Host-Guest Relations in Creative Tourism at the Inle Lake

Creative Tourism in the Golden Land

Author: Maud Hippmann Student number: 900814-341-050 Thesis code: GEO-80436 Educational institution: Wageningen University Faculty: Department of Environmental Sciences Chair group: Cultural Geography Chair Group MSc Programme: MSc Leisure Tourism and Environment Supervisor/Examiner: Prof. Dr. V.R. van der Duim Examiner: Dr. M.E. Ormond Date: 10 August 2015

Disclaimer: This thesis is a student report produced as a part of the Master Program Leisure, Tourism and Environment. It is not an official publication and the content does not represent an official position of Wageningen University and Research Centre.

Foreword

Since I was young I have always had a passion for travelling, meeting people from different countries and getting to know new cultures. That is why, after high school I decided to travel through Southeast Asia for five months, which eventually has had a great impact on my life so far. During my journey I realized that there is much more to learn and discover in the field of leisure, tourism and environment and therefore I enrolled in a Bachelor programme in Thailand, majoring tourism management. Four years later, upon completion of my Bachelor degree I decided to continue my education with the Master programme Leisure, Tourism and Environment in Wageningen.

In the MLE programme, I have developed my interest in creative tourism and was able to further explore this interest during an internship in Sant Pol de Mar (Barcelona) and during the writing of this thesis. Coming back to Southeast Asia for the data collection, but this time in a completely different country has again be an unforgettable experience. As one of the respondents of this study said ‘’in Myanmar the people are what makes the country really beautiful’’. I am very grateful to all the kind people I have met in Myanmar and who have helped me to collect the data for this thesis.

I would furthermore like to thank my supervisor, Rene van der Duim for his guidance and feedback. He encouraged me to look critically at my own work which was needed in order to complete this thesis. I also want to thank my fellow MLE-friends for their support and ideas and especially those with whom I have shared many valuable moments during the three months in Myanmar. Finally, I would like to thank my family and friends for their encouragement and support during the past seven months.

Maud Hippmann August 2015

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Table of contents Executive Summary ...... vii 1. Introduction...... 1 1.1 The emergence of creative tourism ...... 2 1.1.1 Consumption of tourists ...... 3 1.1.2 Production of host destinations ...... 5 1.2 Forms of Creative Tourism ...... 5 1.3 Problem Statement ...... 6 1.4 Research Objectives and Questions ...... 7 1.5 Thesis outline...... 8 2. Theoretical Framework ...... 9 2.1 Creative Tourism Concepts...... 10 2.1.1 Participation and co-creation ...... 10 2.1.2 Authenticity ...... 11 2.1.3 Learning ...... 12 2.1.4 Creativity ...... 13 2.1.5 Sustainability ...... 14 2.2 The interaction between hosts and guests ...... 15 2.2.1 Change and power relations ...... 15 2.2.2 Social Exchange Theory ...... 17 2.2.3 Intimacy Theory ...... 19 2.2.4 Staging Tourism ...... 21 2.3 Conceptual Framework ...... 23 3. Methodology ...... 25 3.1 Epistemology ...... 26 3.2 Methods ...... 27 3.2.1 Preliminary Online – and Field Research ...... 28 3.2.2 Interviews ...... 28 3.2.3 Observations ...... 29 3.3 Data Collection ...... 30 3.3.1 Selection of creative tourism activities ...... 30 3.3.2 Selecting and approaching hosts and guests ...... 31 3.4 Data Analysis ...... 32

4. Context ...... 36 4.1 Political history of Myanmar ...... 37 4.2 Politics and Tourism in Myanmar ...... 38 4.3 The Inle Lake and Nyaunshwe ...... 40 4.4 Creative tourism in the research area ...... 40 4.3.1 Learning ...... 41 4.3.2 Tasting ...... 42 4.3.3 Seeing ...... 42 4.3.4 Buying ...... 43 5. Results ...... 45 5.1 Motivations ...... 46 5.1.1 Motivation Hosts ...... 46 5.1.2 Motivation Tourists ...... 50 5.2 Encounters ...... 54 5.3 Experiences ...... 66 5.3.1 Experiences hosts ...... 66 5.3.2 Experiences Guests ...... 68 5.4 Evaluation of the encounters ...... 73 6. Conclusion & Discussion ...... 77 6.1 Conclusion ...... 78 6.2 Discussion ...... 80 6.2.1 Reflection on creative tourism ...... 80 6.2.2 Reflection on creative tourism in Myanmar ...... 81 6.2.3 Reflection on interaction theories ...... 83 6.2.4 Reflection on research ...... 84 6.2 Recommendations...... 84 6.3.1 Practical recommendations for the research area ...... 84 6.3.2 Recommendations for future research ...... 86 References ...... 87 Appendices ...... 93 Appendix I Interview Guides...... 94 Appendix II List of Respondents ...... 95 Appendix III Overview of Observations ...... 97

List of Figures Figure 1: Drivers of tourism over time...... 4

Figure 2: Forms of creative tourism...... 6

Figure 3: Dimensions creative tourism...... 11

Figure 4: Social Exchange Process...... 18

Figure 5: Relationship Cycle...... 20

Figure 6: Overview of data analysis process...... 33

Figure 7: Map of Myanmar, showing the location of the Ine Lake Region...... 40

Figure 8: Overview of the creative tourism offer in the research area...... 41

Figure 9: Map of the creative tourism offer in the research area...... 44

List of Tables Table 1: Overview of research methods...... 27

Table 2: Number of interviews per activity...... 32

Abbreviations

ASEAN: Association of Southeast Asian Nations

GDP: Gross Domestic Product

IDD: Institute of International Development

ITB: International Tourism Fair Berlin

MOHT: Ministry of Hotels and Tourism Myanmar

NLD: National League for Democracy

SLORC: State Law and Order Restoration Council

UNCTAD: United Nations Conference on Trade and Development

UNESCO: United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization

UNWTO: United Nations World Tourism Organization

Executive Summary

Creative tourism is an interesting phenomena to study in Myanmar, a Southeast Asian country that since its political and economic reforms in 2011 has experienced rapid tourism growth. The country aims to attract responsible travellers and is promoting community involvement in tourism in order to distribute the social and economic benefits of tourism equitably. Creative tourism in line with this strategy as this form of tourism involves the participation of locals and tourists and brings direct benefits to local communities. The UNESCO Creative Cities Network (2006) defined creative tourism as ‘’travel directed toward an engaged and authentic experience, with participative learning in the arts, heritage, or special character of a place, and it provides a connection with those who reside in this place and create this living culture’’ (p.3).

The objective of this research is to get a deeper understanding of creative tourism taking place in the Inle Lake region in Myanmar and more specifically to get a deeper understanding of the interactions between and experiences of hosts and guests that participate in creative tourism activities. Preliminary online – and field research has first of all been conducted in order to determine the creative tourism offer in the research area. Flexible research methods, consisting of structured interviews and unstructured observations have furthermore been applied in order to gain more understanding about the host-guest encounters and creative tourism experiences of hosts and guests.

The findings show that creative tourism can bring hosts and guests closer to each other and can balance the host-guest relationship by empowering locals. However, the rapid tourism development in the research area has also led to the commercialization of tourism and in some cases caused the exploitation of tourists. Host-guest encounters highly influenced the experiences of both hosts and guests and the creative tourism concepts of authenticity, learning and participation, played a central role in the experiences. It was furthermore found that the host-guest relationship is dependent on the type of creative tourism and the involvement of the tourists in the creative tourism activity.

Creative tourism has not yet been developed to its full potential in the research area and therefore this study recommends that creative tourism should be further developed. Regarding the host-guest relations, the learning aspect should however be optimized and tourists should be involved in creative tourism activities to the highest extent possible.

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1. Introduction

This study took place in The Republic of the Union of Myanmar, a Southeast Asian country located between Thailand and India. Myanmar is the largest country in mainland Southeast Asia but with a population of 51.4 million, the country has one of the lowest population densities in the region (The World Bank, 2014). The country has a tropical climate with wet and dry seasons and contains fertile lands and rich natural resources (Lonely Planet Myanmar, 2014). Myanmar has a long history of political instability which has highly influenced the lives of its citizens and the development of the country. The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita was with an estimation of $1,105 in 2014 one of the lowest in East Asia and the Pacific and it is estimated that 26% of the population lives below the poverty line. The infrastructure in the country is limited and often in poor state which furthermore impedes the provision of basic health care, education services and economic development. Around 73% of the population still lacks access to electricity and at the places that have electricity, blackouts frequently occur (The World Bank, 2014). The situation in the country is however improving since the political and economic reforms in 2011.

Since 2011, Myanmar has experienced rapid tourism growth. Between 2011 and 2012 visitor arrivals in the country increased by 29.7% and in 2012 Myanmar received more than 1 million international visitors for the first time in its history (Ministry of Hotels and Tourism Myanmar, 2013a). The government of Myanmar recognizes that the rich and diverse cultural and natural heritage of the country provide opportunities for the development of tourism and therefore the Ministry of Hotels and Tourism (MOHT) developed the Myanmar Tourism Master Plan in 2013. This plan focuses on maximizing the contribution of tourism in terms of national employment and income generation. Besides that, MOHT wants to ensure that the social and economic benefits of tourism are distributed equitably (MOHT, 2013a, p.5). The country aims to attract responsible travellers that are in solidarity with the people from Myanmar and is promoting the development of community involvement in tourism (MOHT, 2013b).

Even though the country’s situation is improving, the tourism industry is still highly controlled by the government and only certain destinations are made accessible for international tourists. One of these destinations is the Inle Lake region, which is the specific research area of this study. The Inle Lake is located in the south of Shan State in central Myanmar and is one of the country’s main tourism destinations (Robertson, 2014). The Inle Lake is the second largest lake of Myanmar and has a broad diversity of cultural and natural assets (Ingelmo, 2013). Tourism is an important source of income in the area and some of the services that are offered to tourists (Robertson, 2014), can be categorized under the creative tourism phenomenon.

1.1 The emergence of creative tourism

According to the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAC, 2010), a new development paradigm, the creative economy, has been emerging in our global society which links the economy and culture, embracing economic, cultural, technological and social aspects of development at the macro and micro levels (p.3). The importance of creativity, knowledge and access to information is being recognized in the creative economy as these are considered to foster economic growth and encourage development. The role of creativity is also recognized in the tourism industry and a new generation of tourism can be identified in which tourists and locals are involved in the creation of tourist products (Creative Tourism Network, n.d.).

Richards and Raymond (2000) researched this new generation of tourism and created the term creative tourism which is defined as ‘‘tourism which offers visitors the opportunity to develop their creative potential through active participation in courses and learning experiences, which are characteristic of the holiday destination where they are taken’’(p.18).

The concept of creative tourism has also been acknowledged by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) as a new generation of tourism in which travel is directed towards an engaged and authentic experience (UNESCO, 2006). Creative tourism is however not something new because for a long time tourists have already been participating in creative and educational experiences during their holidays (Marques, 2012; Richards and Marques, 2009). The difference however is that nowadays this form of tourism is practiced to a larger extent and has become a common form of tourism. For the last decade, creative tourism had grown increasingly (Creative Tourism Network, n.d.) which can be explained from both the supply and demand side; creative tourism is driven by factors linked to consumption and production (Richards, 2009).

1.1.1 Consumption of tourists

Considering the consumption side, it is argued that tourists are getting bored with packaged and sanitized products being offered in the tourism industry. There is a movement in society towards ‘skilled consumption’ which means that consumers want to develop a new skill. Forms of skilled consumption are education, self-development and creative activities. In the past, cultural tourism was seen as a way to educate and engage tourists into culture but nowadays, cultural tourism has become a mass form of tourism in many destinations in which loads of tourists visit ‘must see’ museums and cultural heritage sites (Richards, 2009). The type of cultural content is changing, shifting from high culture, which consists of these ‘must-see’ tangible sites mainly visited by mass tourists, to everyday culture. Creative tourists are looking for this every day culture; they are looking for deep and satisfying experiences and want to connect with local people and feel part of the local community of the place they are visiting (Teparakul and Sangsnit, 2013). Creative tourism is a form of tourism that provides tourists with the opportunity to develop their (creative) skills through experiences in which they are highly involved (Richards, 2014).

This shift in cultural content can be explained by the development of the so called ‘experience economy’ in our society (Binkhorst and Dekker, 2009; Richards, 2014). Pine and Gilmore (2011), identify the importance of experiences in the contemporary economy and explain that goods and services no longer can encourage economic growth and prosperity. They argue that the staging of experiences should be developed as this, opposed to undifferentiated goods and services, can provide a distinctive form of economic output and can stimulate economic growth. Goytia Prat and De la Rica Aspiunza (2012) have identified two stages of the experience economy. The first- generation of the experience economy, which is characterized by the ‘’design of emotional products for guests’’ took place from 1990 till 2000 and the second-generation of the experience economy is characterized by the ‘’co-creation of experiences and emotions’’, which evolved in 2000. People nowadays like to coproduce the experiences they consume instead of statically consuming them. Toffler (1980) already predicted that in the post-industrial age, consumers would be replaced by prosumers, which are people that prefer to produce their own goods and services. According to Binkhorst and Dekker (2009), modern consumers want ‘’context related, authentic experience concepts and seek balance between control by the experience stager and self determined activity with

3 its spontaneity, freedom and self expression’’ (p.312). This seek for interactive experiences is also taking place among tourists and according to Richards (2014), this movement can be seen as a reaction to traditional cultural tourism. Opposed to traditional cultural tourists, creative tourists are looking for more interactive experiences or ‘transformations’ which change them and help them in their personal development and identity creation. Creative tourism belongs to the second-generation of the experience economy and creative tourists co-create their experiences.

Figure 1: Drivers of tourism over time (Richards and Wilson, 2007, p.20)

In figure 1, a shift in the drivers of tourism can be seen. In the early stages of mass tourism, the aspect of ‘having’ a holiday, being able to afford it was an essential point and it conferred a certain status. This form of tourism is being recognized as the first generation of tourism and mainly involves relaxation and leisure (UNESCO, 2006). However, holidays started to become a normal part of everyday life in western societies and therefore more emphasis was placed on what people did or saw during their holidays (Richards and Wilson, 2007). The second generation of tourism, cultural tourism, evolved which was oriented towards museums and cultural tours. This generation of tourism was in the past characterized by the consumption of culture and the collection of ‘must see sights’. However, as mentioned before, tourists have become tired of these standardized activities and endless sights and are moving away from ‘having’ and ‘consuming’ goods and services towards ‘becoming transformed by the tourism experience itself’ (Binkhorst and Dekker, 2009). So, a state of ‘being’ drives the third generation of tourism, creative tourism, in which interaction furthermore plays a central role as UNESCO (2006) states that third generation tourists have ‘’an educational, emotional, social and participative interaction with the place they visit, its living culture and the people who live there’’ (p.2).

1.1.2 Production of host destinations

Looking at the production side, tourism destinations are looking for new ways to differentiate themselves from other destinations and interact with tourists. Opposed to goods and services that can easily be copied, the production of experiences are perceived as a tool that can foster this process of differentiation as experiences are unique and involve individual consumers (Pine and Gilmore, 1999; Binkhorst and Dekker, 2009; Richards, 2009). Because experiences are becoming more important in the tourism industry, so are intangible cultural resources. A shift from tangible (built heritage, museums, monuments, beaches, mountains) to more intangible (image, identity, lifestyles, atmosphere, narratives, creativity, media) resources is taking place (Richards, 2014). Richards (2009), explains that tourism destinations rely on intangible elements like the image or atmosphere of places to make destinations attractive and that creativity is needed in order to turn intangible resources into tourist experiences and products. So, creative tourism can be used in order to support the identity of destinations and encourage the consumption of local culture and creativity. Another outcome of creative tourism is that through the creative experiences, tourists will become emotionally attached to destinations which will encourage them to return to this place and recommend the destinations to others (Teparakul and Sangsnit, 2013). Besides that, creative tourism can encourage the development of creative skills and add creativity and vibrancy in local communities (Richards, 2014).

