The Curse of the Holiday
A model-generating extended essay concerning holiday experiences as the good life.

The purpose of this extended essay is to show that the most expedient method of adapting communication for the contemporary individual is through a social constructionist approach.

A characteristic of the contemporary society is the social fire upon the individual, fire, which due to the spreading of technology comes from all directions. In connection with holiday experiences the individual is fired upon too, but the individual represents holiday experiences as elements of the good life. The individual represents holiday experiences as equal to relaxation, because it is a refuge from duties.

The suppliers of holidays are one of the elements, who socially fires upon the individual with holiday offers, which resembles each other and leaves a bewildered individual. The suppliers therefore needs to separate themselves from the crowd, and to that purpose, experience economy has become a frequently used tool.

The extended essay is divided in two parts, where the first one is a theoretical description of the conditions, which characterize the contemporary society and individual. The purpose of the first part is to gain an insight into how the connection between the forming of an identity for the individual and the significance of experiences concerning tourism can be understood theoretically.

The second part is an analysis of discourse of interviews with 11 Danish tourists in Northern Jutland. The purpose is to gain insight into how the individual represents its experiences and on that basis to analyse whether discourses emerges which indicates, that it is acceptable to categorize holiday experiences as elements which contribute in creating the good life.

It comes to show that the social fire upon the individual in connection with holidays causes the holidays not to be the relaxing refuges, which the individual represents them as. On the contrary the individual is fired upon with rules, attitudes, norms, values and so forth from discourses, who competes on being accepted as true. In other words there is a tendency towards the individual being overly determined.

From the analysis a picture emerges, that it is expedient to adapt communication to a social constructivist model, as the individual is not capable of representing for example holiday memories in its explicit, autobiographical memory, in relation to the elements, which are written into the discourse of the individual. The model is not just intended for the tourism industry, but can be used in other sales oriented businesses. With this model the supplier can adapt the communication, so it may more efficiently live up to the discourses of the individual.