이스탄불 도시관광객의 장소경험

Phenomenological Analysis of Insideness and Outsideness in Urban Tourism: Focusing on Korean Tourists in Istanbul

To explain the concept of place, a Canadian geographer, Edward Relph introduced the dualistic concepts of insideness and outsideness, suggesting that an individual constructs his/her own meaning of a particular space based on a combination between insidenness and outsideness. He explains that insideness can be experienced in familiar, safe, comfortable places while outsideness is related to an individual's uncomfortable, unfamiliar, detached emotions towards a space. Despite the fact that these concepts are closely associated with fundamental motivation of tourists, tourism researchers have not sufficiently employed these concepts in analyzing tourist experiences. Therefore, employing a phenomenological approach and semi-structured qualitative interviews, the current study examined 16 Korean tourists who were visiting Istanbul, Turkey. The results support the argument that urban tourism is a symbolic example of postmodern tourism since respondents create various meanings on urban spaces, experiencing insideness and/or outsideness based on their background, desire, motivation, and expectation. According to the results, three theoretical and practical implications are provided.