carbon.…”