Sensory tourism

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Sensory tourism is a form of tourism, that caters for people with vision impairment. Those suffering from vision impairment face many difficulties based around mainstream tourism such as access to information, navigation, safety and the knowledge of others around them. [1] This has caused the visionless members of society to travel much less than those with no vision impairment. Combining the theories behind tourism in terms of its psychology and its relation to the senses, an inclusive experience for the visually disabled was developed. [2] Sensory tourism engages the physical and multi-sensory aspects of tourism, enhancing the tourism experience specifically for those with, but also benefitting those without vision impairment. [3]

Contents

The Psychology of Tourism

Historically, regular tourism is heavily focused on sightseeing, rather than memories and experiences gained from travelling. [2] Based on recent reviews of the psychology of tourism, it is argued that a tourists experience of a place is based upon the individuals memory, [4] which is actively shaped by what they see, but also what they “hear, smell, touch and taste.” [5] In order to build a pleasurable tourism experience for those who are vision impaired, but also those who are not, discovery of a place should be based on “social and cultural” experiences. [6] Adding to this, the traveller’s anticipation and participation for future trips are based on previous "emotions, satisfactions, and memories of experiences prior," [7] which can often be a barrier faced by visually impaired travellers.

Briefly, psychology is the "study of the mind and behaviour," which can be easily applied to tourism. [8] It can be said that tourism companies should be "most interested in how tourists think, feel and behave." [9] This is because, generally, psychology is based around a vast range of ideas, these mainly being "theories and methods" for explaining human behaviour and experience, which can in turn be applied to, and effect a tourist's experience. [9] This "breadth and intense scrutiny of human behaviour" can be a rich resource in understanding the factors that make up a positive experience that a tourist undertakes. Applying psychology to the context of sensory tourism, a travelling experience for someone with vision impairment should be “considered as a dynamic and reflective process”. [10] This allows those with sight issues a chance to experience a place with their other active senses, leading to further excitement for future tourism experiences. Through enhanced interaction with “physical, social, and virtual environmental stimuli,” [6] the visually impaired can base their travel experience on psychological factors other than sight.

The Senses in Tourism

The five senses (hearing, sight, taste, smell and touch) and their respective sensory organs inherent among Homo sapiens Five senses.jpg
The five senses (hearing, sight, taste, smell and touch) and their respective sensory organs inherent among Homo sapiens

The senses within the body are how information is collected about a person’s surroundings. [11] In terms of tourism, the “bodily states, situated actions, and mental simulations are used to generate our cognitive activity,” which leads to a tourist having certain memories and attitudes toward places they visit (Krishna, 2012). [12] The senses are considered to be the foundations of how tourists interact with their surroundings, and how they create opinions and make sense of these surroundings. [13] Consequently, the design of sensory tourism should be based around the foundations of knowledge surrounding the bodily senses. [13] Applying an understanding of the senses to tourism for those with vision impairment will enhance their travelling experience through “tactility, aroma, movement and sound,” [14] which allows them to build a positive relationship between the place that they visit, and the meaning associated with that place. [15] Hence, more attention needs to be paid more toward the senses rather than just the visual tourism experience, to ensure these people can still gain an “enriched experience” of places they visit. [3] In turn, those with impaired vision will be able to broaden their horizons. [2]

Diagram showing the parts of the brain Diagram showing the parts of the brain CRUK 476.svg
Diagram showing the parts of the brain

In more scientific terms, the human body uses its nervous system in order to react to certain experiences gained from tourism. Theoretically, this works as a sequence of reactions leading to our brain toward making a perception of the world around us, hence, the senses are a very important aspect of tourism. [16] Each of the five senses are connected to a body part or a sensing organ. For example, sight is perceived by the eyes, taste is detected by tastebuds, smell comes from chemicals floating in the air reaching receptors in the nose, touch is received by neural receptors in the skin and finally, hearing is the perception of sound, in which vibrations in the air are perceived by mechanoreceptors in the ear. [17] Once a stimulus is detected at one of these sensing organs of the body, the message is relayed through the “peripheral nervous system to the central nervous system,” to the part of the brain that detects the relevant sense. [17] In terms of what part of the brain in which the senses are processed, smell is “sent directly to the olfactory bulb,” “visual information is processed in the visual cortex of the occipital lobe”, “sound is processed in the auditory cortex of the temporal lobe”, “smells are processed in the olfactory cortex of the temporal lobe”, touch is “processed in the somatosensory cortex of the parietal lobe” and "taste is processed in the gustatory cortex in the parietal lobe.” [17]

