Personifying the peculiarities of pilgrims in places
Mind your Ps and Qs (25)
Pilgrims are travelers with distinct goals. Their journeys are long and often arduous. While we admire their devotion and determination, we often fail to recognize the efforts of millions of people who facilitate and expedite, aid and abet, and help these devotees and zealots achieve goal fulfillment. The seers, sponsors, supporters and service providers who provide sustenance along the way…the unsung heroes whose labor and toil is often ignored and taken for granted…the personification of their sacrifice that others attribute only to pilgrims on a pilgrimage.
While Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Stoics would prefer that we accept living in the present and learn to live at home like travelers, they do not ignore the challenges on the flipside…the making and being of gracious hosts. It may be a truism to note how little we know about the places in which we reside and live, yet we neglect to consider the day-in day-out travails of everybody who serves in the capacity of community hosts, the capabilities they require and challenges they face in doing their jobs, managing their enterprises, and leading in accord with the principles of hospitality.
We should know better. After all, we are all travelers curious about what and who is over the horizon, across the seas, and beyond the boundaries that serve to separate and distinguish us from each other. Outward-bound we go. While our travels are brief pleasure-seeking respites, even when some are promoted as challenging, soul-searching adventures, our enjoyment, learning, growth, and safety are almost always facilitated by the efforts of others, our hosts and tour guides.
Like strangers we wander but make feeble attempts to connect, truly connect. It is difficult, especially when we remain self-centered or lack the time, inclination or language proficiency, though that need not be the case. If we utilize slow travel to help us marinate in place, warp beliefs and the familiar, help discover who we are or want to be, and avert the process of `othering` that is a denial of the collective us, we are so much better for it. As we know from our own journeys, it takes work and effort on behalf of both hosts and guests if they choose to connect.
To a vast extent, however, hosting communities tend to be preoccupied with the viability of their politicized economies, citizens with their individual personal, family and work lives. Everyone caught up in prosaic thought, head down, scrolling, digitally connected, less humanly connected. By doing so they too ignore or limit valuable opportunities to engage and make meaningful contact, unless or until we, as travelers, make the effort and express interest beyond that which is transactional.
I am always amazed how hosting communities purposefully invite people from around the world to visit, yet rarely ensure that their hosting responsibilities extend beyond providing baseline or functional requirements of their clients (guests actually, but it doesn’t often seem so), particularly anything that might be deemed transformational or transcendent.
Why? As hosts or guests, we may not want to admit this, but we have tendencies to place ourselves, unwittingly or knowingly, above the pattern of belonging and the reciprocal web of life, forgetting or unwary as to how deeply inter-connected we are or should be within the world, how influential our individual and collective impacts.
While contentious blame is commonly directed at individuals, their ignorance and apprehensiveness, I contend that as hosts, we are obliged to give greater thought and attention not only to our collective responsibilities in shifting or altering adverse attitudes and behaviors, but to building and strengthening meaningful and long-lasting relationships with our guests. In doing so, though, we should always be wary of the precariousness and complexity of the ‘live and let live’ moral precept especially when the ultimate requirement is to be respectful.
Just as we ‘puzzle our way through paucity, privation and peace’ (the subject of the previous two-part article), we need to prepare ourselves for experiential journeys dedicated to building and strengthening meaningful and long-lasting relationships between people and cultures. Hosts and guests coming together to find and focus on ‘superordinate’ goals’ that they care about and must work on together...pilgrims dedicated to learning and growing together.
As with all trips or pilgrimages, it really helps to be prepared. As Richard Butler mused in a retrospective article in Annals, it is advantageous to revisit the past and understand the evolution toward modern tourism. By reflecting upon, assembling, and building on the complexity of history, former innovations and imaginations - the basis for precedents thinking - we move forward and advance the concept of tourism as a means toward creating social progress.
The initial task for the key decision-makers - tourism planners, marketers, managers, developers, consultants, researchers and influencers who set the agendas - begins when they choose to revisit, and thoroughly engage with, what we and others know to be true and right, purposeful and principled…the foundational requirement for trying to maintain a focus on the creation of futures that are beneficial and transformational, while being prepared and able to pivot in the moment, so as to avoid decline in destination life-cycles
In these days of ambiguity, however, we have no choice but to absorb uncertainty and create islands of clarity as we determine what transformative experiences mean (explained again and again) especially in reference to tourism and individual communities-as-destinations. While a lot of time is likely to be spent worrying and adapting, effective adaptation at macro-levels will require citizens, institutions and organizations to identify and support social change, and then promote it through educating, training, lobbying, campaigning, and making changes in people’s behaviors and lives.
Inevitably, it is a burdensome process with uncertain outcomes, requiring will and perseverance. Indeed, the task inherently is about identifying meaningful social innovations. It has little to do with scenario planning (and its inherent biases) or demographic or psychographic profiling (and its limitations).
