For many, a guided tour is a ‘natural’ and often keenly sought after feature of their touristic experiences. In the last half century, training for and licensing of tour-guiding has greatly increased. Yet, there is no single model for the guided tour; and any tour can be made up from numerous, sometimes incongruous elements: signposting, interpretation, entertainment, cultural-brokerage, aesthetics, even subversion. Tours take place in a wide range of contexts. They emerge from divergent traditions. The motivations and qualifications of guides and guiding organisations are diverse, and as a metaphor, the guided tour has been used to explore ideas across a wide range of disciplinary and theoretical perspectives.

Possible themes are (but not limited to):

• Guiding as organising place and space

• The labour and commerce of guiding and being guided

• Emotion and business in guided tours

• Customer, tourist and the guided audience

• Sustainable tours

• History and responsibility in tour guiding

• Alternative tours

• Image and substance in guided tours

• The politics of guided tours

• The economics of guided tours

• The guided tour as a collective act

• Conquering place through guided tours

• Rewriting space through guided tours

• Fact and fiction in guided tours

• The guided tour and the senses

• Mediating place through the guided tour’s uses of new technology

Deadline:

Submission of abstracts by October 31st, 2010. Please send your abstract of max. 500 words to irfgt2011@gri.gu.se