1.2 Forms of Creative Tourism

Richards (2014) explains that creative tourism should be seen as a range of different possible approaches in order to engage tourists with creative experiences. Looking at the concept, creativity can be either used as a tourist activity in which tourists are highly involved or as backdrop for tourism in which creativity is already present in the destination and tourists are less involved.

Creative experiences that take place through creative activities can first of all be ‘learning’. In this form of creative tourism the engagement of the tourist is the highest. Examples of learning creative tourism activities are language courses or hands-on workshops in which tourist learn a specific skill. Another form of creative tourism through activities is called ‘tasting’. In this form of creative tourism, the tourist is a little less involved compared to learning. Cloke (2007) refers to ‘tasting’ as ‘’a range of practices in which tourists taste the creative performance of others, and in so doing develop their own creative potential and expose their identity to change or cultural acquisition’’ (p.41). Examples of tasting activities are open ateliers in which creative performances can be seen like weaving ateliers, gold smiths or painting. Tasting can furthermore also be interpreted more literally including for example wine tastings or the tasting of local food.

In creative experiences, creativity can also be used as background as some destinations themselves are very creative and nice to be in. Creative experiences that take place in this setting are first of all ‘seeing’, which can be interpreted as sightseeing or seeing a cultural show and secondly ‘buying’, which refers to the buying of creative products like souvenirs and local arts and crafts.

Figure 2: Forms of Creative Tourism (Richards, 2014)

These different creative experiences are linked to different organisation structures and are delivered in different ways like events, networks, partnerships and creative entrepreneurs. The development of social events gives tourists the opportunity to engage in the life of the locals like an insider. During these events, tourists and locals co-produce cultural experiences based on tradition and local culture as a source of inspiration for creativity (Richards, 2009). Creative Tourism Networks like Creative Tourism Thailand or Creative Tourism Barcelona offer creative products to tourists via a network of creative businesses or function as an intermediary, informing tourists who want to participate in creative activities about creative producers at certain destinations (Creative Tourism Network, n.d.). Partnerships of creative enterprises are also formed and cooperation between the tourism and creative sector takes place in order to develop new creative experiences and offer tourists distinctive itineraries which stimulate tourists to see a range of different activities in a specific region.

1.3 Problem Statement

Creative tourism is a world-wide trend but the idea of creative tourism has mostly been adopted in the developed world (Teparakul and Sangsit, 2013) and the relationship between tourism and creativity is usually linked to specific western urban environments (Richards and Wilson, 2007; Cloke, 2007; Jelinčić and Žuvela, 2012). The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD, 2010), however recognizes the growing role of creativity in economies of developing countries and in March 2015 the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO, 2015) furthermore held a panel at the International Tourism Fair (ITB) in Berlin about community empowerment through creative travel industries and tourism. At the fair it was furthermore discussed how creative tourism can improve the livelihoods of local communities. Myanmar is also a developing country. After the political and economic reforms in 2011 in Myanmar, the Inle Lake region has witnessed extensive tourism growth (Institue of International Development, 2012). The main attractions of the Inle Lake region are the natural scenery and the traditional way of life of communities living from the lake. The main source of income of the communities living at the Inle

Lake is agriculture but due to unsustainable farming practices and climate change, the lake environment degrades rapidly (Ingelmo, 2013). Therefore it is important that the local communities at the lake find livelihood alternatives. With this thesis I would like to find out whether the new political situation in Myanmar provides room for the development of creative tourism and whether creative tourism can serve as a viable livelihood alternative for the local communities living in the Inle Lake region. In order to do this, more understanding about the current situation of creative tourism in the research area is however needed.

Whereas the interaction between tourists and locals is an essential element in creative tourism experiences (Richards, 2009), studies on creative tourism so far are mainly concerned with the phenomenon in general (Long and Morpeth, 2012; Couret, 2014; Richards and Raymond, 2000) or focused on either the tourist (Richards and Wilson, 2006) or the host society (Marques, 2012; Sindecharak and Sangsnit, 2013) and studies on the relationship between hosts and guests in creative tourism are lacking. In order to gain more understanding of interaction between hosts and guests in tourism, it is however necessary to look at both sides of the equation (Nash, 1978). With this thesis I would furthermore like to contribute to the scientific discussion on creative tourism by looking at host-guest relations in creative tourism in a development context.

It is first of all important to look at the interaction between hosts and guests because it is a central element of creative tourism and can provide deeper understanding of the phenomenon. Besides that, the development of tourism causes positive as well as negative changes in the host society which can influence the behaviour of the hosts towards the tourists and tourists’ experiences respectively (App, 1992). As long as the interaction with tourists brings higher benefits than costs for the host society, hosts are generally friendly and hospitable towards tourists, but the contrary may occur when the costs of tourism exceed the benefits for the local community. Hostility or anger of hosts can result in unsatisfied tourists who spread negative words-of-mouth about the destination and avoid returning to the area (App, 1992). In order to make further recommendations about the development of creative tourism in the research area, it is important to find out whether hosts and guests are satisfied about their creative tourism experiences or if they experience any implications in the current encounters.

1.4 Research Objectives and Questions

The objective of this research is to get a deeper understanding of creative tourism taking place in the town Nyaungshwe and at the Inle Lake in Myanmar and more specifically to get a deeper understanding of the interactions between and experiences of hosts and guests that participate in creative tourism activities in the research area. Besides that, this research looked at how concepts that are apparent in creative tourism, are related to host-guest interaction. The following research questions have been created in order to guide this research:

1. What is the creative tourism offer in the research area? 2. What are the motivations of hosts and guests for participating in creative tourism? 3. What are characteristics of the host-guest encounters in creative tourism activities? 4. Which factors influence the creative tourism experiences of hosts and guests? 5. How do hosts and guests evaluate the creative tourism encounters?

1.5 Thesis outline

This thesis consists of six chapters. In this first chapter creative tourism as well as the problem statement and the research questions of this study have been introduced. Chapter two covers the theoretical framework, including a discussion of different creative tourism concepts and theories about the study of host-guest encounters. The chapter ends with a conceptual framework that has been created in order to guide this study. Chapter three covers the methodology that has been used for this study and contains the epistemology, methods, data collection and analysis process and the limitations of this research. As this study has been conducted in the Inle Lake region in Myanmar, chapter four is focused on the context in order to gain more understanding about the political situation in Myanmar and the development of (creative) tourism in the Inle Lake region and Myanmar in general. Chapter five contains the results of this study, including the motivations, encounters, experiences and evaluations of the encounters of hosts and guests that participated in creative tourism. Finally, in chapter six the conclusion of this study is given, followed by a discussion which reflects on creative tourism, interaction theories and the research itself. Recommendations for future research and the development of creative tourism in the research area have furthermore been made in this final chapter.

2. Theoretical Framework

This chapter first of all discusses different concepts that are characteristic for the creative tourism phenomenon (2.1). Besides that, different theories will be discussed that inspired the study of host- guest encounters (2.2), followed by a theoretical framework (2.3) that serves as a guideline for this study.

2.1 Creative Tourism Concepts

The creative tourism concepts that have been identified in this chapter will be used in order to gain understanding about the host-guest interactions and experiences of hosts and guests. In order to find out what the most important aspects of creative tourism are, several definitions of creative tourism have been compared.

Richards and Raymond, 2000: ‘‘Tourism which offers visitors the opportunity to develop their creative potential through active participation in courses and learning experiences, which are characteristic of the holiday destination where they are taken’’ (p.18).

Raymond, 2007: ‘’A more sustainable form of tourism that provides an authentic feel for a local culture through informal, hands-on workshops and creative experiences. Workshops take place in small groups at tutors’ homes and places of work; they allow visitors to explore their creativity while getting closer to local people’’ (p.145).

UNESCO Creative Cities Network (2006): ‘’Creative tourism is travel directed toward an engaged and authentic experience, with participative learning in the arts, heritage, or special character of a place, and it provides a connection with those who reside in this place and create this living culture’’ (p.3).

Looking at these definitions, the following inter-related concepts can be identified: participation and co-creation, authenticity, learning, creativity and sustainability. The interaction between hosts and guests is furthermore an essential element in creative tourism. In chapter 2.2, theories regarding host-guest interaction and relationships will be discussed.

2.1.1 Participation and co-creation

Marques (2012) points out that when looking at definitions of creative tourism, it becomes clear that the participation and personal involvement of visitors are important elements. Richards (2011), furthermore argues that the essence of creative tourism lies in ‘’activities and experiences related to self-realisation and self-expression whereby tourists become co-performers and co-creators as they develop their creative skills’’ (p.1237). So, through their participation and involvement, tourists become co-creators of the experience. The degree of participation and involvement can however vary among tourists, ranging from attending a cultural event to creating your own pottery in a pottery workshop (Pine and Gilmore, 1999; Mietinnen, 2006). Opposed to cultural tourism, in creative tourism there is no clear differentiation between production and consumption as the tourist together with the host ‘prosumes’ the experience (Richards and Marques, 2012).

Marques (2012) explains that tourists nowadays have increasingly access to amounts of information and therefore become more demanding and critical. They reject ready-made products and require customised experiences (Pine and Gilmore, 1999). The host and the tourist together co-create personalised and unique experiences which are very much related to identity (Richards, 2011).

Identity is dependent on distinctiveness of a person in a group and therefore it is important for tourists to have unique and personalized experiences as through these experiences they express their identity. Tourists find this distinctiveness in ‘other’ host cultures and try to become part of this other culture. Marques (2012) explains that social relationships are very important in experiencing cultures and human beings have a need to belong to a group. In creative tourism, tourists are seeking to become part of the host community through learning, participation and interaction (Richards and Marques, 2012). These actions create social recognition in the host community as well as the tourist’s home community. Marques (2012) emphasizes the importance of having a sense of belonging in tourist experiences and she explains that becoming part of a group fosters social learning and involvement in social interaction.

Figure 3: Dimensions Creative Tourism (Marques, 2012)

So, according to Marques (2012), the main dimensions of creative tourism are first of all ’experience and participation’ and secondly ‘integration and community belonging’ which lead to identity construction for both the tourist and the host. These dimensions of creative tourism can be seen in figure 3. As explained above, tourists try to construct their identify through creative tourism experiences. The experiences are however co-created with the host and therefore the experience can also contribute to the identity and self-esteem of the host community (Mietinnen, 2006).

2.1.2 Authenticity

Richards and Raymond (2000) emphasize that in creative tourism it is essential that the (learning) experiences which are developed are characteristic of the place in which they happen. Couret (2014) also refers to this local culture by using the term authenticity and explains that in creative tourism, daily life activities are shared with the locals. According to Marques (2012), creative tourism is to a certain extent about living in and experiencing cultures which are different from visitors’ home countries. Creative tourists are looking for ‘authentic’ and participative experiences.

The concept authenticity is however difficult to define. It is difficult to say when something is really authentic and when not (Couret, 2014) and it often depends on the tourist’s own perception. MacCannel (1976) and Bauman (1996) think that the modern man, who represents the tourist, is alienated from the modern and inauthentic world he lives in and therefore is in search for authenticity in the ‘other’, who is the local at the tourism destination. MacCannel (1973) furthermore talks about the concept ‘staged authenticity’ in which he distinguishes the settings of tourist-host encounters as having five gradually stages of authenticity with a ‘front stage’ (stage 1-3) and a ‘backstage’ (stage 4-6). Front regions are meeting spaces between hosts and tourists where for example staged performances like local dances take place. Tourists attempt to get behind this stage because it is perceived as inauthentic. Back regions are the regions tourists are interested in because these are the places where the locals can be themselves; where they do not have to play a certain role. MacCannel (1973) explains that ‘’tourists try to enter back regions of the places they visit

11 because these regions are associated with intimacy of relations and authenticity of experiences’’ (p.589).

According to Wang (1999), there is no fake or real authenticity and therefore he considers three different approaches on authenticity which are objectivism, constructivism and postmodernism. Objective authenticity can be interpreted as a museum version of authenticity which is concerned with real/ original objects. Constructive authenticity implies that the same objects can have different versions of authenticities. It is a form of symbolic authenticity and it refers to the ‘’authenticity projected onto toured objects by tourists or tourism producers in terms of their imagery, expectations, preferences, beliefs, powers, etc.’’ (Wang, 1999). These first two types of authenticity are object- related but the third type, existential authenticity, is activity-related and refers to an existential state of being in which tourists can be and which is activated by tourist activities. Wang (1999) furthermore emphasizes that this last form of ‘existential authenticity’ is becoming more important. By focusing on a state of being, more emphasis is placed on the creativity of tourists compared to when they passively consume ‘staged’ experiences (Richards and Wilson, 2007).

Richards and Wilson (2007) explain that ‘staged authenticity’ is often perceived by tourists as something negative and unreal. They however argue that in creative tourism, the act of ‘staging’ can become a creative act which allows the development of new meanings. Instead of looking at the purity of the product, in creative tourism more emphasis should be placed on the process; ‘’then creative placing becomes a process of creating emergent authenticity’’ (p.261).

Referring back to figure 2, in which different forms of creative tourism can be seen, Richards (2011) explains that ideas of authenticity are shifting in models of creative tourism. Compared to the material and contextual forms of authenticity, which are important in the tangible heritage of cultural tourism, in creative tourism, more conceptual forms of authenticity are present which are based on the concept of the original performer or maker (Ex and Lengkeek, 1996). In the co-creation process of creative tourism experiences, both hosts and tourists create the experience and they can both have their own notion of authenticity.

2.1.3 Learning

Learning is another characteristic in the descriptions of creative tourism. However, in most cases these learning experiences only refer to the side of the tourist. Richards and Wilson (2007) explain that tourists are interested in learning about local cultures of their hosts and Teparakul and Sangsit (2013) point out that creative tourism provides tourists the opportunity to learn new skills through interactive experiences with local hosts like activities and workshops.

As mentioned before, this interest in learning on the side of the tourists comes from a movement in society towards ‘skilled consumption’ which means that consumers want to develop a new skill and creativity. Skilled consumption can take place in the form of education, self-development and creative activities (Richards, 2009). Learning a skill can furthermore increase cultural capital, improve creativity and it can lead to self-enrichment (Richards and Wilson, 2007).

It is also important to look at the role of the host in these learning experiences. Creative tourism can be developed by teaching tourists certain local skills which are typical for the host society (Marques, 2012). Mietinnen (2008) explains how local crafts women in Namibia transfer their skills to tourists by teaching them how to make pottery and other types of crafts. By playing the role of a ‘teacher’, the local crafts women become empowered as they are seen as a source of knowledge and skills from which the tourist can learn (Richards, 2009). The UNWTO (2015) has recently also recognized this potential of creative tourism to relocate power in tourism as they have published a report on ’community empowerment through creative industries and tourism’ and held a presentation about this at the ITB in Berlin on the 6th of March, 2015. Through the interaction with the tourist, the host can furthermore also learn and gain new skills from the tourist. One example could be linguistic skills; by interacting with tourists, hosts can improve their second language.

2.1.4 Creativity

Another characteristic of creative tourism is the creation of creative experiences. Creativity is however also a concept which is difficult to define and it depends on an individual whether something is perceived as creative or not. Creativity can for example be everyday creativity, but also artistic or intellectual creativity as explained by Tan, Kung and Luh (2012). According to Couret (2014) creativity does not necessarily mean being artistic but it is ‘’the ability to create, to innovate, to generate new ideas or concepts, or new associations between ideas and concepts known, that produce original and valuable solutions’’ (p.18). Richards (2011) furthermore explains that like tourism, creativity is grounded in everyday life and tourists seek to participate in everyday creativity because this is closer to the conditions in their real lives. Ivcevic and Mayer (2009) have created five categories of everyday creativity which are craft, cultural refinement, self-expressive creativity, interpersonal creativity and sophisticated media consumption. Tan, Kung and Luh (2012), explain that these everyday activities can provide a good creative base for creative tourism because they are easily accessible for tourists and can therefore encourage tourists to be actively involved.

