“Our incessant commentary on others gives insights into the tourist or vacation mode of consumption. “Those other tourists” come to represent a commodified, fragmented tourism. Here we find a model of tourism as consumption, with vacationers moving along the shelves of the tourist supermarket, falling for today’s special offers, the well-advertised, the cheap, the easily digested, the standardized items of tourist experiences. The commentator sees himself or herself in other terms, not as a consumer but as a producer of experiences… What is it that makes some people define some experiences as shallow or rich, meaningful or meaningless, sublime moments of personal bliss or just another prepackaged item from the tourist industry? And how do we project our own interpretations of what happens in others’ lives?”
–Orvar Lofgren, On Holiday: A History of Vacationing (1999)