Gender Trends in Tourism Destination

The tourism experience was perceived traditionally in terms of products, destinations and consumption patterns. The “new mobility turn” sees the holiday experience as “performance”, “surveillance”, “play”, relationships “at-a-distance”, the impermanence of “sandcastles”, place making, etc.Gale (2007) stated five principles of this turn in tourism: it studies the mobility of individuals; it acknowledges material and immaterial structures; it deals with immobility and power relations; it recognizes virtual and imaginative forms of mobility; and it is concerned with environmental and global consequences. Destinations are not perceived now as fixed unities but as“sandcastles” made of objects, mobility and proximities (Bærenholdt et al., 2004).In the context mentioned above the holiday experience can be evaluated as a process, wherein gender relations are constructed, legitimated, reproduced and reworked” (Aitchison, 2003). These experiences can affect the identities of tourists, locals and employers positively and negatively (Crouch, 2002) and also affect gender identities slightly differently.The Global Gender Gap Report for 2010 found that while 93% of the global education gap and 96% of the global health gap has been closed, only 60% of the economic participation and 16% of the political gender gap has been closed and this gender differences in social and economic roles and responsibilities exacerbate vulnerability.Through this paper we intend to investigate the most important gender trends affecting tourist destination and tourism in general, based on the premise that destination is actually a perceptual concept, interpreted subjectively by consumers and also a result of the moment, the people and artifacts present. The aim of the paper is to get an assessment of future destination in terms of the influence of gender and offer solutions to adapt to trends investigated and to shape a tourism industry more welcoming for women.