Low cost airlines, natural disasters, regional competition, tightening visa rules and terrorism have all changed backpacking in South East Asia.
Dr Mark Hampton, Reader in Tourism Management at the University of Kent’s Business School, (KBS) in a new paper Change, Choice, and Commercialization: Backpacker Routes in Southeast Asia for the international journal Growth and Change, describes how the backpacker is now less of an independent traveller and is increasingly more like a conventional tourist.
In the paper, co-written with Professor Amran Hamzah of Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Dr Hampton argues that there is an increasing process of convergence between backpackers and conventional tourism. Dr Hampton says it became clear that many backpackers had perceptions of the ‘exotic’ northern route with exciting new destinations in Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam and most recently Myanmar (Burma). This image was partially constructed informally by other backpackers, but increasingly was being manufactured by travel firms and official tourism planning and marketing.
The Southern trail has also undergone modification and Dr Hampton found rural enclaves interspersed with ‘holiday within holiday’ beach destinations. In some cases they found increasing provision of more upmarket, capital-intensive flashpacker accommodation. In these rural enclaves, businesses only provided basic facilities but often had high quality attractions or activities such as scuba diving in the Perhentian islands and Koh Tao, or jungle or hill treks inland.
Policies of encouraging small-scale tourist enterprise, could concentrate tourism in fewer destinations, and raises the possibility of anti-competitive behaviour. For the backpackers themselves, it appears that their journey choices, and the possibilities of true independent or even spontaneous travel, have been largely reduced.
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