Rhodes (1961) has identified 4P’s regarding creativity which are person, product, process and environment/press. In the past, creativity was mainly associated with creative people and later on with creative products. Nowadays however, the notion of creativity has changed towards the social context and environment of creativity (Richards, 2011). Richards and Wilson (2007) argue that creativity is place and context specific. Furthermore, as explained in the introduction, different models of creative tourism exist. Creativity can be used as a tourist activity in which tourists are highly involved or as backdrop for tourism in which creativity is already present in the destination and tourists are less involved. As these different types of creative tourism exist, so do different types of creative tourists, consisting of skilled and unskilled consumers (Richards and Wilson, 2007). Whereas for skilled consumers it may be important to be highly involved in creative activities in order to develop new skills, for unskilled consumers the experience of a general tourism activity with creativity as background may already be satisfying.

In creative tourism, it is not only important that tourists are creatively involved but destinations also need to become more creative in designing experiences that are characteristic for the destination (Richards and Raymond, 2000). It is important that creativity is characteristic to a place. Richards (2011), explains that ‘’every location has the potential to provide a unique combination of knowledge, skills, physical assets, social capital and ‘atmosphere’ which make particular places particularly suited

13 to specific creative activities’’ (p.1238). This helps to create a ‘brand’ of a destination and gives tourists motivations to visit. Creativity can be used to create individual and authentic experiences for tourists (Marques, 2012). However, instead of diversifying destinations, the hype of creative tourism may also lead to less distinctiveness between places when similar policies and creative strategies are adopted. Marques and Richards (2012) furthermore discuss the discrepancy of creative tourism in terms of management and planning. On the one hand, it is important to manage creative tourism so this form of tourism will be carried out in the right ways and most benefits can be achieved. On the other side, creativity has a spontaneous nature and policies and strategies may therefore reduce creativity. It is therefore suggested to encourage creativity to emerge from the bottom up (Scott, 2006). Destinations however should try to encourage active involvement of tourists by providing a range of creative tourism activities.

2.1.5 Sustainability

Jelinčić and Žuvela (2012) suggest a definition of creative tourism in which sustainable development is the central element. According to them, “creative tourism is a projection of a new tourism in which natural, cultural and personal resources are not manipulated and exploited but valued and enriched” (p.88). As in creative tourism these natural, cultural and personal resources are being valued, this may in return lead to the preservation and development of these resources (Swarbrooke, 1999). Marques (2012) furthermore argues that in rural areas in developing countries, creative tourism can be an important element in social and cultural sustainable development because it first of all creates jobs and stimulates economic development. Opposed to other forms of tourism, creative tourism furthermore possibly faces less economic leakage because more direct contact takes place between guests and hosts and the money spent by tourists will directly go to the local community (Richards, 2014). Besides that, another positive side effect may be that the young population is more attracted to stay in the area and basic living conditions in the area can be improved.

According to Tan, Kung and Luh (2014), the use of intangible resources is more sustainable than the use of tangible resources. Regions have different creative resources which can be used to develop intangible events and attractions and thereby provide a distinctive tourism offer in the region, just by optimizing existing resources (Marques, 2012; website Creative Tourism Network, n.d.). Besides that, creative tourism can be an important tool to maintain sustainable rural communities when it is appropriately managed (Teparakul and Sangsit, 2013). With creative tourism, cross-cultural experiences take place which helps tourists to understand local communities and vice versa. Creative tourism can furthermore help to preserve culture as it creates (cultural) pride among locals, who can pass their knowledge, values and beliefs on to new generations (Tan, Kung and Luh, 2014). Forms of tourism in which the attractions are based on the local populations’ way of life, are paradoxical as on the one hand they stimulate change and on the other hand continuity (Swain, 1978). With their interest in the local culture, tourists stimulate the maintenance of traditions but simultaneously cause changes in the host society with their presence and interaction.

As Tan, Kung and Luh (2014) argue that the use of intangible resources is more sustainable, Ex and Lengkeek (1996) see this feature of creative tourism as a problem. Whereas in cultural tourism tangible heritage was commodified, in creative tourism the intangible culture of everyday life is the object of commodification which leads to further colonisation of the lifeworld. A high extend of the

14 commodification of the local culture can in the end lead to more standardized cultures and homogenised creative tourism experiences.

Some authors also question in how far creative tourism can be seen as a valuable development strategy opposed to a hype (Long and Morpeth, 2012). In many destinations, creativity has become a hype (Richards and Wilson, 2006) and ‘creativity washing’ is taking place (Marques and Richards, 2012), meaning that destinations or service providers use the word creativity to attract tourists while they actually do not meet the creative tourism criteria. When the term ‘creativity’ is used in the wrong way, it may lead to the loss of meaning of the concept.

2.2 The interaction between hosts and guests

Interactions between local residents of destinations and tourists are called host-guest relations, where the locals are referred to as hosts and the tourists referred to as guests (Smith, 1978). Interaction between hosts and guests are inevitable at most tourism destinations (Su and Wall, 2010) and interaction between tourists and locals is the essential element for creative tourism experiences (Richards, 2009). It was found by Pizam, Jafari and Milman (2000) that higher intensity of host-guest interactions results in higher positive attitudes of tourists towards the hosts and the destination and that tourists’ satisfaction with the destination experience is higher as well. Prentice, Witt and Wydenbach (1994) furthermore argue that often through tourism activities and interactions with locals, an emotional attachment is developed by tourists to the people and environment of a destination. The level and way of the emotional attachment however depends on the type of tourist. In the following sections, theories will be discussed that can be used in order to study host-guest relationships including theories about change and power relations (2.2.1), social exchange theory (2.2.2), intimacy theory (2.2.3) and the theory of staged performances (2.2.4).

2.2.1 Change and power relations

Nuñez (1978), points out that in the modern world, tourism is most often encouraged and promoted in developing countries. Countries that used to be relatively isolated like Myanmar, start to open up for tourism, which is seen as the road to development and modernization. Other consequences like economic dependency are often however not primarily taken into account. Besides that, tourism can have socio-cultural consequences for the host society like the commodification of the local culture, increased standardisation of culture and the change or loss of traditional cultural and artistic activities (Bramwell, Henry, Jackson and Straaten, 1998).

Nash (1978) explains that when people from different cultures come in contact with each other, some extend of socio-cultural change takes place. Nuñez (1978) uses acculturation theory to explain this change. He explains that in the contact situations between people from different cultures, both parties will to a certain extent change and become somewhat like the other through a process of borrowing. This system of borrowing is however often asymmetrical as the socio-cultural change in the host society is often bigger. Whereas tourists come and go, the host community will continually interact with different types of tourists and is therefore more likely to change more towards the tourists’ culture. This may in turn affect the native way of life and cause other implications for the host community and for the relationship between tourists and hosts as pointed out in the following quote: ‘’acceptance or rejection of alien traits or artefacts conditioned by the foregoing

15 considerations may have far-reaching indirect consequences because the functional model of societies explains that a perturbation of one aspect of a social system is likely to disturb or change other aspects’’ (Nuñez, 1978, p. 208).

One example of the asymmetry in host-guest relationships lies in the linguistic acculturation. The population of the host society, which is often less literate, learns a second language in order to cater to tourists whereas tourists in general (except from a few words) do not learn the language of the host society (Nuñez, 1978). This furthermore results in unequal division of the benefits coming from tourism as often the people with the linguistic skills are favoured over the monolinguals (Smith, 1978).

Nash (1978) perceives tourists as agents of contact between cultures and as the direct or indirect cause of change in the less developed regions of the world in particular. He argues for the adaptation of theories of imperialism for the study of contact situations in tourism. In a broad sense, imperialism refers to the expansion of a society’s interests abroad, which can be forced on or adopted by a different society and results in inter-societal transactions which are characterized by changes of power. It should be taken into account that adaptation of interests can happen voluntarily. However, changes in the relative power of the different parties involved in the contact may change or terminate the relationship. Nash furthermore explains that, it is the power of highly industrialized societies over touristic and related developments abroad (often in less developed regions of the world) that makes tourism a form of imperialism. Often different degrees of enthusiasm exist among hosts when starting to develop the tourist system. In order to find out what the consequences of tourism are in tourist areas, the individual and collective adaptations made by the hosts in order to provide services for tourists can be studied. These adaptations which also bring certain socio-cultural changes to the host society, can be seen as the first consequences of tourism. The service economy, which is created in host societies, is externally oriented and focuses on providing the needs for tourists.

I think that it is important to consider Nash’s view on tourism in this research as it takes place in a developing country which is going through a lot of changes at the moment. It is however also important to keep in mind that tourism in many cases is encouraged and welcomed by the host society and that changes can be very beneficial for the host society as a whole. As said by Nuñez (1978): ‘’Who are we to say that improved roads, water purification projects, and rural electrification, as spinoffs from tourist development, are not as beneficial to, let us say, rural peasants and craftsmen as they are to their governments and to tourists?’’(p.215).

Whereas Nash (1978) argues that tourists often have a more powerful position compared to hosts, Richards and Wilson explain in terms of creative tourism that creative development can eventually lead to the relocation of power in tourism when appropriately managed: ‘’thoughtful application of creative development may produce a more embedded and engaging tourism experience with the potential for a redistribution of power in the tourism system and a new mindset for prosumers’’ (p.288). In her study on local crafts women in Namibia, Mietinnen (2006) furthermore explains that by providing workshops to tourists, the women first of all gained money through the sales of their products and besides that, the women were empowered by their role as being a teacher instead of a servant which is often the base of relationships between tourists and hosts. She explains that normally, women in developing countries have the role of servant or they are ‘gazed’ upon by

16 tourists and perceived as indigenous objects. She argues that in creative tourism, local communities can be empowered by having a more active role in encountering the tourists. As will be explained later on, tourists and hosts have the tendency to stereotype each other. Mietinnen (2006) argues that the change of roles (in which the local is for example being seen as the teacher) can change people’s stereotypical representations and lead to more meaningful encounters.

2.2.2 Social Exchange Theory

In the literature about tourism, interaction between and perceptions of different stakeholders in the tourism industry have often been studied by applying social exchange theory (Ap, 1992; Coulson et al., 2014; Andereck et al., 2005). Social exchange theory is originally derived from sociology and social psychology (Moyle et al., 2010) and has mainly been developed in sociology by the psychological researchers Emerson (1976) and Homans (1961) and by the economic researcher Blau (1964). Social exchange theory has been defined by Ap (1992) as ‘’a general sociological theory concerned with understanding the exchange of resources between individuals and groups in an interaction situation’’ (p.668). The theory assumes that all social life can be treated as an exchange of tangible and intangible benefits and resources between people (Homans, 1961).

In the tourism industry, various forms of interaction take place between individuals and other stakeholders. When interacting, people seek something of value and the foundation of social exchange theory in a tourism context is that in order to sustain interaction, there must at least be a two-way interaction of resources between the parties interacting (Ap, 1992).

Ap (1992) has identified four key stages of social exchange which can be seen in figure 4. The process of interaction begins by the initiation of an exchange by an actor. The initiation of an exchange occurs before the exchange takes place (Moyle et al., 2010). In this stage, a certain need stimulates the seek for interaction with the other party. Ap (1992) explains that the nature of the need in most cases is material, social or psychological but it is also possible that actors are motivated by other needs (Ap, 1992). For host communities, the need can for example be to improve the economic well- being of the locals by the money that is gained from tourism. Examples of social needs are the improvement of infrastructure, accessibility to health care or peace and psychological needs can be to foster international understanding or cultural exchanges. For tourists, material needs can for example be the seek for certain goods that are made by the host community and social needs the seek for pleasure. Psychological needs of tourists are for instance the seek to learn about the local culture or belong to the local community. Marques (2012) however argues that in a tourism context, emotions also have an important role and consumer choices in tourism are often more emotional than rational or logical. In my opinion, an emotional need should therefore also be taken into account.

Figure 4: Social Exchange Process (Ap, 1992)

The second stage is the exchange formation and consists of three interrelated components which are antecedents, the exchange relation and the form of the exchange relation (Ap, 1992). Antecedents are the conditions before the interaction takes place. Based on the antecedents, the actor predicts whether the exchange will be beneficial or not. When not, the actor can decide to withdraw before the actual interaction and exchange of resources takes place (Moyle et al., 2010). However, when the antecedents are perceived positively, the exchange relation will be formed. Within the exchange relation part, several ‘temporally inter-dispersed exchanges’ of material, social and or psychological resources take place, which determine the nature of the exchange (Ap, 1992). The third component, which is the form of the relation exchange is considered with the power and dependency relationship between the parties interacting; the exchange of resources during the exchange relation can be balanced when both parties benefit equally from the exchange or unbalanced when one actor benefits more than the other (Moyle et al., 2010).

The last two stages of the exchange process are the exchange transaction evaluation and the evaluation of exchange consequences. Both stages take place after the actual exchange (Ap, 1992). After the exchange, both parties of the exchange evaluate the transactions of resources and identify the consequences of the exchange which are based on the form of the exchange relation (Cook et al., 1983). In this stage, the actors of the exchange furthermore identify whether the exchange was positive or negative (Ap, 1992). When the consequences of the exchange is perceived as negative by one of the actors involved in the exchange, it means that the exchange relation is unbalanced and the actor might decide to withdraw from exchanging in the future (Emerson, 1976). However, it might be necessary for the actor to continue exchanging in the future when power or dependence on the other actor plays a role (Moyle et al., 2010). However, when both parties perceive the consequences of the exchange positively, it is likely that exchanging will be continued in the future.

Within social exchange theory, a distinction can be made between reciprocal and negotiated exchange (Blau, 1964). In reciprocal exchange, beneficial acts for the other are performed without knowing if and to what extend the other will reciprocate. However these type of exchanges may carry social obligations and expectations (Coulson et al., 2014). In reciprocal exchange, the behaviour of one actor influences the behaviour of the other actor and so on. It is a continuous process and each consequence can create self-reinforcing cycles of behaviour. Coulson et al. (2014) argue that reciprocal exchange leads to trust. This trust is being developed through repeated interactions that allow an individual to collect information about the other and develop an expectation that the other’s behaviour is predictable and positive (Blau, 1964). In negotiated exchange, explicit agreements are made between both parties on terms of the exchange so, both parties’ benefits and costs are measured in advance. In this case, exchange will take place on the basis of mutual advantage (Coulson et al., 2014).

According to Homans (1973), the underlying basis of human behaviour is the exchange of benefits, which can be tangible or intangible as well as negotiable or reciprocal. He tries to explain social exchange by looking at economic behaviour, which has been criticized. Emerson (1976) for example argues that Homans tries to reduce human behaviour to economic behaviour by an economic analysis of non-economic situations. Trauer and Ryan (2005) furthermore argue that exchange theories that are merely based on economic models are limited in the context of tourism.

2.2.3 Intimacy Theory

Tourist experiences contain the attributes of intimacy, authenticity and a sense of belonging (Hayllar, Griffin and Huyskens, 2003) and fulfilling tourism experiences can take place when visitors have open minds, hearts and senses towards place, their hosts and their travelling partners (Trauer and Ryan, 2005). Marques (2012) emphasizes the importance of a sense of belonging in tourist experiences and explains that becoming part of a group fosters social learning and involvement in social interaction. She furthermore argues that consumer choices in tourism are often more emotional than rational or logical. In creative tourism, assumptions are being made that deeper involvement or greater empathy lead to more meaningful experiences (Richards and Wilson, 2007). Before researching whether this is the case, there is a need to gain more understanding about intimacy theory.

Creative tourism is a niche within cultural tourism, it is a form of special interest tourism. According to Trauer and Ryan (2005), encounters in forms of special interest tourism are ‘’service relationships with emotional attachment through the special interest focus and a level of enduring involvement on the part of participants’’ (p.481). The involvement takes first of all place through an interest in the activity and secondly through sharing with like-minded people in a social world that extends from home to tourist destination and return. Trauer and Ryan (2005) argue that, instead of using exchange theories that are only based on economic models, it is important to look at intimacy when studying human interaction. With intimacy, they refer to something ‘real’, requiring enduring involvement rather than situational involvement and a willingness to identify with the other. In terms of tourism it seems that hosts and guests cannot reach enduring involvement and a sense of belonging because tourists are just on holiday for a certain period of time and therefore are likely to remain outsiders of the host community. Different studies however prove that tourists do seek, develop and sustain these kinds of intimate relationships with hosts (MacCannel, 1976, Marques, 2012). Trauer and Ryan (2005) suggest that relationships in tourism can be interpreted by using the model of the relationship

19 cycle which was proposed by Stern in 1988 because the model recognises the influence of emotions in relationship contexts of intense interaction and extended duration between hosts and guests in tourism, as well as other likeminded participants (p.486). Furthermore, the formation, maintenance and ending of relationships are considered in the model. The model can be seen in figure 5 and consists of different stages which are A, Aquaintance, B, Buildup, C, Continuation and D, Dissolution.

