This thesis focuses on an under-researched area of tourism - individualised travel - by examining non-institutionalised solitary travellers. The purpose of the study is to discover precisely why non-institutionalised solitary travellers travel alone. In order to understand the travel behaviour and motivation of solitary travellers, they are contrasted with group tourists. To be able to tackle this research problem, Grounded Theory is chosen as the most appropriate approach, for the following reasons. First, Grounded Theory is a methodology which makes its greatest contribution in areas about which little is known. Second, its aim is to generate rather than to test theory. Based on the computer-assisted content analysis and interpretation of relatively neglected qualitative data obtained from interviews and diaries, sixteen socio-psychological justifications for solo travel are empirically identified. From these responses, a taxonomy of non-institutionalised solitary travellers is inductively constructed. It consists of two basic types. First, there are those who travel alone because they simply have no available travel companion, referred to as "solitary travellers by default". Second, there are those individuals who deliberately travel on their own, and who are regarded as "solitary travellers by choice". The elaboration of such a distinction is the primary contribution made by this research to tourism knowledge. A secondary contribution is realised by confronting the data on solitary travellers and group tourists with the extant literature on tourist typologies - an exercise that raises a number of issues about the mythical status of the former. As a result, an alternative taxonomy is generated that consists of two distinct types of tourists - individualistic and collectivistic. The individualistic tourist is someone for whom internal personal values. (e.g., sense of accomplishment) are the most important principles in life, who has motives stemming from ego-enhancement (e.g., personal development), and for whom travel means the investment of personal cultural capital. The collectivistic tourist, on the other hand, is someone who assigns greater priority to external personal values (e.g., sense of belonging), whose motives originate in the anomic conditions of society, and for whom travel is little more than a short break from routine.

This thesis explores the transmission and reception of Benjamin of Tudela’s Book of Travels, a twelfth-century Hebrew travel narrative. Scholarship of the Book of Travels is fragmentary, descriptive and largely focused on what the narrative can tell scholars about the twelfth-century Jewish and non-Jewish worlds. This study presents a methodological shift away from an intra-textual examination of the text by seeking to answer how the text has been transmitted, how successive copiers and printers have changed the text, and how readers interpreted and used the text between the twelfth and seventeenth centuries. It begins with an outline of the extant manuscripts through a codicological examination and textual comparison. Based on a close reading of the manuscripts, it illustrates how the Book of Travels has survived in four separate textual witnesses. This study, however, highlights the centrality of the Jerusalem manuscript, which carried the transmission of the Book of Travels from manuscript into print. Whilst scholars have argued that the text has been edited and redacted, this thesis offers a more nuanced argument for scribal intervention as copyists, and later printers, altered the text through error and deliberate omissions and additions. Consequently, there is no single transmission of the Book of Travels. Although the core of the text remained unchanged, readers would have encountered different texts through the lens of copyists and printers. The second half of the thesis addresses the medieval and early modern reception of the Book of Travels. It argues that the narrative was used in a variety of contexts, from polemics, to biblical geography and history by medieval Jewish scholars. The early modern reception, discussed more broadly, indicates that the printed Hebrew editions of 1543 and 1556 were read by an Sephardic audience for the purposes of connecting to their Iberian heritage, with an additional layer of interpretation which linked the text to the hope for redemption and the coming of the Messiah. As the text becomes introduced to Christian readers in both Hebrew and Latin, the Book of Travels was initially understood and used in a similar manner. The 1583 Hebrew edition and first Latin translation of 1575 also applied the text to history and biblical geography. This study thus illuminates the continuity in the way in which the Book of Travels was understood – as an eye-witness and authoritative source which found contemporary resonance with later readers. The second Latin translation of 1633 represents an evolution in the way in which the Book of Travels was interpreted, as the text was now engaged polemically to attack the Jews. This study also investigates the censorship of the Book of Travels. It analyses not just the text which has been excised through self-censorship, and the prohibition and expurgations proscribed by both the Italian and Spanish Inquisitions, but also how this impacted the transmission and reception of the narrative. It is shown that whilst Inquisitorial censorship was seemingly systematic, it was unevenly applied and did not impact on the Book of Travels’ transmission. This thesis is ultimately a pioneering study of the afterlives of a Hebrew travel narrative which enjoyed a rich manuscript and printed tradition. In attracting both Jewish and Christian readers alike, the Book of Travels endured and continued to find relevance amongst audiences. As a result of its versatility the Book of Travels achieved a prominent position within the Jewish and Christian worlds crossing cultural and religious divides between the twelfth and seventeenth centuries.

