Tourist skills

Mertena, Ilze ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2135-0467, Kaaristo, Maarja and Edensor, Tim (2022) Tourist skills. Annals of Tourism Research, 94. p. 103387. ISSN 0160-7383

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Abstract

This study extends the theoretical debate on skills as an important element of tourism as a practice. Analysing qualitative data on train and canal boating tourism in the UK, we discuss how some tourism practices require both specialist and commonplace skills, while others only need the latter. Moreover, every tourism practice is skilled, and all skills are learned and portable from the context in which they were acquired to new situations and practices in tourism. Any tourism practice requires a skill-kit: a complex of skills that emerges to facilitate a given tourism practice. Therefore, the tourist skills make tourism practices largely effortless and enjoyable, allowing tourists to respond creatively and with confidence to the variations of the surrounding environment.