Before tourists go on holiday, they prepare their bags, they read travel guides, recommendations of others on interactive travel forums and other preparations are taken in order to anticipate the holiday. Then they go on holiday and leave their ‘normal’ lives for a certain period of time and enter the environment of the host society. During their holiday, tourists acquire new and intimate experiences through involvement with hosts / service providers or other participants and co- travellers. Trauer and Ryan (2005) explain that intimate connections between people are Figure 5: Relationship cycle (Stern, 1988) stimulated through an existent interest or through new stimuli that are found at the holiday destination. These new and intimate experiences will be remembered by the tourists and will influence their holiday experiences in the future. As explained by Nuñez (1978), when people from different culture come in contact with each other, both parties will to a certain extend change and become somewhat like the other. So therefore Trauer and Ryan (2005) consider the fact that tourists do not just return to their homes as before but have somehow changed. This aspect is however not taken into account in the relationship cycle proposed by Stern (1988). When tourists leave their holiday it is possible that the relationships that have been established during the holiday are dissolved. It is however also possible that the intimate association that have been established with the other persons on holiday is continued.

Trauer and Ryan (2005) furthermore explain the differences between healthy, ‘intimate’ relationships and dysfunctional relationships in tourism settings based on ideas of other-centredness and self-centredness. Openness, other-orientation and trust between people are important factors for intimate relationships. ‘’It is through these transparent processes that one begins to learn about self through interaction with a specific other and then through others more generally’’ (p.487). However, when one or both parties are only self-centred, problems may arise in an exploitative relationship.

Thus, the interaction between hosts and guest does not always result in benefits for both parties. Problems may arise and the relationship may become exploitative when one or both actors are self- centred. Smith (1978) explains that interpersonal conflicts between tourists and locals are minimal when the living standards of both parties are similar. But when the ethnic and cultural distance between tourists and hosts is big, it is more likely that the two groups will encounter confusion and misunderstanding (Nuñez, 1978). Nash (1978) explains that touristic transactions are first of all defined by ‘strangerhood’, where the tourist is seen as a stranger, being different from the host.

Tourists and hosts are furthermore separated from each other due to the work-leisure distinction and cultural differences. When the cultural differences between the societies engaging in tourism are big, both tourists and hosts have the tendency to generalize and categorize each other which is common for relationships in the modern world. This can however be problematic as people who generalize each other, are likely less personally involved with each other and therefore have the tendency to act in terms of their own interest (Nash, 1978), which may lead to an exploitative relationship (Trauer and Ryan, 2005). Richards and Wilson (2007) furthermore argue that in creative tourism it is more likely that ‘cultural empathy’ is being developed between hosts and guests with similar lifestyles compared to groups with very different backgrounds and lifestyles.

So far, the majority of the research that is carried out related to creative tourism takes place in a western, urban setting (Marques) where living standards of hosts and guests are similar. This research however takes place in a development context where wide economic disparities exist between tourists and the local community. These economic disparities may cause several problems in the research area and can disturb the creative tourism process. In developing countries, the main reason for locals to work in the tourism sector is often to gain money. In the eyes of the locals, the tourists are rich and they therefore want to gain money from them. Higher prices are often asked from tourists compared to locals which may cause conflicts once tourists find out they are being overcharged.

2.2.4 Staging Tourism

In order to understand and interpret the host-tourist interaction, Nuñez, (1978) calls for the adaptation of Goffman’s ’dramaturgical studies’ which is similar to the ‘staged performances’ discussed by Edensor (2000, 2001). Edensor (2000) perceives the whole of social life as being ‘performative’ and perceives hosts and tourists as being ‘on stage’ during their face-to-face encounters. He furthermore argues that the ‘on stage’ performance has been prepared backstage by the tourist as well as the host. Before going on holiday, tourists have prepared their holiday by reading information about the destination, talking about it with previous visitors, planning their wardrobe etc. and hosts have made certain adaptations to their normal way of life in order to accommodate the tourist.

As explained before in the part about authenticity, MacCannell (1976) also uses the metaphor of front and back stages in tourism. The front stage is being put up in order to protect the real ‘authentic’ local culture which can be found backstage which is also explained in the following quote of Edensor (2000): ‘’the strategic `stage-management' of impressions characterizes the ways in which people attempt to convey particular meanings and values in social settings on the `front-stage', dropping their actor's mask only when they reach the domestic safety of `backstage' regions’’ (p.323). Like Nash (1978), Edensor (2001) also discusses how tourism can sometimes be perceived as a form of imperialism. Cultural shows are often performed by the host community for tourists which can include local dance or dramas. These performances are however often devised to satisfy tourists and therefore adaptations are made like leaving out cultural aspects that might be difficult for tourists to understand. These performances often furthermore foster the reproduction of stereotypes associated with ‘primitivism, exoticism and eroticism’ (Edensor, 2001, p.69).

Goffman (1959) refers to this on-stage performance as being dramaturgical and argues that the performance is dependent on social contexts. Performances of a person can vary based on the regulation of the stage (the place where the performance takes place) and the relationship between the actors involved (Edensor, 2000). Edensor furthermore argues that performance is an interactive process which succeeds depending on the skill of the actor, the context in which it takes place and the way in which it is interpreted by the audience (p.324). I do however think that when the performance does not succeed, it can influence the host-guest relationship. As mentioned before, MacCannel (1973) argued that tourists try to enter back regions because these are associated with intimacy of relations and authenticity of experiences (p.589) and the front regions are perceived as inauthentic. When for example tourists are aware of hosts’ performances, this may cause negative feelings because it makes tourists aware that they have not reached the back region and the intimate relationship with the hosts. Richards and Wilson (2007) explain that in order to perform successfully, tourists need to develop their performance skills which they refer to as ‘creativity’. Once tourists have developed their performance skills they are able to shift roles; shift from being a consumer to a ‘prosumer’ (p.3). Edensor (2000) furthermore explains that the level of involvement in the tourist experience depends on the extent of the tourist’s reflexive awareness. Once a tourist has more experience of ‘being a tourist’ and so has developed his or her performance skills, the tourists is more involved in the experience and is able to reflect on the performance being made.

Certain tourist performances are focused on ‘the self’ (Edensor, 2001). MacCannell (1976) argues that more ‘authentic’ selves can be released by tourists when being on holiday. On holiday they have the opportunity to perform new ‘roles’ and explore new identities. Edensor (2001) furthermore explains that tourists transmit their identity by travelling in a certain style and by undertaking a certain way of travel. The performances of tourists are an important part of the tourist’s own holiday experience, but besides that, the performance is also part of the holiday experience of other tourists (Richards and Wilson, 2007). Edensor (2000) explains that tourists can take on different roles during their holidays and thereby also shift their identities while travelling.

Edensor (2000) also discusses different tourism stages and argues that the stages where the performances take place can influence tourists’ performances. A distinction is made between ‘enclavic’ and ‘heterogeneous’ space. Enclavic spaces are spaces imposed by ‘western’ standards which are highly controlled. Examples of enclavic spaces are all-inclusive resorts in which tourists have access to western standards like air-conditioning, western food, quality products etc. In enclavic spaces, tourists are often isolated from the host population and protected from potentially offensive sights, sounds and smells (p.330). Heterogeneous spaces on the other hand are spaces where locals and tourists mingle and where activities, facilities, local businesses and institutions co-exist. Edensor (2000) explains that heterogeneous spaces can often be found in ‘non-western’ destinations where tourism has evolved in an unplanned process and where the tourism economy is labour-intensive, consisting of small family businesses which do not provide the ‘western’ standards. In these spaces, a variety of encounters can take place between several communities and between locals and tourists. Tourists often end up in unexpected situations in which they have to perform a certain role, which is based on improvisation in order to find their way. These different performances can help tourists to find new identities. Heterogeneous spaces are characteristic for creative tourism as they allow for host-guest interactions and the development of creative tourism experiences.

2.3 Conceptual Framework

In this section, I present the conceptual framework of this research. The framework has been created in order to guide this study.

Regarding the four theories that have been discussed in the theoretical framework, different stages have been identified to explain the host-guest interaction which are the motivation for the encounter, the encounter itself and the evaluation of the encounter. In order to study the interaction between and experiences of hosts and guests, these stages will be used as a basis of the model. In both social exchange theory and intimacy theory, the encounter during the holiday starts because of a certain need on the side of the host and the guest which in most cases is material, social, psychological or emotional in nature but it is also possible that actors are motivated by other needs. These needs have to be satisfied and form the motivation for the creative tourism encounter. These two theories have inspired research question 2 and two motivation boxes have been created in the conceptual framework. The box on the right side of the model represents the host’s motivation for participating in creative tourism and the box on the left side the motivation of the tourist.

The big box in the middle first of all represents the creative tourism experiences. The encounters between hosts and guests are an essential part of the creative tourism experiences. The importance of encounters in holiday experiences is furthermore discussed in intimacy theory and can therefore be found within the experience field. Next to the host-guest encounter, other factors can however also influence the experiences of hosts and guests and therefore research question 4 has been designed in order to find out what those factors are. The basis of the encounter box has been inspired by all the four theories about the study of host-guest interactions and research question 3 has been created respectively. The concepts that are placed within the encounter box are however based on creative tourism literature and the theory of staged performances. On the left side of the interaction box, I have placed concepts that in my opinion influence the nature of the interaction and can contribute to a positive evaluation of the encounter and experience in general. These criteria are participation, learning, creativity and authenticity. Opposed to authenticity I have placed the concept of staged performances which in my opinion may lead to more negative evaluations of the encounter when the performances are not carried out and perceived successful.

The last box, which contains the evaluation of the encounter, has been inspired by social exchange theory, intimacy theory and the theory on change and power relations. These theories evaluate the encounter and discuss how the host-guest encounter can influence the nature of the host-guest relationship. In this box I have also placed the positive outcomes on the left side which are first of all balanced and intimate relationships and the negative on the right side which are unbalanced and exploitative relationships. I have furthermore placed the creative tourism concept sustainability in this box because the interaction between hosts and guests can lead to the sustainability and enrichment of traditions and host cultures. Research question 5 is linked to this box and has been created in order to find out how hosts and guests evaluate the creative tourism encounters.

Conceptual Framework

3. Methodology

This chapter provides an overview of the research design, which has been guided by the theoretical framework in the previous chapter. The epistemology (3.1) that applies to this research will first of all be discussed, followed by a section about the methods that have been used (3.2). The methods contain preliminary online – and field research (3.2.1), interviews (3.2.2) and observations (3.2.3). The data collection strategy (3.3) thereafter follows, including the selection of creative tourism activities (3.3.1) and the selection and approaching of hosts and guests (3.3.2). The next section provides an overview of the data analysis process (3.4) and in the last part, the positionality of the researcher and reflection on the methods (3.5) has been covered, including the limitations and ethics of the research.

3.1 Epistemology

The paradigm that applies to this research is social constructionism. In my opinion, there is no universal truth and I think that people experience reality in their own way and this reality is socially constructed by people’s interactions with each other and with the world. People are interdependent and their social exchanges have consequences for the way they construct their reality (Crotty, 1998). New experiences can furthermore change our construction of reality. Schwandt (2000), explains that people ‘’invent concepts, models, and schemes to make sense of experience, and we continually test and modify these constructions in the light of new experiences.’’(p.197).

The overall research aim of this study was to gain more understanding about the phenomenon of creative tourism in the research area and to get a deeper understanding of the creative tourism encounters between hosts and guests and their respective experiences. In order to enquire this, qualitative research techniques have been used which according to Boeije (2010) consist of three key elements: looking for meaning, using flexible research methods enabling contact and providing qualitative findings (p.11). Being able to interpret human experiences and behaviour was important for this research and therefore a combination of an ethnographic and phenomenological approach has been taken for this study.

Ethnography is a ‘’qualitative social science practice that seeks to understand human groups by having the researcher in the same social space as the participants in the study’’ (Madden, 2010, p.16). Ethnographers study people in typical circumstances in which interaction takes place which is distinctive for that certain situation. This approach has helped me to study the behaviour of the hosts and guests and make sense of the host-guest encounters. Phenomenology is the study of the lived experiences of people whereby the people being studied are trying to make sense of their personal experiences and the social world and the researcher tries to make sense of the phenomenon that is being experienced by the participants. (Smith, Flower and Larking, 2009). For this study, I also looked at the experiences of hosts and guests of the encounters and the creative tourism activities in order to gain deeper understanding of the phenomenon.

3.2 Methods

A number of methods have been used. First of all, some preliminary online – and field research has been conducted in order to determine the creative tourism offer in the research area. This information was needed to be able to select the activities being studied and start collecting data about the host-guest interactions. In order to gain more understanding about the encounters between hosts and guests in creative tourism activities, I have applied a number of flexible research methods which are semi-structured interviews and unstructured observations.

I have chosen these methods because they gave me the ability to play with interesting things that came up during the data selection period and did not restrict me to certain predetermined questions or observation criteria. As a researcher, I tried to ‘look over the shoulder’ of the actors being studied by observing and talking with them in order to gain more understanding about them. Table 1 shows an overview of the methods that have been used for this research. The first column names the method, the second column the research questions that I aimed to answer with the method, the third column the method instrument or tools that are used to conduct the research and in the fourth column the relevance of the method can be seen.

Table 1: Overview of research methods

3.2.1 Preliminary Online – and Field Research

Before I was able to start observing and interviewing, I first of all had to determine what creative tourism activities are offered in the research area. In order to do this, I did some preliminary online research. With the online research I was able to identify a number of activities but not all of them because not all of the businesses have online information about the activity available. Therefore, the first two weeks upon arrival in the research area, were used to explore the area and identify the whole creative tourism offer. This was done by doing field trips on the lake with a boat, cycling around the village Nyaungshwe and especially talking with other people in the area. The field research furthermore helped me to select a number of activities for this research because more information was retrieved about the price, accessibility and popularity of the activities. In the following chapter I present an extensive overview of the different activities.

3.2.2 Interviews

For this research I have applied a semi-structured interview technique as this is a flexible research method. In order to answer the research question and gain more understanding about the host- guest relationship in creative tourism activities, some guidance in the interviews was needed. As explained by O’Leary (2004), with semi-structured interviews, ‘’interviews generally start with some defined questioning plan, but pursue a more conversational style of interview that may see questions answered in an order more natural to the flow of conversation’’(p.164). For the interviews, a number of defined questions were made in advance but whenever any interesting tangents came up, I tried to develop these and ask in further detail about the certain topic. In order to gain trust of the interviewees and create a more open environment, the interviews that have been conducted were all informal. Even though a number of questions were made in advance, the interviews had a conversational style. After approaching the interviewees, I started with introducing myself and the research topic. Besides that I asked the interviewees for permission to record the interview and I gave an indication of the duration and type of questions of the interview. I furthermore explained them that they cannot give wrong answers and that I am interested in their opinions, feelings and beliefs and in order to get these type of answers, the majority of questions that were asked are open questions.

In Appendix I an overview can be found of two interview guides; one for the tourists and one for the hosts. Because the interview questions for hosts and guests are slightly different, two interview guides have been created but both consist of three main parts which are the motivation, the experience and encounter and the evaluation of the encounter and activity. In the section about the motivation I asked questions in order to find out what induced the hosts and guests for participating in creative tourism. In the section about the experience and the encounter, I tried to get a clear picture of what the activity and the encounter look like and how they experienced those and in the last section about the evaluations I tried to find out how hosts and guests reflected on the encounter. These three main topics have been discussed in each interview but besides that, other topics have been discussed that came up in the conversations. In the end of the interview I have asked whether the interviewee had any questions or wanted to add anything, whether the interviewee was interested in the final results and whether the interviewee wanted to stay anonymous.

