The humour tourist: A conceptualisation

The paper reviews the role of humour in society and then discusses Stebbins' [Stebbins RA. Defusing awkward situations: comic relief as an interactive strategy for people with disabilities. J Leis 1996;23(4):3-38] theory of social comic relief in a tourism context. The paper conceptualises informal and formal humour in tourism and reflects on tourist motivation and satisfaction levels in relation to humour related travel experiences. The paper considers the importance of understanding the role of humour in the tourist experience, particularly in relation to the management of formal humorous experiences such as comedy festivals.