L’industrie du tourisme a beaucoup évolué et continue de se transformer sous l’effet du numérique, mais aussi sous l’effet des changements sociaux et économiques. L’information destinée aux voyageurs, auparavant produite par les seuls professionnels du métier – les journalistes de voyage – s’est diversifiée. De nouveaux acteurs, comme les blogueurs et les commentateurs des sites de recommandation, sont devenus des sources d’information importantes pour les voyageurs. Nos travaux de recherche se proposent d’explorer les pratiques des auteurs en ligne ainsi que la réception et l’interprétation de leurs écrits par les voyageurs. Des entretiens qualitatifs menés auprès de journalistes, blogueurs et commentateurs producteurs d’informations autour de Paris, éclairent leurs méthodes et pratiques et leur niveau d’adoption ou de rejet des codes traditionnels du journalisme. Dans un second temps, une autre série d’entretiens avec des voyageurs nous ont permis de mettre en évidence les jugements émis par ces « consommateurs » sur les contenus trouvés en ligne. En considérant les motivations de ces internautes, surtout l’aspiration à vivre des expériences « authentiques », les chercheurs peuvent mieux comprendre ce que les voyageurs apprécient. Les résultats suggèrent que les productions des journalistes de voyage, blogueurs et contributeurs participent chacune à leur manière à alimenter l’internaute en information lorsqu’il organise son voyage. Quant aux « consommateurs » de ces articles ou commentaires sur une destination, ils apprécient trouver une variété d’informations. Ces travaux permettent de formuler une conclusion générale au sujet du journaliste de voyage professionnel, dont les écrits ne sont qu’un fragment parmi toute la production d’informations touristiques, à laquelle contribuent également des non-professionnels. Le journalisme de voyage s’avère être un processus riche, au sein duquel différents types d’acteurs évoluent, pour répondre aux besoins des voyageurs-internautes. / The travel industry has evolved over the past decades, including social and technological changes that allow more people than ever to cross the globe. Travel journalists working for established media are no longer the sole gatekeepers of information relating to a destination. New authors, including bloggers and commentators on recommendation sites, have become major sources of information for travelers. This project seeks to explore both the practices of these online authors as well as the reception and interpretations of their work by travelers. Qualitative interviews with a sample of journalists, bloggers, and forum contributors in Paris help shed light on how these individuals adhere to notions considered “journalistic” as defined by traditional manuals. The goal is to explore and elaborate a definition of the travel journalist as opposed to non-professional authors. Secondly, through interviews with travelers who plan their trips online, the research aims to understand how consumers prioritize and value the content they find on the internet, especially looking at motivations linked to the idea of discovering authentic experiences abroad. Findings suggest that travel journalists, bloggers, and forum contributors all participate uniquely to the travel planning process, providing different elements. On the reception end, travelers consume many sources during their travel planning, and actively seek various websites and publications for different reasons. The overall conclusion is that travel journalists are just one important yet specific part of the larger process of travel journalism that acts interdependently with non-professional sources to respond to the online traveler’s needs.