In order to be able to transcribe the interviews word for word and to not miss out on anything that has been discussed during the interviews, all the interviews have been recorded with an audio recorder on my mobile phone. The majority of the interviews have been conducted in English and there were nine interviews conducted in Dutch with Dutch tourists. I have decided to conduct those interviews in Dutch because it is for many people easier to express themselves in their mother tongue. Besides that, I felt it would have been inappropriate to request the Dutch tourists to do the interview in English because I was already speaking with them in Dutch and they already sacrificed their leisure time during their holiday to help me. A number of Interviews have furthermore been conducted with the help of a Burmese translator.

3.2.3 Observations

Next to conducting interviews, observations have also been made in order to gain deeper understanding about the interaction between the hosts and guests and in order to compare the observations with the interview findings. For the observations I have applied two different techniques which are participant and non-participant observations. In Appendix III an overview can be found of the observations and applied method. I first of all decided to conduct observations while I was participating ‘undercover’ in creative tourism activities. O’Leary (2004), explains that as a participant observer you try to ‘’to preserve a natural setting and to gain cultural empathy by experiencing phenomena and events from the perspective of the observed’’ (p.172). The observations were covert as the participants did not know they were being observed. I decided to use this research technique because I thought that the participants might change their behaviour once they knew I was observing them. So this method helped me to get a sense of the ‘real’ situation.

I was able to participate in the majority of the activities but due to financial limitations I was not able to participate in all of them and make covert observations. Therefore I decided to make non- participant observations as well and I asked the host and tourist for permission to observe them. In these cases, the observations were candid as the participants knew they were being observed and I partly explained them what my research was about. Because for the observations I was mainly interested in the interaction between hosts and guests, I did not inform the participants that I was looking at this because I was worried that they might change their behaviour. Therefore, I generally explained them that my research was about creative tourism and that I was interested to learn something about the activity.

The observations were unstructured because I did not have any predetermined criteria I was looking for while I was observing. I was mainly looking at the interaction between the hosts and the guests and I made notes of things that happened at the moment because they seemed relevant to me. I did not have a checklist of things I was looking for because it would have been too difficult to focus on that as often more than two persons were being observed. But the things I mainly focused on during the observations were spoken language and physical contact. Next to looking at the interaction between the participants, for the participant observations, I wrote down my own experience and impression as a tourist after the activity. For a number of activities, like the cooking classes and the restaurant, I was able to take notes during the observations but for the other activities notes were written down afterwards or sometimes quickly during the activity. The observations contain general notes of the behaviour of people and things that were said and afterwards I have interpreted these notes.

3.3 Data Collection

Time in the research area has been spent from February 4, 2015 until April 22, 2015. The beginning of this period was mainly used to explore the area and to determine the creative tourism offer and the accessibility of the different activities. The remaining time in the research area has been used to collect primary data by conducting observations and interviews. Out of the 51 interviews, one interview has been conducted upon return in the Netherlands because this was more convenient for the respondent, a Dutch tourist. The other interviews have been conducted in the research area and all were conducted face to face. In this sub-chapter, the selection of the activities and respondents and the way they were approached will furthermore be discussed.

3.3.1 Selection of creative tourism activities

As explained before, some preliminary research has been done in order to identify the offer of creative tourism activities in the research area. Due to financial restrictions, time limitations and accessibility of the activities, a number of creative tourism activities have been selected to study. More extensive information about the activities can be found in Chapter 4. In the beginning of the data collection period I started with the following activities:

1. Boat trip: including stops at the cheroot making, silver smith, weaving and paper making workshop 2. Cooking Classes: including Bamboo Delight, Mr. Min and Linn Htett 3. Leg Rowing Class 4. Puppet Show 5. Movie French Touch 6. Thanakha Garden Restaurant

These activities have been selected because I wanted to look at different types of creative tourism activities which can be divided into the categories of buying, seeing, tasting and learning. In these different types of creative tourism, the amount of involvement and interaction is different which can have an influence on the hosts and guests experiences of the activity. Interviews have been conducted with participants of all these activities, but a problem which arose was that for a number of activities the interviews were quite short. This had several reasons but one of them was that the activity was either too short or there did hardly take any interaction place between the host and the guest. So, the interviewee was not able to talk a lot about the activity. Therefore I decided to put my focus on three main activities in the last few weeks of the data collection period. These activities were the cooking classes, boat trips and the leg rowing class. In the beginning I only included two cooking classes but in these weeks I decided to add another cooking class which is Linn Htett. I decided to add this cooking class because the low season had started in the research area so adding this cooking class enlarged the chance of finding sufficient interviewees. In the three activities that had been selected for the final data collection period, more involvement took place between hosts and guests and besides that, the duration of the activities was the longest.

3.3.2 Selecting and approaching hosts and guests

By selecting the creative tourism activity, in the majority of the cases I already selected the host because most of the activities are run by one or two hosts. The only exception was for the boat trip because there are quite a lot of workshops at the lake. As explained in chapter 4, there are a lot of villages at the Inle Lake and each village represents a main handicraft workshop. So, in one village there were several weaving workshops and in the other village a number of silver smiths can be found. Because it would take too much time and money to visit all of these workshops, I have asked the owner of the hotel where I was staying to contact the owners of a number of workshops and arrange some interviews for me. The owner of the hotel where I was staying used to work as a tour guide in the past so she knows the research area and was able to arrange some interviews for me with the owners of the workshops which are the silver smith, weaving workshop, paper making and cheroot making. For the other activities I approached the hosts by myself. In most cases, I first approached the host in order to participate in the activity myself and afterwards asked if it was possible to interview him or her. The majority of the interviews with the hosts took place in their house or shop and one interview has been conducted in a restaurant.

The selection criteria for the tourists were that they first of all needed to have participated in a creative tourism activity and they had to be international tourists. The only creative tourism activity where I saw domestic tourists was the boat trip but the domestic tourists are mainly interested in buying souvenirs at the workshops and they are not interested in the work process. This was already explained to me by some hosts and I noticed this when visiting the workshops as the domestic tourists walked straight to the ‘shop’ and did not look at the workshop itself. So, therefore I decided to focus on international tourists for this study.

Different methods have been used to approach tourists. Tourists have first of all been approached after they participated in the activity. For example after seeing the movie or the puppet show where I was as observer, I asked a number of tourists if I could interview them about the activity. In order to approach the tourists that went on a boat trip, I was waiting at the Jetty in Nyaungshwe where all the boats that go to the Inle Lake leave and arrive. All of the participants that were approached were willing to do the interview but I found out that this approach was not very successful because the tourists had other plans and the setting was not always very comfortable.

After conducting the interviews with the hosts of the cooking classes, I asked the hosts if I could stop by their cooking class to approach tourists and I asked the owner of cooking class 2 if he could call me if one of his participants was willing to be interviewed. This worked out quite well because in this way I could approach them more easily and in most cases the interview was scheduled a few hours later on the same day or for the next day. In the end of the data collection period, I changed the method of approaching tourists because it was important that the tourist would have enough time to be interviewed. Therefore I chose to approach tourists that were sitting in the restaurant the French touch. This restaurant is quite big, has wifi and a relaxed atmosphere and tourists often spend their time here after they have checked out from their hotel and are waiting to take the bus in the evening. This method of approaching tourists worked out very well for me because it was obvious that the tourists had enough time for the interview which made it easier to probe and discuss certain topics more in depth.

3.4 Data Analysis

The data collection period of this research took place during the months March and April 2015. During this period, interviews have been conducted with tourists and hosts that were involved in creative tourism activities in the research area. The total number of interviews that have been conducted is 51, but out of these interviews, 47 have been analyzed. Of the four interviews that have been excluded, three of these interviews were conducted with employees that work at different workshops at the lake and are part of the boat trip activity. The other interview that has been excluded was conducted with French tourists that went to the puppet show. I was not able to retrieve a lot of information of the respondents during these interviews which was mainly caused by language barriers and besides that I noticed that some of the respondents did not feel comfortable talking to me. Therefore these interviews have not been used in the analysis. In table 2 an overview can be seen of the number of interviews with hosts and guests for each activity. Because the owner of the leg rowing class and cooking class 2 is the same person, the total number in the table is 48, but 47 interviews have been conducted. In Appendix II, an overview of the interview respondents can furthermore be found.

Table 2: Number of interviews per activity

Activity Host Guest Boat trip 7 13 - cheroot (cigar) making (2) - silver smith (1) - weaving (2) - paper making (2) Cooking Classes 4 10 - Cooking class 1 (2) (5) - Cooking class 2 (1) (2) - Cooking class 3 (1) (3) Leg Rowing 1 2 Puppet Show 1 4 Movie 1 3 Thanakha making 2 0

Besides the interviews, I have participated in the activities as a tourist and observations have been made of my own experiences and of the interaction between hosts and guests. When possible, the observations have been written down during the activity and in other cases afterwards. Because there was a limited amount of time in the research area, the interviews have been transcribed upon return in the Netherlands. The interviews have been transcribed word for word in order to gain understanding about the experiences and perceptions of the interviewees. After all the interviews had been transcribed and the observations been sorted, I started coding them. Based on the theoretical framework, deductive codes have been created. These codes contained the different stages of interaction and important creative tourism concepts. These deductive codes have been amplified by inductive codes which are returning themes and topics of the interviews and observations.

Because the amount of primary data retrieved for this research is quite big, the computer program ATLAS.ti has been used to code the data. As mentioned, a number of codes had already been created and other codes were made while reading through all the transcripts. As explained by Boeije (2010), a code is a ‘’summarizing phrase for a piece of text which expresses the meaning of the fragment’’ (p.96). When reading through the transcripts, fragments have been selected and assigned to the codes or in some cases a new code was created and in the end of this process 45 codes had been created. After this process of ‘open coding’, I started reviewing each code and the assigned fragments and thereafter I created main codes and sub codes. Besides that, I have merged codes that were similar and I have deleted a few codes that were not relevant. Doing this, helped me to organize and get a better overview of all the data.

After this I tried to determine relationships between the different main codes / main concepts and started writing the results and interpreting the data. After that, the findings have been linked to the theories that have been discussed in the theoretical framework and conclusions have been drawn based on the research questions. Figure 6 shows an overview of the data analysis process of this research.

•Interviews with hosts and guests involved in creative tourism activities Primary data •Participant observations as being a tourist myself collection

•Transcribing the interviews Preparing •Working out notes of observations data for analysis

•Reading through the data •Assigning codes to data fragments (inductive and deductive codes) Open coding

•Review and reorganize the data Axial coding

•Determine relationships between core conepts •interpret findings and link to theories in theoretical framework Selective •Draw conclusions: link findings to research questions coding

Figure 6: Overview of data analysis process (Boeije, 2010)

3.5 Positionality and reflection on methods

Madden (2010) explains that an ethnographer is the primary tool of research and an active participant in the ethnographic field (p.24) and therefore it is important to acknowledge the fact that I as a researcher, have influenced the research. First of all, my upbringing, education and past experiences influence the way I interpret things. I believe that there is no universal truth and that my interpretation is just one way of seeing things. Because cultural differences exist between me and the respondents, I might have interpreted their words differently than they were meant. Furthermore, the observations that have been made are dependent on the researcher’s senses and O’Leary (2004) explains that the actual world is narrowed down to what the researcher can manage to take in through the senses. This means that only parts of the actual moment can be observed by the researcher. Besides that, when I conducted non-participant observations, the participants might have behaved differently than they normally would have because they knew that I was observing them. My presence as participant-observer might furthermore have influenced the behaviour of the hosts and guests.

For this research it is furthermore important to be aware of the political situation of the country which will be discussed more extensively in chapter 4. The people living in Myanmar have been oppressed by the government for many years and were in these years not able to express their opinion about many things and they were especially not able to criticize the government. Like other Asian countries, Myanmar still has a very hierarchical social system and people in a ‘lower’ position might not feel comfortable expressing their true feelings. Besides that, my own appearance might have influenced the respondents as well. Because I come from a ‘western’ country like the majority of the tourists visiting the research area the hosts might have given me desirable answers. When conducting the interviews with the hosts, I first of all noticed that they hardly have any negative experiences with tourists or they did not feel comfortable telling me about this. Besides that, when conducting interviews at the lake, I felt that a number of employees that work at the different workshops felt very uncomfortable talking to me.

In the beginning I thought that the problem was the language barrier as some of the employees only know how to explain the work process but were not really able to have a conversation in English. Therefore I decided to return to these workshops with a Burmese translator which has the same ethnicity as the employees working at the lake. I noticed in the research area that the people are quite proud of their own ethnicity and people from the same ethnic group often stick together. The people that live and work on the lake are the ‘Intha’ so therefore I brought an Intha translator along to help me conduct the interviews. But even with the help of the translator, some of the employees were not talkative and sometimes they just did not answer the questions and looked down. I do not know the exact reason but I think that the employees first of all might have been shy to talk and besides that felt not comfortable talking because they are employed and they might have been worried to say something wrong and lose their job. The owners of the different activities that have been interviewed were in general more talkative and more open about their feelings and opinions but when I asked them about the tourists the majority only had nothing but positive words.

Another limitation of the research is the language barrier. The majority of the interviews have been conducted in English which is not the mother tongue of many respondents and the researcher. People cannot always express themselves well in another language (Creswell, 2009), and therefore some meanings might have been lost. As explained, a number of interviews have been conducted with the help of a translator. The translator helped me to collect new data but one limitation of having a translator is that the information you get depends on the interpretation and translation of the translator. Besides that, it might have happened that the translator did not translate everything which was said by the respondent but only selected things which seemed important to her. One thing I also faced during the interviews was that sometimes the translator answered the question while I was not interested in the facts but in the way the respondent would give the answer. This was sometimes difficult to make clear for the translator.

Another limitation of the research, which has already been discussed in the above, is that I was not able to participate in all of the activities due to financial limitations. Even though non-participant observations have been made and interviews have been conducted regarding these activities, it is still different from participating yourself and I was furthermore not able to make any observation of cooking class 2. Besides that, interviews have not been conducted with tourists that visited the Thanakha Garden restaurant because the interaction and activity itself only took a few minutes which in my opinion made it very difficult to interview tourists about. In the end of the data collection period the Burmese new year, water festival took place for five days which made it difficult to collect any data.

Taking these limitations into account, I however tried to make most of it and consider the well-being of the respondents. As explained by Boeije (2010), when doing research it is important to follow ethical rules of behaviour in order to protect yourself and others from doing harm. When conducting the interviews, I first of all tried to comfort the respondents in the beginning by telling them that they cannot give any wrong answers and that I am only interested in their opinion and feelings. Besides that I asked them whether they wanted to stay anonymous and ensured this by not using their names in this research. Whenever I noticed that interviewees felt uncomfortable talking about a certain topic I moved on to the next or I tried to end the interview and thanked the interviewee when I noticed that he or she did not feel comfortable talking to me at all.

4. Context

This research has been conducted in the area of the Inle Lake, which is located in the eastern part of the republic of Myanmar. Myanmar is a country located between South and Southeast Asia, neighbouring Thailand, Laos, Bangladesh, China and India. This chapter starts with a brief history of the political situation of the country (4.1), followed by a section about the influence of the political instability on tourism (4.2). The research area and its tourism development (4.3) is furthermore discussed and this chapter ends with an identification of the creative tourism offer (4.4) in the research area.

4.1 Political history of Myanmar

Myanmar knows a long history of political instability. The country has been colonized by the British for many years and was back then referred to as Burma. The British dominated the whole country from 1885 until 1948 (Steinberg, 2010) and in this period three Anglo-Burmese wars took place (Thant, 2001). After more than 60 years of colonization, the country became independent and was reigned by an elected government until 1962, when a military coup took place (Steinberg, 2010) and armed forces have exercised control in the country ever since (Henderson, 2003). The military ruled under the Revolutionary Council which was a junta of seventeen officers who’s philosophy was the so called Burmese way to socialism. The military tried to dismantle anything that could threaten military control and the regime proceeded a policy of intentional isolation (Henderson, 2003).