In terms of the senses giving someone a perception of a place, the certain senses relayed from the sensory organ, through the nervous system, to the brain for a response will give someone a unique awareness of the place in which they visit. The sensory signals will be relayed from the sensory organ to the brain, in which this information can be stored as a part of an individual’s memory. [18] In terms of tourism, when someone remembers something about a place that they have visited, either a scene, smell, taste, feeling or something they heard, the “sensory processing areas in the brain become activated.” [18] These sensory inputs will also cause us to remember something about a place, causing both positive or negative memories associated with this place to resurface. Once again, this means that all senses, not just sight should be considered by tourism companies in order for both visionless and visioned tourists alike to have the most enhanced experience of a place they visit.

A Gap in the Market

Tourism companies have struggled to adapt to changing industry needs and have “failed to engage seriously with disability issues,” which leads to a negative connotation with visited areas by those of whom choose to visit. [19] World Health Organization estimates that in 2012 there were 285 million people suffering from vision impairment worldwide. [20] As Packer [1] rightfully explains, people with disabilities “have the right to fully participate in the community,” and they should be able to “enjoy the same quality of life” as those without. It goes without saying that this includes tourism, but research shows that people with vision impairment are not travelling as frequently as those without. [1]

This infrequency of vision impaired people travelling is due to the complexity and difficulty of travelling with vision impairment. There are four main factors that create a barrier between tourism and those with vision impairment, these being “accessing information, navigating the physical environment – safety, knowledge and attitudes of others [and] travelling with a Guide Dog.” [1] There is “additional energy required to access” the information needed for those with vision impairment to travel, [1] which makes it difficult for people to access resources and extra help in order to gain the most out of their travel experience, as well as allowing them to gain a positive psychological connotation to their place of visit. Without guidance from knowledgeable people or appropriate animal assistance, navigating foreign terrain can be difficult but also dangerous for visually impaired tourists. Another barrier for travellers that have impaired vision is the limited knowledge and attitudes towards others, which can sometimes cause feelings of exclusion. It is important that tourism companies “manage their tourist experiences closely and constantly,” in order to provide those with visual impairment an enjoyable experience. [21] The tourism industry must understand the psychology and sensory aspects of tourism if “quality accessible experiences are to be available for tourists with vision impairment.” [21]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Perception</span> Interpretation of sensory information

Perception is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the presented information or environment. All perception involves signals that go through the nervous system, which in turn result from physical or chemical stimulation of the sensory system. Vision involves light striking the retina of the eye; smell is mediated by odor molecules; and hearing involves pressure waves.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hallucination</span> Perception in the absence of external stimulation that has the qualities of real perception

A hallucination is a perception in the absence of an external stimulus that has the qualities of a real perception. Hallucinations are vivid, substantial, and are perceived to be located in external objective space. Hallucination is a combination of two conscious states of brain wakefulness and REM sleep. They are distinguishable from several related phenomena, such as dreaming, which does not involve wakefulness; pseudohallucination, which does not mimic real perception, and is accurately perceived as unreal; illusion, which involves distorted or misinterpreted real perception; and mental imagery, which does not mimic real perception, and is under voluntary control. Hallucinations also differ from "delusional perceptions", in which a correctly sensed and interpreted stimulus is given some additional significance. Many hallucinations happen also during sleep paralysis.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sensory nervous system</span> Part of the nervous system responsible for processing sensory information

The sensory nervous system is a part of the nervous system responsible for processing sensory information. A sensory system consists of sensory neurons, neural pathways, and parts of the brain involved in sensory perception and interoception. Commonly recognized sensory systems are those for vision, hearing, touch, taste, smell, balance and visceral sensation. Sense organs are transducers that convert data from the outer physical world to the realm of the mind where people interpret the information, creating their perception of the world around them.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Parietal lobe</span> Part of the brain responsible for sensory input and some language processing

The parietal lobe is one of the four major lobes of the cerebral cortex in the brain of mammals. The parietal lobe is positioned above the temporal lobe and behind the frontal lobe and central sulcus.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Temporal lobe</span> One of the four lobes of the mammalian brain

The temporal lobe is one of the four major lobes of the cerebral cortex in the brain of mammals. The temporal lobe is located beneath the lateral fissure on both cerebral hemispheres of the mammalian brain.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Visual memory</span> Ability to process visual and spatial information

Visual memory describes the relationship between perceptual processing and the encoding, storage and retrieval of the resulting neural representations. Visual memory occurs over a broad time range spanning from eye movements to years in order to visually navigate to a previously visited location. Visual memory is a form of memory which preserves some characteristics of our senses pertaining to visual experience. We are able to place in memory visual information which resembles objects, places, animals or people in a mental image. The experience of visual memory is also referred to as the mind's eye through which we can retrieve from our memory a mental image of original objects, places, animals or people. Visual memory is one of several cognitive systems, which are all interconnected parts that combine to form the human memory. Types of palinopsia, the persistence or recurrence of a visual image after the stimulus has been removed, is a dysfunction of visual memory.

