Theoretical Contribution

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capture clearer differences between travelers coming from different background. That issue is discussed later in the section discussing limitations and future directions.

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Figure 6. 1. Simplified Visualization: ‘The Backpack Model’

Source: Researcher’s interpretation

Figure 6.1 termed as ‘The Backpack Model’, narrates, conceptualizes, and visualizes the model of ‘6As of Budget Travel’ into a sketch of a backpack. The factor

‘affordability’ the most fundamental consideration for budget travelers. Concern on the budget is the most obvious character of backpackers (Locker-Murphy & Pearce, 1995;

Hampton & Hamzah, 2010; Riley, 1988; ten Have, 1974). It is positioned in the base, portraying itself as a mattress or sleeping bag that usually attached to a backpack. As indicated by the model, the concern on budget is covering three factors: attraction, accessibility, and amenities – which are parallel to the resources and supplies that carried in a backpack. The relationship is depicted by the intersecting boxes.

‘Attraction’ is the main object that travelers are seeking to encounter and among the most significant factor according to previous study by Crouch (20110. However, this research argues that it’s not always the case since not all budget travelers are

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oriented. Accessibility functions to facilitate tourists to, from, and in the destination. It is always a concern for travelers (Crouch, 2011; McKercher, 1998; Murphy, 2001). And amenities signify the importance of infrastructures, as also emphasized in many works (Buhalis, 2000; Crouch & Ritchie, 1999; Dwyer & Kim, 2003).

The ‘atmosphere’ affects the ambiance in those three aforementioned factors. As elaborated earlier, ambiance affects the tourist experience while visiting attractions, staying in destinations in which backpackerish ambiance is an essential thing for budget accommodation, as well as the atmosphere while taking transportation that could be an attraction for backpackers. The importance of atmosphere is also noted in the studies by Dwyer and Kim (2003), Enright and Newton (2004) and Lee and King (2006). Visual-wise, it is portrayed by the intersection of those boxes. This box can be thought as supporting tools or equipment that is light, so it is put on top of other stuff in the backpack, but it is as important as others.

The ‘amplifier’ literally wraps the factors altogether and become the face of the backpack that represents the perceived perception of a destination from outside. As argued by Dwyer and Kim (2003), the actual visitation depends on the match between tourist preferences and perceived offerings. In terms of analogy, one can simply imagine it as the backpack cover. And as mentioned earlier, some backpackers who arguably the adventurers or the authentic drifters might be immune to this factor – as it can be found that some travelers might not always put a bag cover on their backpack.

The narration, conceptualization, and visualization of this model are intended to summarize the concept into something easier to comprehend. However, the content of this model is not entirely different from the competitiveness model targeting tourists in

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general. This might indicate there is a converging preference in backpacking tourism or mainstreamization.

The Mainstreamization of Backpacking Tourism

This research conceptualizes a model that much inspired by previous works on the generic destination competitiveness model. Furthermore, it is revealed that most of the attributes are coherent with the general model that developed by the “gargantuan compilation of competitiveness factors “, borrowing a phrase used by Mazanet et al.

(2007) to define works by Crouch and Ritchie (1999), Crouch (2011), and Dwyer and Kim (2003).

Several attributes are perceived at various degrees of importance. ‘Price’,

‘diversity’, all attributes in the factor ‘accessibility’, ‘accommodation’, and ‘local atmosphere’ are among attributes that hold more significance for budget travelers. In addition, “safety and security” could be much less important for backpackers, in comparison to regular tourists. Nevertheless, there is one distinguished attribute that might be the most unique identity of what the backpackers seek in a destination. It is

‘work availability’. This attribute is almost unknown for regular tourists since most of the tourists treat travel as a break from routine, thus do not travel for a long period of time, and do not take travel as a way of life or known as “lifestyle” traveler (Cohen, 2011).

Due to similarities shared between the generic model and the proposed model here, it is interpreted that backpacking tourism has experienced mainstreamization. This type of travel is no longer unique. This tendency might have already been observed by scholars, such as Cohen (1973) who further classifies his classical concept of “the drifters” into different types based on their motivation and period of travel, including to

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coin a term “mass drifter”, leaving “the adventurer” as the authentic drifter to become a minority. O’Reilly (2006) argues that backpacking, which used to be considered as a marginal activity taken by society’s drop-outs has now gradually become a mainstream tourist product. Cooper et al. (as cited in Richards & King, 2014) state that the “nomads”

might have joined the mainstream. Larsen et al. (2011) also found there are few motivational differences between budget travelers and mainstream tourists, while confirming slight differences in which budget travelers don’t seek luxury and worry less about terror and foreign cultures.

In the field, this mainstreamization is obviously seen from the “commoditization”

of tourism products targeting backpackers. The term is borrowed from the concept of

“experience economy” developed by Pine & Gilmore (1998), describing the degradation of an economy product that used to offer experience, devolving into a lower level of product offerings, such as service, goods, or even commodities at its lowest level.

Backpacking tourism, a phenomenon that used to be a very personal journey, now becomes a standardized trip with many businesses focus on catering to this segment.

Backpacking, which was once a spiritual “stage” of explorers taking adventurous trips, a

“theatre” of spiritual wanderers seeking enlightenment and the meaning of life, now has devolved into a superficial relationship between businesses and “clients”, facilitating the mere needs to experience the counter-culture or the backpacking sub-culture. They buy commoditized products from the “manufacturers” in the tourism industry, which are the tour operators and travel agencies, that flourishing in backpacker enclaves offering similar services and products with no differentiation. There is only a minimum of

“experience”, if any, that becomes a point of difference in the products, while the most dominant consideration is solely on price. As argued by Spreitzhofer (2010), low-budget travel has become mass tourism that done on low-budget.