People were dissatisfied with the regime and its handling of the nation’s economy which led in 1988 to big demonstrations. Thousands of university students, accompanied by monks and other citizens went on the streets and called to end the socialist regime, asking for a multi party democratic system of governance. This was however futile as the demonstrations were quelled by the military and ended in a huge bloodshed, taking the lives of thousands of people (Smith, 1999). After the military coup, the State Law and Order Restoration Council (SLORC) obtained power. In order to keep military control and end the chaos, this military government had to reform its governance and therefore tried to introduce a more market oriented system (Steinberg, 2010). In 1990, elections were organized and with more than 80% of the votes, the National League for Democracy (NLD), that was headed by Aung San Suu Kyi won the elections (Henderson, 2003). Aung San Suu Kyi was in 1991 awarded for the Nobel Prize of Peace as she had been fighting for human rights and democracy in Myanmar. Even though she won the elections, she was not permitted to take office and the election results had been dissolved by the military that continued to rule the country. Colonial names were abandoned and the country was now named Myanmar and its capital Rangoon, named Yangon (Henderson, 2003).

In sequence, Aung San Suu Kyi was put under house arrest and anyone that was expected to have connections with anti government groups was arrested and sentenced to a long period of imprisonment (Amnesty International, 2000; Sang Lian Thang, 2013). In 1995, Aung San Suu Kyi was released but in 2003 again put under house arrest after riots took place which presumably have been provoked by the military. During the years of military dictatorship from 1988 till 2010, the regime did not allow any interference from other countries and due to the oppression, thousands of Burmese fled to neighbouring countries like Thailand, India and China (Sang Lian Thang, 2013). The regime of the junta has internationally highly been criticized by western countries and non-governmental organisations (NGO’s), creating a negative reputation which adversely affected the country’s international relations.

A process of reforms started in November 2010, when the junta was replaced by a civilian government, still backed by the military (BBC, 2015). In the same month, one week after the elections, Aung San Suu Kyi was released. The current regime states that is has transformed to a civilian democracy (BBC, 2015). This however can be highly questioned as nowadays minorities like the Rohingya Muslims are still being oppressed and human rights are violated.

4.2 Politics and Tourism in Myanmar

The political situation of Myanmar has also influenced its tourism industry. Compared to neighbouring countries like Thailand and Laos, the number of annual visitors has been low (UNWTO, 2000). Due to a policy to promote tourism, visitor arrivals started to increase in the 1970’s and 1980’s but the military coup in 1988 caused a decline of 76% in international arrivals in 1989 (Henderson, 2003). In the 1990’s, tourism was recognized as an industry of importance by the government that started to allow local and foreign private operators to operate in the tourism industry by running hotels, transport businesses and tour guiding services (Hudson, 2006). These initiatives, as well as the release of Aung San Suu Kyi in 1995 resulted in a rise of the visitor arrivals but was however limited and the predetermined target had not been reached because the development of tourism in Myanmar, has been linked with mass human rights violations and benefits for the military regime (Tourism concern, 2014).

Major redevelopment plans of the tourism industry in the 1990’s, that were aimed to attract foreign investors and tourists, have led to the violation of the human rights of many people. Slave labour was taking place and millions of people, including children, pregnant women and elderly, were used to create tourist facilities. Besides that, between 1-4 million citizens have been removed from their homes to make room for hotels and hostels (Smith, 1994). Tourism did not bring benefits for the majority of the Burmese and locals were not able to talk freely to tourists. Furthermore, accusations were spread that tourism revenues ended up in the pockets of the military. Therefore, after her release, Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD called for a tourism boycott of Myanmar in 1996 (Tourism concern, 2015). For a number of years, Aung San Suu Kyi kept asking tourists not to visit Myanmar and stated the following:

"I still think that people should not come to Burma because the bulk of the money from tourism goes straight into the pockets of the generals. And not only that, it's a form of moral support for them because it makes the military authorities think that the international community is not opposed to the human rights violations which they are committing all the time. They seem to look on the influx of tourists as proof that their actions are accepted by the world." (Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, January 1999).

With the reforms that started in November 2010, the NLD called to end the full tourism boycott in Myanmar. They welcomed responsible travellers that are in solidarity with the Burmese people but stated that the boycott on large tourism operations like package tours and cruise ships should continue because most of the revenue of this type of tourism ends up with the junta and provides the majority of the Burmese only with few social and economic benefits (Tourism concern, 2015). This call of the NLD made many tourists decide to visit the country as between 2011 and 2012, visitor arrivals in the country increased by 29.7% and in 2012 Myanmar received more than 1 million international visitors for the first time in its history (MOHT, 2013a). From the visitors that arrived by

38 air, in 2012 the majority came from Asia (64%), followed by Western Europe (22%), North America (7.4%) and Oceania (3.4%). Visitors that entered through land were mainly citizens from Thailand. In the same year, the majority of tourists in Myanmar were university-educated, Free Independent Travellers (FIT) that travelled by themselves or in small groups. (MOHT,2014).

International tourism in Myanmar mainly consists of four destinations which are Yangon, Mandalay, Bagan and the Inle Lake Region. In 2013, 95% of the visitors that arrived by air visited Yangon, 53% visited Mandalay, 28% visited Bagan and 16% visited the Inlay Lake. Other destinations were less than 5% (MOHT, 2014, p.20). Tourism is developing rapidly and the government of Myanmar has recognized its tourism potential as the country possesses rich cultural and natural heritage. The Myanmar Tourism Master Plan 2013 has been developed in order to: ‘’maximize tourism's contribution to national employment and income generation while ensuring the social and economic benefits of tourism are distributed equitably’’ (MOHT, 2013a, p.5).

Myanmar is part of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which is a political and economic organisation of ten countries located in Southeast Asia. Besides Myanmar, ASEAN includes Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Lao PDR, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam (ASEAN, n.d.). In the ASEAN Tourism Marketing Strategy (ASEAN, 2012), emerging trends in visitor motivations and behaviour have been identified and it was found that tourists want to experience, discover and immerse themselves in local ways of life. ASEAN tries to respond to this demand by promoting experiential and creative tourism that respects the environment and culture in the associated countries (ASEAN, 2013). In the Myanmar Tourism Master Plan which has been made by the MOHT, there are however no specific plans regarding the development of creative tourism and very little information is available about the phenomenon in Myanmar.

4.3 The Inle Lake and Nyaunshwe

The Inle Lake and the village Nyaungshwe are situated in the Nyaungshwe Township in the Southern Shan State of Central Myanmar and form one of the country’s main tourism destinations (Robertson,2014). Figure 7 contains a map of Myanmar and the location of the Inle Lake. With a length of 22km and width of 11km the Inle Lake is the second largest lake of Myanmar (Lonely Planet Myanmar, 2014). The lake is situated in a valley, surrounded by two mountain ranges and has a broad diversity of cultural and natural assets (Ingelmo, 2013). Tourism is a developing source of income at the Inle Lake and next to the natural scenery, one of Inle’s main attractions is the traditional way of life of communities living from the lake as the lake is home to a variety of ethnic groups like the Intha (70%), Pa-O (10%), Bamar (3%), Taung Yo (2%) and Shan people (15%). It is estimated that inside the Inle Lake and its surroundings live more than 160,000 people whose main mode of income comes from agriculture (Ingelmo, 2013). In 2012, the Inle Lake attracted roughly 300,000 visitors and it is predicted that in the coming three years, this number will double (IDD, 2012).

Figure 7: Map of Myanmar, showing the location of the Inle Lake

The main access point to the Inle Lake is the town Nyaungshwe, which is located by a canal 3,5 km from the northern part of the lake (MOHT, 2014). In the Lonely Planet Myanmar (2014), Nyaungshwe is described as ‘’a bustling traveller centre with dozens of guesthouses and hotels, a surfeit of restaurants serving pancakes and pasta, and a pleasantly relaxed traveller vibe’’(p.186).The town furthermore contains a number of heritage buildings, pagodas and other traditional architecture (MOHT, 2014).

4.4 Creative tourism in the research area

Even though there is not much information available yet about creative tourism in Myanmar, by conducting online and field research I was able to identify the creative tourism offer in the research area. I have used the different types of creative tourism that have been identified by Richards (2014) in order to create an overview of the creative tourism offer, which can be found in figure 8.

Figure 8: Overview of the creative tourism offer in the research area

4.3.1 Learning

In the learning type of creative tourism, tourists are able to develop their creative skills by participating in creative tourism activities. The learning activities that have been identified in the research area are cooking classes and a leg rowing class.

Cooking classes: Four cooking classes have been identified in the research area which are Bamboo Delight, Lin Htett, Mr. Min and the Inthar Heritage House. However, in a lot restaurants cooking classes can also be arranged upon request. The first three cooking classes have been included in this research because these were the most accessible as they are located in Nyaungshwe. The Intha Heritage House is located in the southern part of the Inle Lake and can only be reached by boat. The cooking classes all had a personal touch and gave an insight in the lives of the hosts as they were located in or next to the hosts’ houses. In the cooking classes of Bamboo Delight and Lin Htett, tourists learn how to prepare traditional Burmese food whereas Mr. Min focuses on Shan food, which is traditional food of the research area. The prices of the cooking classes are all around $20. For the cooking class of Mr. Min, tourists can however choose between two different locations which are in the centre of Nyaungshwe or between the floating gardens at the lake which is more expensive. Cooking classes can be scheduled in the morning before lunch or in the afternoon before dinner. The morning classes also include a visit at the local market in Nyaungshwe where tourists can learn about the different products and groceries are bought for the cooking class. On average, the duration of the cooking classes is three hours.

Leg rowing class: Next to the cooking class, Mr. Min also provides a leg rowing class. The Intha, translated as ‘people of the lake’, have an extraordinary leg-rowing tradition which is a unique characteristic of the Inle Lake. In order to move themselves from one place to another at the lake, the Intha use their leg to paddle by placing one leg on the boat or canoe, and wrapping the other around a paddle to move through the water. The leg rowing class takes place in the Magyizin village, where Mr. Min grew up, located in the northeast of the Inle Lake surrounded by floating gardens. In this village, a small gantry has been built on a raft where tourists can practice to paddle with their legs and hold on to a grip. When tourists feel confident they can later try to stand and paddle on a canoe. After the leg rowing class, tourists are taken through the floating gardens on a canoe. The price of the class is $10 and $5 has to be paid for the boat. In most cases the duration of the activity depends on the tourists and they can inform the host when they would like to return to their accommodation.

4.3.2 Tasting

The tasting form of creative tourism can exist of activities in which tourists can taste the creative skills of hosts which in the research area are a number of handicraft workshops and Thanakha making. Tasting can also refer to the real tasting of food or drinks which in the research area is a wine tasting.

Boat trip: The boat trip is the most popular activity because it takes tourists on the lake, which is the highlight of the research area. The boat trip itself is not necessarily a creative tourism activity but the different workshops that in most cases are visited during the boat trip are. The lake consists of many villages which originally are characterized by a certain handicraft. On the map in figure 9, some villages and their current handicraft workshops have been identified. The majority of the weaving workshops are originated and can still be found in the Inpawkhone village, located in the southwest of the lake. Nampan village, which is located in the southeast of the lake, is known for the cheroot and boat making. Ywama has a central location at the lake and is with the floating market and number of workshops the most vibrant village. Besides that, the village is passed by tourists on their way to Indein which is a popular sight consisting of hundreds of old pagodas. Ywama was originally known for the silver smiths but paper and umbrella making workshops, which are originally from Pindaya, can now also be found in the village. Besides that, there are now also weaving workshops and longneck women that are sitting in souvenir shops also form an attraction. The workshops form a mix of tasting, seeing and buying. Tourists can see how the different handicrafts are being made by the hosts and in most cases, an explanation is given about the production process of the handicrafts which afterwards can be bought in the souvenir shop that is attached to the workshops.

Thanakha making: Thanakha is traditional Burmese makeup which is worn by the majority of women from Myanmar. It is made from the bark of the Thanakha tree and becomes liquid by putting a bit of water on a stone and scratching the bark over it after which it is applied on the cheeks and nose. In the research area, Thanakha making is not an activity on itself but the hosts of the Thanakha garden restaurant often demonstrate tourists how it is made and apply is on their faces upon request.

Wine tasting: The Red Mountain Estate Vineyard and Winery is situated in Taung Chay, a village just outside of Nyaungshwe. Each day, guided tours take place in which the production process of the wines is being explained and showed to tourists. Tourists can furthermore pay $2 to do a tasting of four different wines that are produced by the estate. Because the wine production is not a traditional activity of the hosts and veins have been imported from overseas countries, the wine tasting has not been included in this research.

4.3.3 Seeing

The seeing creative tourism offer consists of a traditional puppet show, cultural movie, cultural museum and art galleries which together form a nice cultural backdrop in Nyaungshwe.

Aung Puppet show: Puppetry is originated in Bagan, an ancient city in the centre of Myanmar and was in the 11th century used as entertainment for the Kings court. Puppet shows were performed with a big team of puppet masters and orchestras and the plays lasted for a couple of hours. Shows were later performed for the ordinary public at festivals and often contained political messages

42 which people were not allowed to talk about. Nowadays it has also become an attraction for tourists. Just outside the centre of Nyaungshwe there is a puppet show which is performed by the puppet master Aung, who grew up in Bagan. The puppet show is performed for tourists and takes 20 minutes in which eight different puppets and their traditional dances are introduced. The puppet master has made all the puppets himself which can also be bought after the show. The show is every day at 19:00 and 20:30 and the entry price is $3.

Movie: At the restaurant and photo gallery the French Touch, which is located in the centre of Nyaungshwe, every evening the Inthar movie ‘The Son of the Lake’ is shown at 19:30. The movie takes approximately one hour and is about a love story and the live of a monk and gives tourists an insight in the everyday life of the Burmese. The movie has been produced in the research area by the owner of the French Touch, who is from France but has been living in Myanmar for 18 years already. He made the movie because photography and movie making is his passion but besides that, he wanted to show the world a part of Burma which you normally as a tourist do not know about but only see when you are in the country for a longer time. There is no admission for the movie but tourists are expected to buy a drink or order some food.

Cultural Museum: In the former palace is a cultural museum which is located just outside the centre of Nyaungshwe. The museum contains information about Shan culture and history but is unfortunately almost all in Burmese. Displays in the museum consist of traditional costumes of the different ethnic groups living in Shan state, traditional boats and other things that characterize Shan culture. The museum is opened from 10:00 – 16:00 on Tuesdays till Sundays and the admission is $2. The museum has not been included in this research because it was difficult to find tourists that visited the museum. Besides that, the people that work in the museum did not speak English and a translator would have had to be hired in order to interview them.

Art Galleries: There are a number of art galleries in the centre and on the shores of Nyaungshwe that mainly contain paintings about for example natural landscapes, people and other contemporary scenes in Myanmar. The art galleries have not been included in this study either because there hardly takes any interaction place between the artists and tourists which makes the interview questions very limited.

4.3.4 Buying

The buying creative tourism offer consists of souvenir shops and markets where different handicrafts that have been made by hosts in the research area can be bought.

Souvenir shops: There are a number of souvenir shops in the centre of Nyaungshwe and a lot at the lake. The products that are sold in the shops are mainly handicrafts that are produced at the different workshops at the lake. Because the buying aspect of these products was already included in the interviews about the boat trips, other souvenir shops have not been included in this study.

Markets: There are a number of markets where the same or similar products are being sold but often for a lower price which are the Mingala market in the centre of Nyaungshwe, the floating market in Ywama and the five day market in Nampan. Next to handicrafts and souvenirs, other products like food are also being sold at the markets.

Figure 9: Map of the creative tourism offer in the research area

5. Results

This chapter contains the results of this study, starting with an explanation of the different motivations of hosts and guests for participating in creative tourism (5.1). In the section that follows, the characteristics of the host-guest encounters are discussed (5.2), followed by factors that influence the creative tourism experiences of hosts and guests (5.3). The last section contains the evaluation of the encounters (5.4) and discusses the nature of the relationship between hosts and guests.

5.1 Motivations

This section will discuss the motivations of hosts and guests to participate in creative tourism activities. As explained by Ap (1992), the initiation of an exchange first of all starts with a certain need of an individual, which is the motivation of the encounter. The hosts’ motivations will first be discussed, followed by the tourists’ motivations.

5.1.1 Motivation Hosts

Host have different motivations for participating in creative tourism and in some cases the primary need of one host can be a less important motivation of another host. The most important need of many hosts is material which is discussed in the section about income generation (5.1.1.1). However, for some hosts it is important to do something they really like (5.1.1.2) and others find it important to help the local community (5.1.1.3). Suggestions of guests (5.1.1.4) have furthermore encouraged the hosts to set up their business. Finally, being able to share their culture, knowledge and skills (5.1.1.5) is also a motivation to participate in creative tourism.

