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Cultural Tourism and Tourism Cultures: The Business of Mediating Experiences in Copenhagen and Singapore. By CANG-SENG OOI. Copenhagen: Copenhagen Business School Press, 2002. 277 pp. $31.00, euro32.00 (paper).
In Cultural Tourism and Tourism Cultures, Cang-Seng Ooi "examine[s] the role of mediators in cultural tourism" (p. 2). The author's objective is one of increasing interest to tourism scholars as they think beyond the boundaries of the well-worn dichotomy "hosts and guests" and examine the space and actors who fit somewhere in the middle of those two seemingly opposite positions. Tourism interactions extend beyond simple interactions between those who tour and those who are toured upon. Ooi's analysis of the Copenhagen and Singapore tourism boards' promotion and production of cultural tourism provides a welcome contribution.
The volume's organizational framework is relatively straightforward, moving from theory to context to case-study materials. Chapters 2 and 3 provide the theoretical background, while chapter 4 bridges the early theoretical chapters to the more place-specific chapters 5 through 8. The latter chapters compare the strategies of Copenhagen's and Singapore's tourism boards, the Danish Tourism Board, "Wonderful Copenhagen," and the Singapore Tourism Board. Specifically, Ooi analyzes how the tourism boards "recenter" culture by adopting strategies to create a sense of place through destination branding, a sense of authenticity in "living" cultures, and a sense history in...