Multisensory integration, also known as multimodal integration, is the study of how information from the different sensory modalities may be integrated by the nervous system. A coherent representation of objects combining modalities enables animals to have meaningful perceptual experiences. Indeed, multisensory integration is central to adaptive behavior because it allows animals to perceive a world of coherent perceptual entities. Multisensory integration also deals with how different sensory modalities interact with one another and alter each other's processing.

Sensory substitution is a change of the characteristics of one sensory modality into stimuli of another sensory modality.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Associative visual agnosia</span> Medical condition

Associative visual agnosia is a form of visual agnosia. It is an impairment in recognition or assigning meaning to a stimulus that is accurately perceived and not associated with a generalized deficit in intelligence, memory, language or attention. The disorder appears to be very uncommon in a "pure" or uncomplicated form and is usually accompanied by other complex neuropsychological problems due to the nature of the etiology. Affected individuals can accurately distinguish the object, as demonstrated by the ability to draw a picture of it or categorize accurately, yet they are unable to identify the object, its features or its functions.

Neural adaptation or sensory adaptation is a gradual decrease over time in the responsiveness of the sensory system to a constant stimulus. It is usually experienced as a change in the stimulus. For example, if a hand is rested on a table, the table's surface is immediately felt against the skin. Subsequently, however, the sensation of the table surface against the skin gradually diminishes until it is virtually unnoticeable. The sensory neurons that initially respond are no longer stimulated to respond; this is an example of neural adaptation.

Sensory processing is the process that organizes and distinguishes sensation from one's own body and the environment, thus making it possible to use the body effectively within the environment. Specifically, it deals with how the brain processes multiple sensory modality inputs, such as proprioception, vision, auditory system, tactile, olfactory, vestibular system, interoception, and taste into usable functional outputs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aura (symptom)</span> Symptom of epilepsy and migraine

An aura is a perceptual disturbance experienced by some with epilepsy or migraine. An epileptic aura is a seizure.

In medicine and anatomy, the special senses are the senses that have specialized organs devoted to them:

Derealization is an alteration in the perception of the external world, causing those with the condition to perceive it as unreal, distant, distorted or falsified. Other symptoms include feeling as if one's environment is lacking in spontaneity, emotional coloring, and depth. It is a dissociative symptom that may appear in moments of severe stress.

The neuroanatomy of memory encompasses a wide variety of anatomical structures in the brain.

Recognition memory, a subcategory of explicit memory, is the ability to recognize previously encountered events, objects, or people. When the previously experienced event is reexperienced, this environmental content is matched to stored memory representations, eliciting matching signals. As first established by psychology experiments in the 1970s, recognition memory for pictures is quite remarkable: humans can remember thousands of images at high accuracy after seeing each only once and only for a few seconds.

A sense is a biological system used by an organism for sensation, the process of gathering information about the world through the detection of stimuli. Although in some cultures five human senses were traditionally identified as such, many more are now recognized. Senses used by non-human organisms are even greater in variety and number. During sensation, sense organs collect various stimuli for transduction, meaning transformation into a form that can be understood by the brain. Sensation and perception are fundamental to nearly every aspect of an organism's cognition, behavior and thought.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Visual capture</span>

In psychology, visual capture is the dominance of vision over other sense modalities in creating a percept. In this process, the visual senses influence the other parts of the somatosensory system, to result in a perceived environment that is not congruent with the actual stimuli. Through this phenomenon, the visual system is able to disregard what other information a different sensory system is conveying, and provide a logical explanation for whatever output the environment provides. Visual capture allows one to interpret the location of sound as well as the sensation of touch without actually relying on those stimuli but rather creating an output that allows the individual to perceive a coherent environment.