5.1.1.1 Income generation

Considering the living standards of the local people in the research area, the primary need of the hosts that have been interviewed is to make a livelihood. The handicraft businesses at the lake are all family businesses which already exist for a few generations. As more tourists started to visit Myanmar since 1996, opportunities were seen to make more money and the businesses have been extended with workshops where tourists are able to see how the handicrafts are made and are able to buy these afterwards in the souvenir shop. Besides that, for many of the business owners at the lake, their work is like a habit as they have grown up with their family working in the business and have learned from their family how to make the handicrafts since they were young. So taking over the business of their parents was something they knew would happen. Except for the puppet show, the businesses located in Nyuangshwe however are still quite young as they have only started in the last few years and different motivations were given by the hosts to start up their creative tourism business.

5.1.1.2 Job is passion

Overall, the business owners in Nyaungshwe talked very passionate about their job and when conducting the observations I could really feel that they enjoy what they do. They have consciously chosen to start their business as they had a different job before. For one of the owners of cooking class 1, teaching and interacting with tourists is what he likes to do most. He explained that in the

46 past he used to work in a hotel but here he was not allowed to communicate with the tourists. Now that he is his own boss he has the freedom to do what he likes. In the following fragment the respondent expressed his feelings about his work:

‘’I mostly like to teach the foreigner because I can speak, I can explain, I can share my knowledge for my life, my past. And you know, cooking with love you know, talking, having a conversation with each other, learning about their country, share the knowledge about my country. That’s really pretty nice and all the time finish with talking and keep cooking.’’– respondent 20

As explained by Trauer and Ryan (2005), in special interest tourism like creative tourism, the encounter between hosts and guests takes first of all place through an interest in the activity and secondly through sharing with like-minded people. This is also the case with the respondent as he first of all really liked to cook and besides that interacting with tourists and sharing knowledge with each other is what he really likes. The puppet master also explains a similar feeling as the owner of cooking class 1. The puppet master explains that he feels relaxed and happy when he is performing:

‘’As a real puppet master I feel very happy inside when I play. I like to see everybody when I am playing. I feel that all the problems, all the things I forget, I forget everything. My feeling is very good. I forget my headache, forget my children, everything. I just listen to the music and dance with the puppet.’’ – respondent 27

The puppet master really likes to perform and he likes to see the audience looking at him and enjoying while he is performing. He cannot imagine having another job as puppetry is a tradition of his family where he grew up with. So even though the work is his passion, it is also something that was expected of him to do by his family since he was young. Next to the material need of making money, for the business owners in Nyaungshwe their motivation is also psychological and social.

5.1.1.3 Supporting the local community

Being able to support the local community with their business, is for the majority of hosts also a motivation to set up the business, but not the most important reason. For the workshops at the lake, support is mainly given by providing jobs for the local community. The businesses in Nyaungshwe are smaller and do not employ that many people but the cooking classes support the market and indirectly the local farmers and the owners of cooking class 1 have their own charity. For the owner of the leg rowing and cooking class however, being able to support the local community was the main reason to set up his business. He also works as a tour guide for another company and started his own business in order to support his family and the villagers of the village where he was born. He tries to employ them and encourage them to think out of the box:

‘’So I was just thinking what I can create for the village, for the future. But of course I kind of have to start with my family and then by increasing my business, I can also help the villagers. [...] As long as they try to improve themselves I appreciate it. I won’t mind having competition in the village because, for me it’s important that they think something different. Now they work as a farmer or fishermen but they need to improve themselves’’ – respondent 13

The owner of the leg rowing and cooking class really cares about his country and about the villagers and wants them to improve their lives. So setting up his business is not out of self interest but because he wants to help others and let them benefit from his ideas as well.

5.1.1.4 Suggestions and help of guests

A number of the businesses have been set up due to suggestions of guests. So for some business owners a relationship with tourists had already been established in advance of the creative tourism experience. The owners of cooking class 1 have had close relationships with guests for over ten years already and a friend of them, a French lady that returns to their home at least once a year had suggested them to set up a cooking class which one of the owners explained:

‘’We try to make the cooking class in 2013 of March. This is the idea of the French woman which is Pascale. Pascale had the idea for our cooking class. So Sue was starting in the beginning and now I am helping her.’’ - respondent 20 (owner)

An interview has also been conducted with the French lady as she was in the area during the data collection period. She went to Myanmar for the first time around ten years ago and kept returning because of the relationships she had established with the people. In the following fragment she explains that she encouraged the owners of cooking class 1 to set up their business:

‘’another thing I do with people whenever they want is talk with them and encourage them to bring about innovation and new ideas. And knowing that Sue wanted to stay home more than she did when she was a guide and that Lesly was really unhappy in his restaurant, three years ago I really had the strong idea of the cooking class [...] The first class it was terrible, it was three of us. I think we ate around three in the afternoon. They did not know how to show us and now they are doing so well.’’ - respondent 2

This lady felt that the owners were unhappy with their current work situation and therefore wanted to help them improve their lives. The owners had another job but decided to change their career because they wanted to spend more time with their family and do something they really like. The owners of cooking class 3 already had a restaurant and a lot of tourists who came to eat in their restaurant asked them if it was possible to do a cooking class with them. Because they received many requests of tourists they decided to set up the cooking class. The owner of another restaurant was also asked by tourists to teach them how to cook so now she provides cooking classes on request in the low season because in the high season she is too busy with running her restaurant. This quote shows that she does the cooking class for them, in order to satisfy her customers:

‘’No, a lot of people ask me how to cook and then they want to learn about the cooking class with me so I am trying, I am trying a lot. Yeah, because I don’t have experience for the cooking class before but some of customers ask me a lot so I try it for them’’ – respondent 10

So, considering the cooking classes, the business owners that have been mentioned here, did not have the intention to set up a cooking class but due to suggestions and requests of tourists they decided to provide this activity. It became furthermore clear during the interviews and observations

48 that even though running the cooking classes was not their own idea, they are very passionate about it. The puppet master has performed puppet shows since he was young and he used to give performances in a hotel where he worked and tourists that came here suggested him to start up his own business. Besides that, he liked to set up his own business in order to make his show more accessible to all kinds of tourists and not only the ones staying in the hotel where he worked before.

Looking at the different quotes it shows that on the one hand tourists want to help the locals to improve their lives and businesses and locals want to provide the service for the tourists because they want to help them and satisfy them. However, both the local and the tourist have their own interest in it as for the locals it is of course a new source of income and for the tourists it is a new activity in which they can participate and develop their skills and knowledge.

5.1.1.5 Sharing culture, knowledge and skills

Another motivation for a number of hosts is to be able to share their culture, knowledge and skills. They are proud of their culture and job and want to share this with the tourists. The owner of the leg rowing class explains in the following fragment how he got the idea for his business:

‘’I get the idea to start the leg rowing class because I think that some people do not want to do all the touristy things. With the leg rowing class they are for example more isolated from all the other tourist attractions and it is not too expensive and also something you learn from the lake. When you come to Inle, you will see the fishermen with the one leg rowing and fishing with the net so you may want to know how it feels to do the leg rowing. So I want to share some knowledge about how is the leg rowing from the lake because you will only see this in Inle in the world. I am really proud that we have the leg rowing here.’’ – respondent 13

Leg rowing is a typical tradition of the Intha people, living at the Inle Lake and does not exist in other parts of the world. The leg rowing class is a very distinctive tourism offer in the region which has been created by optimizing the existing resources (Marques, 2012). This is the only place where tourists can do this and this makes the owner of the leg rowing class very proud. By putting himself in the place of tourists, he furthermore realizes that tourists might want to do something different and therefore he wants to provide tourists a unique, alternative experience on the lake next to the ‘touristy’ boat trips. The owner of the leg rowing class also has a cooking class. For him it is very important to share knowledge about his ‘real’ culture:

‘’I mean, there are a lot of places that have cooking classes but some are very expensive and only the rich tourists can do that. [...] But for the normal or middle class or the poor tourists I want to give them also some taste about here, the real cooking. How the people cooking at their village. So, for my cooking class, I don’t make a creation. I just show what we normally cook at home.’’ – respondent 13

The respondent really values and enriches the cultural resources for his activities. He created the activities based on the existing resources and tradition, which is an important aspect of creative tourism (Jelinčić and Žuvela, 2012). These fragments furthermore indicate that the owner of the leg rowing class and cooking class 2 wants to make the activities accessible for tourists that have a lower budget and that he is not only interested in the money of the tourists.

The owner of the silversmith also explains that her father opened the silver making workshop in order to provide tourists a different experience and share their tradition with the tourists:

‘’He wanted to show our traditional silver smith life, show what the villagers can make with their hands. [...] I am proud of the idea. Most of the people living at the lake were fisherman and my father was worried about that. [...] We have so many handicrafts in our Inle Lake so he wanted to show that and tried to open the shop.’’ – respondent 33

They already have the silversmith for a long time but it only used to be for the locals so now they can share their traditional handicrafts with tourists as well. Besides that, the tourists are an important source of income for the silversmith as nowadays a lot of the locals cannot afford to buy silver handicrafts because the prices have increased a lot in the last few years. Other hosts, working at the workshops at the lake also explained that they are very proud of their tradition and handicrafts and like to share this with the tourists. The movie maker is an expat that has been living and working in Myanmar for 18 years. His motivation to make the movie is to share his passion and share his knowledge about Myanmar culture with tourists. He explained that some things you will only see and understand when you stay in the country for a long time so this is what he wants to show the tourists with his movie. The owners of cooking class 3 are also very proud of their culture and especially of Myanmar cuisine. Their aim is to make Myanmar cuisine well known around the world and as tourists suggested the owners to set up a cooking class, they realized that this can be a way to make their traditional cuisine more well known among foreigners.

The cultural pride is something that was really standing out in the interviews and observations. I think that it is partly created due to the interest of tourists in the hosts’ culture (Tan, Kung and Luh, 2014) as some hosts explained that they felt proud of what they do when they saw that tourists are interested in their culture and work. Besides that, I think that it is something typical for the hosts that live in the research area. There are a lot of different ethnic groups in Myanmar and conflicts have occurred between them. The locals are really proud of their ethnicity and want to show this to the outside world and one way of doing this is providing activities for tourists in which they can share their local culture. I furthermore think that the political situation of the country also plays a role in the cultural pride of the locals as they now finally are able to show the world what they have to offer.

5.1.2 Motivation Tourists

The most important motivations of guests for participating in creative tourism have also been identified. The tourists first of all seek to have authentic and unique experiences (5.1.2.1). Tourists furthermore want to learn new skills and want to get to know the local culture and local people by participating in the activities (5.1.2.2). The tourists also have emotional and social motivations as ‘the host’ (5.1.2.3) is an important factor and some tourists are seeking relaxation and entertainment (5.1.2.4). Finally, recommendations of others (5.1.2.5) have also often been taken into account by tourists when they decided to participate in the creative tourism activity.

5.1.2.1 Seeking authentic and unique experiences

A lot of the tourists that visited the research area were seeking authentic and unique experiences and chose to participate in a certain creative tourism activity because they expected the activity

50 would give them this kind of experience. Especially the tourists that did the boat trip told me explicitly that they wanted to have an authentic experience and see the local life of the people living on the lake. As explained by Marques (2012), creative tourism is to a certain extent about experiencing cultures which are different from visitors’ home countries. A Danish couple that did the boat trip explained that they did the activity because they wanted to have a local experience and wanted to learn about the local culture and thought they would get this on the boat trip:

‘’We like to experience the local thing and then when we travel we always would like to travel with a guide and we have a guide here together with us and all the other places we have been here in Myanmar has been together with a guide. Because the guides can really tell us a lot about the culture I think. [...] So, for me it’s very interesting to meet local people.’’ – respondent 31.1

The Danish couple really liked to see the local life of the people on the lake and they liked to interact with locals whom they met at the different workshops and other places. Another tourist who participated in cooking class 2 furthermore explained that she was looking at comments of other tourists who did cooking classes in Nyaungshwe. She decided to do this cooking class because based on the comments of others she thought it would be a traditional experience of which she could learn a lot:

‘’I read on the internet it’s quite traditional and you can like see his village which was important to me. [...] I did read some travel blogs and someone made a recommendation and I thought ok, this sounds like so good! I really want to go with him.’’– respondent 9

As explained in chapter 2, the concept authenticity is difficult to define and in my opinion it depends on the perception of the tourist. In terms of motivations, tourists were seeking a form of existential authenticity and hoped to reach an existential stage of being by participating in the chosen activity (Wang, 1999). Tourists were referring to seeking ‘local’ experiences, interacting with the locals and seeing the ‘real’ local life. Seeking an authentic experience is also related to having a unique experience, doing something you normally won’t do, which you can find in the hosts’ culture. A lot of tourists furthermore explained that they like to have unique and personal experiences which is different from the ‘standard’ routine but this was for most of the tourists not the main motivation. One tourist however did explain that his main motivation to participate in the leg rowing class was to have a unique experience:

‘’Or at least, everyone over here does the standard tours, so a boat tour or a trekking or eh cycling or something but eh I had the idea that the leg rowing class was quite unique and as we were here for a while already I thought it might be nice to do. So eh, yes.’’ [own translation] – respondent 17

This tourist did the leg rowing class and explained that he thought it would be nice because it is different from the activities which tourists normally do. Like explained by Richards (2011), I think that tourists seek unique experiences because they want to be different and by participating in the activity they try to express their identity. I think that seeking authentic and unique experiences can be perceived as psychological needs of the tourists.

5.1.2.2 Learning

Especially tourists that did the cooking class, decided to do the activity because they wanted to learn a new skill and they wanted to learn about the local culture. One of the participants of cooking class 3 explained how she got the idea to the activity:

‘’I’m a professional chef and I thought it was maybe also interesting just to see a different type of cooking. [...] because this kitchen is so different from all of the other Asian foods I have seen so far we thought this would be really interesting.’’ – respondent 47

First of all cooking is the profession of the participant so therefore she is interested in the activity, but besides that she was really interested in learning something new as the Asian cuisine if very different from the one in her country. One of her friends that also did the cooking class explained that for her doing a cooking class is a way to learn about the local culture and connect with the people:

‘’I think it’s a very nice way to learn the culture and get to the people so I actually was looking for a cooking class all over the places.’’ – Respondent 50.1

This quotation shows that the participant is interested in the local culture and wants to connect with the local people. Especially for tourists participating in the cooking classes it was important to learn something new, a new skill but it was interesting to see that even though they said sometimes that they did not learn so much during the cooking class, they still really enjoyed the experience due to other factors. As mentioned in chapter 2, this interest in learning on the side of the tourists comes from a movement in society towards ‘skilled consumption’ which means that consumers want to develop a new skill and creativity. In this case, tourists were seeking to learn how to cook traditional Myanmar food, by participating in a creative activity, the cooking class. Like Richards (2011) explained, by participating in the experience, tourists furthermore hoped to increase their cultural capital.

5.1.2.3 The host

For tourists that participated in activities with a higher extent of involvement, like the cooking classes and the leg rowing class, the host was considered as an important factor to participate in the activity. Some tourists decided to participate in an activity because they already knew the host or recommendations of other tourists were made about the hosts. A Dutch couple participated in cooking class 1 and one of them explained that she was looking for comments of other tourists and picked this cooking class because it had a good rating and a lot of people were very positive about the hosts:

‘’And besides that this one was also really good rated on TripAdvisor and everyone also said like ‘Sue and Lesly, such nice people and a nice setting’. And actually everyone was very positive.’’ [own translation]– respondent 11.2

This quotation shows that it is important for these participants to know that the teachers are nice people. Another tourist who participated in cooking class 1 explained that he was already planning to do a cooking class in Myanmar some day and after he met the owners of cooking class 1 during a dinner, he decided to do the cooking class with them:

‘’Ehm so while having this pretty amazing dinner at the cooking class facilities, the owners or the chefs talked to us for quite some time and they were really charming and super nice. So I just decided to do the cooking class the next day in the evening.’’ – respondent 25

So, because he had such a good feeling about the hosts, he decided to do the cooking class with them. A tourist that did the leg rowing class also explained that she mainly did the class because she had a good connection with the host instead of for her own interest:

‘’We already knew Min a little bit and therefore especially I really liked to do it with him. I don’t know, it was kind of, that I wished him well to do it with him and yes maybe that played more of a role than the fact that I wanted it myself. Yes, kind of a, you could just see how proud he was of it, that he did it and yes I don’t know, just a very sympathetic guy so anyway I really liked it.’’ [own translation] – respondent 51

Seeing how proud the host was of his culture and his work made her decide to participate in the leg rowing class. She really had a good feeling about the host and therefore wanted to spend her money with him. As opposed to the previous motivations of tourists, this motivation is more social and emotional and shows that the tourists wish all the best for the hosts and besides that find it important to participate in an activity with someone they feel good about.