This thesis is an autoethnography based on a two week Trans-Siberian railway journey from Moscow to Vladivostok in October 2011. It explores the role of memory in our spatial surroundings, the effect remembering has on the way we move through and interpret the present and ourselves. In the chapters about community, rhythms, memory/imagination, and landscape the journey becomes a backbone for the personal narratives and the stories of others, which intertwining unveil the complex relationship between the self and the world, the present and the absent, and the imagined. Thesis explores the inevitable mobility of the mind, which sees us losing the ability to stay fastened to physical spaces, images and our own being, and opening the possibility to travel in time, space and memory. The physical landscape, landscape of Siberia gradually becomes almost invisible, disappears and re-emerges as a series of personal images and stories, feelings and dreams, suggesting that even moving through the vastest landscapes in the world we are always travelling inward, towards an understanding of ourselves and the world around us.

This research focused on adventure tourism in KZN. The adventurer traveller is interested in remote pristine hotspots. A concern is that irresponsible behaviour on the adventurer’s part could lead to the destruction of the fragile natural environment, as well as negatively interfere with the local traditional cultural values. Adventure hotspots were identified by using the functionalities of a GIS. These findings were validated by tourism practitioners in KZN. The researcher also proposed a practical solution that could improve or enhance the behaviour of adventurers. Existing media were collated into information prompts. These information prompts were categorised in tables that could be linked to a mobile GIS environment. The researcher then examined the framework requirements for a mobile GIS. This resulted in a set of seven criteria that brought together the core essentials required for the conceptual framework of a mobile GIS device dedicated to the adventurer in KZN. / Geography / M.A. (Geography)

Les pays qui se sont insérés plus tardivement dans l'économie mondiale subissent généralement les effets de la mondialisation de manière accrue.De ce point de vue, les BRIC, comparés aux autres pays émergents, possèdent un certain poids dans l’économie mondiale et représentent doncun potentiel de marché important. Avec une croissance économique qui devrait dans un avenir proche dépasser celle de la Chine, l’Inde sembleêtre un remarquable cas d’étude. Cependant, les clichés persistent dans un pays où deux aspects seulement sont le plus souvent mis en avant.D’une part, l’Inde est considérée comme un nouvel eldorado, un espace où les multinationales essaient de s’implanter en raison de l’augmentationsubstantielle du nombre de consommateurs : «the shining India». D’autre part, l’Inde est aussi souvent décrite comme surpeuplée, massivementpauvre et occupée par une forte présence de taudis, tant dans les espaces urbains que ruraux. Spatialement, un modèle dual pourrait en effet contenir d'un côté une part croissante de la classe moyenne en pleine explosion tandis que d'autres verraient s'accentuer les inégalités économiques et sociales. En revanche, il paraît difficile d'imaginer que deux extrêmes seulement puissent représenter la diversité d'un si grand pays. Dans les faits, l’évolution du secteur tertiaire n’est pas assez rapide pour maintenir un haut niveau d’emploi dans certains espaces urbains,alors qu’un modèle agraire de plus en plus intensif en zones rurales contribue à réduire graduellement le nombre d’employés agricoles et depropriétaires terriens. Par conséquent, l’augmentation générale du niveau de vie ne suivra pas forcément le rythme de croissance économiqueet démographique de l’Inde ; d’autant que les inégalités socio-économiques de ce pays sont déjà accentuées par un système rigide de castes. Ilest nécessaire de rappeler que l’inde est un pays d’ancienne urbanisation dont les premières traces remontent à 2400 AEC. De cette particularitérésulte une histoire riche et complexe. Aujourd’hui, l’Inde est caractérisée par une grande diversité de langues, de religions, de castes, de communautés, de tribus, de traditions, d'espaces sous influences métropolitaines, etc. Peu de pays dans le monde présentenet autant de spécificités. Ces faits soulèvent les questions suivantes : comment est-il possible de visualiser et quantifier les inégalités spatiales d'un pays si large et si complexe ? Quels sont les principaux facteurs qui affectent et/ou engendrent ces inégalités spatiales ? Il pourrait être simpliste d'étudier ces écarts spatiaux seulement au travers d’indicateurs macro économiques tel que le PIB. Ainsi, pour faire face à tant de complexité, un modèle conceptuel nous a permis de sélectionner de manière rigoureuse 55 indicateurs afin de renseigner ces récentes transformations spatiales en cette ère de mondialisation accrue. Cette sélection d’indicateurs a donné naissance à une base de données multicritères composée de données économiques,socio-démographiques, géographiques, sociologiques, culturelles, etc., à