With rose colored glasses removed when looking forward, everyone is inevitably likely to find themselves wondering: Where is ‘hope’ when trying to change behaviors and interaction, imagine positive futures, or promote the willingness to pursue and support collective action?
· Hope that reflects context and the temporal distance of imagined futures.
· Hope that may glimmer, for it has been said that mass consumption is shifting to mindful choices and communities are making better choices for being and becoming sustainable, equitable and inclusive destinations.
· Hope that reflects an immersive pilgrimage of self-actualization, responsibility, personal growth, advancement, and commitment to achieving a particular goal or outcome that has social merit.
To a high degree, these choices, wisely made, are likely to be about ethical tourism, ethical consumption, and how tourism can create abundance and value for all stakeholders and communities-as-destinations…choices that represent a willingness to learn from the past, the present and future…choices infusing hindsight into foresight in order to facilitate civic engagement through the art of association.
Individually and organizationally, our attitudes and interests are based on an assemblage of past and present-day experiences that allow and instruct us to make sense of our personal histories, set priorities, project what we might do next, and try to shape the future. As memories and stories that we share with others to mark change and create continuity, we chart the course of our lives that help determine what we expect to do as we set out on our pilgrimages facilitated through capitalistic overtones and motivations steeped in the histories of the world, similar to this summarized one from the new world.
It pays to reflect on the links between pilgrims, political economies, trade and travel that are precursors to tourism, the motivations for and the commodification of. Whether spiritual or secular, the journey or quest is supposed to result in some form of transformative experience, learning and growth, meaning and connection. Somewhat equivalent to a mono-myth or the hero`s (host and guest's) journey in the clutch of market capitalism. But the extent to which this will result in positive outcomes will depend on the willingness, actions and benevolence of stakeholders, citizens and industry participants whose goals and actions are demonstrative of the heart and soul of communities.
With so many contemporary pilgrims journeying in search of reverent and uplifting beauty that the natural, spiritual and secular worlds bestow on us…or given the wide variety of passionate, immersive and sensual interests - spiritual, physical and mental health, music, art, culture, hobbies, sports, food, wine, events, sacred and historic sites, even danger and dark tourism - all communities-as-destinations need to determine whether and how their essential offerings merit designation as a special or unique pilgrimage destination…maybe not for the masses but at least for the minorities or niche markets.
The process of doing so brings to mind the Blue Ocean Strategy that goes beyond the need to differentiate by focusing on those people who are not being served and by identifying the activities and arenas where nobody else is competing or offering fascinating options.
In reference to this strategy, no destination is likely to succeed without full appreciation for, and deep understanding of, the type and number of pilgrims being sought, and the particularities associated with their life-enhancing rituals, practices, traditions, compulsions, collective behaviors and desired outcomes. But even then, the strategy must reflect and be in concert with the corresponding acceptance and needs of the community.
The tradition of pilgrimages certainly thrives on the economy of reverent devotees who have and share a passion for their idols, teams, shrines, places, and so on. Entrepreneurial afficionados, promoters, and many volunteers drive this industry both individually and through partnerships, by providing services, support, accommodation and transport options in pilgrimage sites, including all essential formal and informal information and orientation.
Pilgrimages that occur during regularly scheduled time frames in specific locales, however, can be cause for concern. The crowding of masses can result in safety and security breaches and, overtime, lead to deleterious environmental degradation. With capacity limits exceeded and local life and livelihoods disrupted, many communities feel compelled to proceed on their own pilgrimages to regain a semblance of normality and correct impositions and imbalances.
Similar to setting out on the global community pilgrimage to COP 26, communities-as-destinations find themselves mulling through issues of communitas and contestation, unity and difference. Concerns about maintaining historic and cultural integrities, credibility and trust are always top-of-mind, as are the needs for visitor access management plans, finding syncronicity between demand and supply side management, adopting best sustainability practices, improving social mobility and engaging the community and the tourism clusters.
The pilgrimage to improve the heart and soul of community relationships is contingent on achieving strategic fit or the degree to which the more commercial aspects of pilgrimages align with those of communities. When such a fit becomes optimal, it creates beneficial multiplier effects among all stakeholders, particularly the tourism cluster and the community—provided the companies and communities can adapt effectively and quickly to changing conditions.
While most pilgrimages are revered as solo endeavors, communities-as-destinations benefit most when the intent and purpose of pilgrimages includes and is supportive of the community. Indeed, this ideal represents the essence of Destinations-in-Action – pilgrims on pilgrimages negotiating and working together as demonstrations of faith to achieve superordinate goals that are a testament of commitment, community learning, growth and actualization.
So, as we engage as pilgrims, let’s get lost, though it might be a more secular walk on the wild side
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