Many types of sense loss occur due to a dysfunctional sensation process, whether it be ineffective receptors, nerve damage, or cerebral impairment. Unlike agnosia, these impairments are due to damages prior to the perception process.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Memory</span> Faculty of mind to store and retrieve data

Memory is the faculty of the mind by which data or information is encoded, stored, and retrieved when needed. It is the retention of information over time for the purpose of influencing future action. If past events could not be remembered, it would be impossible for language, relationships, or personal identity to develop. Memory loss is usually described as forgetfulness or amnesia.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Packer, Tanya L (2008). "TOURIST EXPERIENCES OF INDIVIDUALS WITH VISION IMPAIRMENT" (PDF). Curtin University. Retrieved April 1, 2019.
  2. 1 2 3 Clifford, Jessica (2019-03-24). "The life-changing form of tourism that involves everything but sightseeing". ABC News. Retrieved 2019-05-12.
  3. 1 2 Pan, Steve; Ryan, Chris (2009-11-01). "Tourism Sense‐Making: The Role of the Senses and Travel Journalism". Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing. 26 (7): 625–639. doi:10.1080/10548400903276897. hdl: 10397/27922 . ISSN   1054-8408. S2CID   153598874.
  4. ↑ Larsen, Svein (2007-05-01). "Aspects of a Psychology of the Tourist Experience". Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism. 7 (1): 7–18. doi:10.1080/15022250701226014. ISSN   1502-2250. S2CID   144986000.
  5. ↑ Csordas, TJ (1994). Embodiment and experience: The existential ground of culture and self (Vol. 2). Cambridge University Press.
  6. 1 2 Tussyadiah, I., & Fesenmaier, D. R. (2009). "Mediating tourist experiences: access to places". Annals of Tourism Research. 36 (1): 24–40. doi:10.1016/j.annals.2008.10.001.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  7. ↑ Ek, R., Larsen, J., Hornskov, S. B., & Mansfeldt, O. K. (2008). "A dynamic framework of tourist experiences: Space‐time and performances in the experience economy". Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism. 8 (2): 122–140. doi:10.1080/15022250802110091. S2CID   154921026.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  8. ↑ "What is Psychology? | Simply Psychology". www.simplypsychology.org. Retrieved 2019-06-06.
  9. 1 2 Pearce (2013). "Minds on the move: New links from psychology to tourism" (PDF). Annals of Tourism Research. 40: 386–411. doi:10.1016/j.annals.2012.10.002.
  10. ↑ Schmitt, B (1999). "Experiential marketing". Journal of Marketing Management. 15 (1–3): 53–67. doi:10.1362/026725799784870496.
  11. ↑ Jeongmi Jamie Kim, Daniel R. Fesenmaier (2015). "DESIGNING TOURISM PLACES: UNDERSTANDING THE TOURISM EXPERIENCE THROUGH OUR SENSES". Travel and Tourism Research Association: Advancing Tourism Research Globally. 19: 1–6.
  12. ↑ Krishna, A (2012). "An integrative review of sensory marketing: Engaging the senses to affect perception, judgment and behavior". Journal of Consumer Psychology. 22 (3): 332–351. doi:10.1016/j.jcps.2011.08.003. hdl: 2027.42/142108 . S2CID   12584361.
  13. 1 2 Gretzel, U., & Fesenmaier, D (2003). "Experience-based internet marketing: an exploratory study of sensory experiences associated with pleasure travel to the Midwest United States". Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism: 49–57.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  14. ↑ Small, Jennie; Darcy, Simon; Packer, Tanya (August 2012). "The embodied tourist experiences of people with vision impairment: Management implications beyond the visual gaze". Tourism Management. 33 (4): 941–950. doi:10.1016/j.tourman.2011.09.015.
  15. ↑ Tuan, Y.F (1977). Space and place: The perspective of experience . U of Minnesota Press.
  16. ↑ Joeel, R (2017). "Psychological Theory on the Five Human Senses". Sciencing. Retrieved 28 June 2019.
  17. 1 2 3 Bailey, Regina (2018). "The Five Senses and How They Work". Thought Co. Retrieved 28 June 2019.
  18. 1 2 "Sensory Systems Work Together". learn.genetics.utah.edu. Retrieved 2019-05-28.
  19. ↑ Richards, Victoria; Pritchard, Annette; Morgan, Nigel (October 2010). "(Re)Envisioning tourism and visual impairment". Annals of Tourism Research. 37 (4): 1097–1116. doi:10.1016/j.annals.2010.04.011.
  20. ↑ "Vision impairment and blindness". www.who.int. Retrieved 2019-05-12.
  21. 1 2 Small, Jennie; Darcy, Simon; Packer, Tanya (August 2012). "The embodied tourist experiences of people with vision impairment: Management implications beyond the visual gaze". Tourism Management. 33 (4): 941–950. doi:10.1016/j.tourman.2011.09.015.
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