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Furthermore on the economic perspective, backpacker destination is usually not that well-planned. Thus when mainstreamization brings mass-tourism in, then some enclaves have started to suffer from overtourism and associated with it (Allon, 2004; Howard, 2005). Consequently, many enclaves are already associated with bad connotations due to backpacker presence. Everything starts to be orientating on price, which starts to deteriorate the destination atmosphere to be very much materialistic and pragmatic.

Moreover, often a destination has no comparative nor comparative advantage to attract the other segment of tourists which makes it difficult to shift into another type of tourism.

In the long run, there is a possibility that the destination would lose any of its attractiveness and competitiveness, making tourism is no longer a relevant nor a contributing industry for the host city.

Mainstreamization of backpacking tourism is inevitable. This is the future challenge for destination planners, businesses, and other stakeholders. Then how should they deal with this issue? This research might have several suggestions that might help to tackle the problems. The countermeasures are divided into the supply and demand side.

From the supply side, the idea is to increase the supply. It can be done through developing other enclaves and promoting destinations so the tourist concentration would disperse into other points. The concept of sharing-economy like AirBnb or Uber can instantly expand the supply because they are already there but only in latent presence.

Nevertheless, it should be regulated to prevent the community and other industries suffer from it. In order to cope with the devolution of backpacking tourism into commoditized products, then it should re-evolve its offering by emphasizing unique, memorable, and valuable experience as the point of difference, instead of solely on price. The most challenging constraint for this suggestion is that the target market has a tight budget constraint, obliges the possible alternatives to be low-cost. As the way out, one of the

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alternatives that this research suggests to develop is volunteer tourism, which is closely related to backpackers (Ooi & Laing, 2009). This might be a means to reinvent backpacking back into experience-based tourism, while at the same time allow the backpackers to contribute more to the host society through non-financial form. Argued by Mustonen (2008), volunteer tourism might be seen as the post-modern pilgrimage and altruistic tourism will likely become a trend in the future. UNWTO (2016) also emphasizes the possibility of “purposeful travel”, in form of volunteering, language-learning, and work-and-study, that allows the travelers to enjoy benefits of self-development while having impact to the local community. To summarize, the idea of reinvention of experience economy could be the key to face the challenge of mainstreamization. Figure 6.2 illustrates the idea of reinventing backpacking experience.

On the demand side, the basic idea of countermeasure is to control the demand. One of the means is by setting a minimum threshold of price on tourism products such as accommodation, entrance, food, and so on. It will filter some budget travelers out since the scope of target market is narrowed due to affordability issue and also force travelers to spend more. Other tactics could be less harsh, which is to educate backpackers on how to behave or how to become a responsible tourist. Scheyvens (2002, p.144) uses the phrase “overcoming the self-centered attitudes of backpackers who might behave irresponsibly”. It can be implemented through various means, e.g., putting more signs on dos and don’ts, distributing booklets, and so on. It also covers encouraging the influencers such as travel writers or bloggers of which many backpackers refer to, to make more inspiring content instead of simply having fun at the cheapest cost while visiting a destination.

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Figure 6. 2. The Evolution of Backpacking Tourism Source: Researcher’s interpretation

As a conclusion, backpacking tourism is experiencing mainstreamization. That phenomenon and its effects (especially overtourism) are inevitable. However, several countermeasures can be taken in order to deal with the challenges. The mainstreamization of backpacking tourism has also resulted in the concept of “mass-drifters” (Cohen, 1973), which arguably becomes the majority of backpackers nowadays. The discussion on who contemporary backpackers are and its alternative typology is discussed subsequently.

Understanding Who Backpackers Are

This research is still unable to define perfectly who backpackers are, as previous works failed to do so. The constraint is that backpackers are multi-faceted, diverse, and heterogeneous (Ateljevic & Doorne, 2000; Cohen, 2004; Maoz, 2007; Sorensen, 2003;

Uriely et al., 2002). However, this research adopts an operational or working definition as follows, that captures two most obvious universal characteristics of backpackers, that are low budget and long travel time.

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“those who travel on (low) budget, very cost-conscious, or price-sensitive;

and travel for a long period of time - more than a month away from his or her own country”

Furthermore, this research might provide a base argument for alternative typology in classifying backpackers based on the proposed model of 6 As of Budget Travel. As a speculative prototype of research, the proposed typology can be drawn as a continuum over a line, with two extremes. One extreme on the right denotes the very importance of that factor according to the backpackers, resulting in a specific term for the backpackers sharing this characteristic. Meanwhile extreme on the left portrays the term for backpackers who consider the factor to be least important. Figure 6.3 visualizes the concept.

Figure 6. 3. Speculative Typology of Backpackers According to Their Sought Attribute Source: Researcher’s interpretation

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A backpacker can be on either side for each factor. One can be an accountant, an anti-tourist, a navigator, a humble, an ethnographer, and an opinionated traveler – which depicts the ideal authentic drifter or the “adventurer”, according to Cohen’s (1972; 1973) typology. This might cover a wide range of variations that might exist in defining backpackers according to their preference for destination attributes.

Those are three contributions that this research might have. Following its academic contributions, the research might also offer some practical uses. This is discussed in the next section.