l’échelle du district (640 unités spatiales) et entre deux dates: 2001 et 2011. L'hypothèse de cette recherche est la suivante : une approche inductive à partir de ces indicateurs pourrait nous permettre une identificationet une caractérisation a-posteriori de structures spatiales en Inde. / Countries that have experienced a delayed entry within the world economy have usually sustained an enhanced and faster globalisation process. This is the case for BRIC countries which are, compared to other emerging countries, organised on large economies and thus provide a stronger potential market. From this perspective, India appears to be the perfect case study with an economic growth expected to overcome China’s growth in the near future. However, the «clichés» are persistent within a country mostly depicted as bipolar. On the one hand, it is considered as a new eldorado, the «Shining India», a place where multinationals aim to implement themselves due to the substantial increase of the consumer market. At the same time, India is also characterised by overcrowding, the major presence of slum areas and mass poverty, both in urban and rural areas. It is indeed possible that some areas will accommodate a bigger and bigger share of the growing middle class, while others will accentuate economic and social inequalities. Yet, can these extremes be truly representative of the diversity of such a large country? In fact, in some urban oriented spaces, the evolution of the tertiary sector is not strong enough to maintain a high level of employment while in rural spaces; an intensive farming model contributes to gradually reducing the number of labourers and landowners. As a result, the increase of the standard of living related to both economic and demographic growth is not homogeneously distributed over a territory where socio-economic divisions are already made worse by a tight caste system. With evidence dating back to 2400 BCE, it must be remembered that India is a country of old urbanisation. This has given rise to a rich and complex history and India is now home to a variety of languages, religions, castes, communities, tribes, traditions, urbanisation patterns and, more recently, globalisation-related dynamics. Perhaps no other country in the world seems to be characterised by such a great diversity. This begs the following questions: how is it possible to quantify and visualise the spatial gap of such a complex and subcontinent sized country? What are the main drivers affecting this spatial gap? It would indeed be simplistic to study India only through macro-economic indicators such as GDP. To deal with this complexity, a conceptualisation has been performed to strictly select 55 criteria that can affect the transformation sustained by the Indian territory in this enhanced age of globalisation. These selected factors have fed a multi-critera database characterised by aspects coming from economy, geography, sociology, culture etc. at the district scale level (640 spatial units) and on a ten year timeframe (2001-2011). The assumption is as follows: each Indian district can be driven by different factors. The human capacity to understand a complex issue has been reached here since we cannot take into account and at the same time the behaviour of a large number of elements influencing one another. AI Based Algorithm methods (Bayesian and Neural Networks) have thus been resorted to as a good alternative to process a large number of factors. In order to be as accurate as possible and to keep a transversal point of view, the methodology is divided into a robust procedure including fieldwork steps. The results of the models show that the 55 factors interact, bringing the emergence of unobservable factors representative of broader concepts, which find consistency only in the case of India. It also shows that the Indian territory can be segmented into a multitude of sub-spaces. Some of these profiles are close to the caricatured India. However, in most cases, results show a heterogeneous country with sub-spaces possessing a logic of their own and far away from any cliché.

This research focused on adventure tourism in KZN. The adventurer traveller is interested in remote pristine hotspots. A concern is that irresponsible behaviour on the adventurer’s part could lead to the destruction of the fragile natural environment, as well as negatively interfere with the local traditional cultural values. Adventure hotspots were identified by using the functionalities of a GIS. These findings were validated by tourism practitioners in KZN. The researcher also proposed a practical solution that could improve or enhance the behaviour of adventurers. Existing media were collated into information prompts. These information prompts were categorised in tables that could be linked to a mobile GIS environment. The researcher then examined the framework requirements for a mobile GIS. This resulted in a set of seven criteria that brought together the core essentials required for the conceptual framework of a mobile GIS device dedicated to the adventurer in KZN. / Geography / M.A. (Geography)