5.1.2.4 Relaxation and entertainment

For the activities in which the tourists were less involved, like the movie, puppet show and boat trip some tourists explained that the reason to do the activity was to relax or to be entertained. Regarding the boat trip, some tourists explained that they just liked to see the lake and relax on the boat and spend the day with their friends or other travellers. They were not necessarily interested in the workshops or the local life of the people living on the lake. The boat trip itself is not necessarily a creative tourism activity but the different workshops which are part of the boat trip, make it a creative tourism activity. So, some tourists visited the workshops while they were actually not interested in this. Tourists furthermore mentioned that they visited the puppet show and the movie because they were seeking some entertainment and liked to do something in the evening because in the research area there are not many other things to do in the evening. So this can be perceived as a social need that had to be satisfied.

5.1.2.5 Recommendations of others

When asking the tourists why they decided to do a certain activity, a lot of them explained that they made the decision based on recommendations of others or just joined others with the activity. So the opinion of others is also encouraged tourists to participate in creative tourism. A lot of recommendations came from friends, other travellers, the hotel or guesthouse, guidebooks like the Lonely Planet or interactive travel forums like TripAdvisor. The majority of tourists that were

53 interviewed were travelling with the Lonely Planet and took a lot of advice from the writers. I think that some people follow the recommendations of others because they want to identify with likeminded people or they want to identify themselves as a certain type of traveller. The Lonely Planet is for example a travel guide which is mainly used by backpackers that like to go ‘off the beaten track’ so by using this travel guide, they hope to gain these kind of experiences.

5.2 Encounters

As the previous section discussed the motivations of hosts and guests for participating in creative tourism, this section will discuss the characteristics of the creative tourism host-guest encounters and the respective experiences of the hosts and guests. The hospitality of the hosts was first of all apparent in the encounters. The hosts were very welcoming which gave the guests a sense of belonging to the local community (5.2.1). The participation (5.2.2) in the creative tourism activities brought hosts and guests closer to each other and also encouraged mutual learning. Hosts and guests learned about each other’s cultures and new skills have been gained (5.2.3). It was furthermore apparent in many cases that hosts and guests care about each other (5.2.4) but staged performances (5.2.5) also took place during the encounters. Finally, some activities have become quite commercialized (5.2.6) which influenced the host-guest encounters in a negative way.

5.2.1 Welcoming and belonging

For the hosts it is very important to make tourists feel welcome. Being hospitable is first of all part of the hosts’ culture but besides that also part of the service industry as it can benefit the business. The hospitality of the hosts subsequently gave guests the feeling like they belonged to the local community. One of the owners of cooking class 1 explained that she will always welcome tourists and help them because that was what her father used to do:

‘’This is the place where they can stay together with a local family and this is the place where they can eat together, cook the things together. Or maybe the place for helping the people. We will be happy together with the foreigner and me.’’ – respondent 1

When conducting the interviews with the owners of cooking class 1 and when observations were made, I also noticed that the hosts always tried to make me and the other tourists feel welcome. When I arrived at the cooking class the whole family greeted me and I was offered green tea and a welcome snack. The lady furthermore said to me ‘feel like your home’ and in the end of the cooking class the hosts told me and the other participants of the cooking class that we are always welcome to come back and that we can always come to sit and relax in their garden. The hosts furthermore often smiled at us and checked if we were feeling good. The owner of the cheroot making workshop also welcomes tourists that enter her shop with some green tea and a traditional pancake:

‘’I am offering the green tea with the traditional pancake from here. Everybody like it. We make the special pancake for them from egg without oil so they are very happy. They visit the lake for the whole day so they are very tired so we give the tea so they can relax.’’ – respondent 28

She explains that she wants the tourists to relax. Regarding the observations that have been made during the boat trips, I noticed that at a lot of workshops green tea is offered to the tourists. I think that it is first of all a way to welcome tourists, which is part of the host’s culture. Besides that, they might offer the tourists the tea in order to relax and spend more time in their shop which may increase the chance that tourists buy something in the shop. The owner of the paper making workshop however explained that he used to welcome tourists with some green tea but tourists did not like it and often did not drink it so therefore he stopped offering it to them. He does however still have some seats where tourists can relax and have some tea if they want. The hosts of the other cooking classes and the puppet master also provided their guests a welcome drink and the puppet master held a welcome talk and introduced puppetry in general for the tourists.

The majority of tourists explained that they really appreciated the hospitality of the hosts. Two Austrian tourists who participated in cooking class 3 explain that they felt very welcome at the house of the cook:

‘’I felt like they really brought us into the community too and the people were looking at us not like usual, like you are tourists but rather like oh it’s cool with the locals .[...] Because we were with the locals and it was easier for us to fit in. Ehm yeah and then we got there and we got the new year’s drink [...] it was not like she treated us like we were intruders but like ‘yeah you are here now’.’’– respondent 50.2

The tourists really appreciated that an effort was made for them by the hosts in order to make them feel welcome. They felt like they were part of the local community which made them feel like they belonged there while normally they feel like a normal tourist who is very different from the locals. As a normal tourist they sometimes feel like they are intruders but in this case they felt like it was normal to be there so this was a very important aspect of the encounter. Regarding my observations, the hosts of cooking class 1 and 3 also really made me feel welcome, which was also explained by other participants of these cooking classes. According to Richards and Marques (2012), tourists are seeking to become part of the host community through learning, participation and interaction (Richards and Marques, 2012) and these actions create social recognition in the host community. I think that by participating in the cooking class and showing their willingness to learn about the hosts culture, the tourists got social recognition of the hosts and were treated like they were one of them.

Another tourist that participated in the leg rowing class, respondent 51, also explained that she felt very welcome in the village where the class took place and she felt like she was like a local villager for a while, so she also had the feeling she belonged there. This feeling helped her to learn the new skill because she explained that she would not feel comfortable doing the leg rowing class if she would be treated like an intruder. This is also in accordance with what was stated by Marques (2012) as she explained that having a sense of belonging is important for tourists because it fosters social learning and the involvement in social interaction.

5.2.2 Participating and co-creating

The participation of both tourists and hosts in the creative tourism activities brought hosts and guests closer to each other and contributed to a positive experience on both sides. A lack of participation was furthermore perceived as negative by tourists.

Participation helps tourists to learn and sometimes gives them a more authentic experience and a sense of belonging. As explained by Richards (2011), through participation and personal involvement, tourists become co-creators of the experience. The degree of participation and involvement however varied among tourists. For this study, participating was especially important for tourists doing the leg rowing class and the cooking class because in these activities they had the possibility to really do something. The majority of the tourists that participated in cooking classes, mentioned that for them it is important to participate because participation contributes to the learning process and helps them remember how to prepare the food. Two Austrian tourists that participated in cooking class 3 were a bit disappointed because they did not do very much during the cooking class. Based on previous experiences, they expected that they would be able to do more themselves:

‘’I thought that there would be more cooking for ourselves. It was rather show and tell so she was cooking and we were watching. In the other cooking class I did we had to cook the meal ourselves so here it was rather that she did the things but we also asked her if we could like peel something, cut something, so that was oke. Like, if you ask them they give it to you but I think they are not used to tourists working in the cooking class. [...] I think it’s more active and I think you remember the recipes more than by just looking at it.’’ – respondents 50.1

So the respondent would have liked to be more involved. She however explained that the space in the kitchen was quite limited for four participants which might have been the reason why they were not able to participate that much. However, during my own observation of cooking class 3 I also noticed that the host did most of the work and that the tourists were not involved in the cooking class to the highest extent possible. Cooking class 1 was overall better managed as tasks were given to tourists by the host and most of the tourists were occupied during the class. Being able to participate also made the experience more authentic for some tourists. A Dutch tourist who participated in the leg rowing class explained how the involvement made her feel like a local villager:

‘’That you really get a very authentic experience. [...] that it is not played, it is very real. That you just for a while are able to feel like a local inhabitant. That is just really very special. The doing it yourself, the active part of it. Not looking at it because then you keep a distance, but really just executing it yourself.’’ [own translation] – respondent 51

So, for the respondent, being actively involved in the activity made the experience authentic and made her feel like she was one of the locals. Marques (2012) explains that through participation, tourist seek to become part of the host community which gives them a sense of belonging. This was also the case with this tourist as she felt like a local inhabitant for the moment.

It is important for hosts and guests to have a connection with each other when participating in creative tourism activities which was especially apparent for the activities in which the involvement

56 of the tourists is quite high. Regarding observations 3,6 and 7, I noticed that the hosts and guests showed a lot of interest in each other. During the activity, they had conversations with each other about their everyday lives but also about the activity and Myanmar in general. Besides that, when both of these activities were finished, the conversations were continued over a cup of tea or coffee and tourists stayed for quite some time at the house of the hosts. The hosts made clear that they were not in a rush and that tourists were welcome to stay as long as they wanted and tourists also seemed happy to stay with the hosts for a longer time. Marques (2012) explains that social relationships are important in experiencing cultures and humans have a need to belong to a group. A Dutch tourist who did the leg rowing class explained that he really liked to interact with the host, the teacher of the class because that made the activity more social for him:

‘’We immediately had a whole conversation and stuff like that. That’s a thing I miss with the normal boat drivers but like yesterday with Min, he speaks English fluently so that’s just really nice. He really liked to talk and had something to tell about where he is from and stuff like that and that makes it just a bit nicer, more a social thing with the locals instead of only being among tourists.’’ [own translation] – respondent 17

So in the fragment the tourist explains that he really liked to be with the locals instead of only being among tourists. He really liked to interact with the host and get to know him better. A Dutch tourist who did cooking class 1 also explains that she really liked the cooking class because of the interaction with the hosts:

‘’But yes, I actually liked this better because the people were more involved and while you were preparing they were explaining a lot of things about the dish, about the ingredients. Yes, that was nicer. Also more interaction with them.’’ [own translation] – respondent 23

The interaction with the hosts made her feel more involved in the activity and with the hosts. The involvement and participation of tourists in the creative tourism activities was also appreciated by the hosts. For them it was important to get to know the tourist and enjoy the activity together. One of the owners of cooking class 1 explained that tourists give him a good feeling which makes him happy about his work:

‘’Because all the clients make me feel better. You know, you must be happy with yourself. I am happy with myself and if you are happy with each other, the food is also very tasty. I try to speak English every day, I try to learn and when I see the foreigner, they are like my friends. I see them as my friends and I feel that I really want to talk with them.’’ – respondent 20

He really perceived tourists as his friends. The wife of the respondent furthermore said that tourists always give her a lot of energy and often she has a good connection with tourists. She feels that with the foreigners she has a better connection and can be more like herself opposed to with other villagers.

5.2.3 Learning

Learning is another important characteristic of the host-guest encounters. The creative tourism activities have helped a lot of tourists to learn a new skill and gain knowledge about the local culture and hosts have also learned about the cultures of tourists and gained new skills with the help of tourists.

For a German tourist, the puppet show was very interesting because the show and the information that was provided about puppetry really gave him an impression of local life in the past. Tourists that did the boat trip explained that they learned a lot about the local life of the people living at the lake and they gained knowledge about the production process of the different handicrafts. Some tourist were however disappointed because they wanted to learn about the local culture but their boat driver did not speak English so was not able to explain them the things they liked to know. The teaching techniques of the hosts really helped some tourists to learn. Two Dutch tourists that went on a boat trip explain that the employees of the weaving workshop really made their experience interesting by the way things were visualized and explained:

‘’They have made all of these samples so you can feel before the washing and after the washing and they have also put a lot of energy in it in order to show you [...] so you also started to understand it [...] she was also very explicit and she also showed it and explained it next to the device and someone was working at the device’’ [own translation] – respondent 43

Because the girls could feel the different fabrics and they could see the hosts work while explanation was given about the production process, it helped them to understand the weaving process. Several respondents that participated in the cooking classes also explained that the teaching skills of the hosts are important. In cooking class 3, the participants had to write down the recipes on a piece of paper in order to remember things better. For some of them this was perceived as very useful. A German tourist that participated in cooking class 2 furthermore explained that the teaching of the host was very practical which will make her able to prepare the dishes back home as well.

According to Edensor (2000), when tourists gain experience of being a tourist, they also develop their performance skills, meaning that you are able to be more involved in the experience and reflect on the performance that is made. A German tourist, who participated in cooking class 1 was reflecting on his own behaviour and the behaviour and teaching technique of the hosts during the cooking class:

‘’I think what they tried to do was to involve everyone to the highest extend really which sometimes looks slightly ridiculous to be honest because I felt like I had a servant on my side but after all I wouldn’t know any better way to do it. So, even though it was a little bit ridiculous I think it was a pretty good way to do it. [...] It was just the overall experience I think because everything fit together pretty well like all of the explaining, us chopping and then us giving really the feeling of cooking ourselves even though we didn’t you know.’’ – respondent 25

The tourist first of all reflected on his own behaviour. He explained that he was involved and did make all the movements with his hands but because for every single step, the host told him what to

58 do, he realized that he actually did not cook the dish himself but that the hosts just tried to make the participants feel like they cooked the dishes themselves. So, the respondent was also reflecting on the teaching technique of the host. Technically, the tourists made the dishes as they cut the vegetables and added the spices etc. but due to all the instructions and help of the hosts, it did not feel this way for the respondent. The respondent however did conclude that he did not know a better way to teach because you cannot do everything on your own for the first time so it was good to participate and do the things yourself even though it was with the help of the teachers.

Regarding the observations I have made during the different activities, I noticed that the tourists are very open and willing to learn about the local culture. In each activity tourists were asking the hosts questions. Regarding the cooking classes, a lot of tourists were very focused and taking notes about the different steps and in the leg rowing class the tourists were also discussing the leg rowing techniques with each other in order to master the new skill. Openness and other-orientation are important factors for intimate relationships (Trauer and Ryan, 2005) which were overall present among the tourists. Trusting the other is furthermore an important factor for intimate relationships which was especially apparent in the leg rowing class. A Dutch tourist explained that she really trusted the teacher which was important for her in order to master the new skill she was learning:

‘’At that moment I already trusted him like, ok, he is going to help me and he won’t let me fall into the water. I thought it was quite exciting [...] But it went well and he just held my hand in the beginning as long as I wanted and he also told me how I should stand’’ [own translation] – respondent 51

The way the leg rowing teacher was teaching really made the tourist feel comfortable with him and with the activity, she really trusted him. Having trust is very important because the tourist was reliant on the teacher. The way he supported her by giving tips and holding her hand helped her to master the skill. Richards and Wilson (2007) explained that creative tourism can lead to the relocation of power and change the mind-set of prosumers, which is what I noticed as well. Especially in the activities where the host had an active role as a teacher, the hosts were not gazed upon by the tourists but perceived as ‘the teacher’ of whom they wanted to learn. Tourists really admired the skills of the hosts and were eager to learn about those or gain the skill themselves.

Hosts did not only teach tourists but also learned from them. Regarding the activities in Nyaungshwe, a number of hosts explained that they received help from tourists in order to improve their businesses. For the kind of help that was provided, often computer skills were needed which the hosts did not yet gain at that moment. One of the owners of cooking class 1, explained how tourists helped him with his business:

‘’Some people that help me with the website are from Holland and American people they make the TripAdvisor for me. Also an American girl showed me how to do the standard recipe and she showed me and I followed. I practiced and followed to learn to do it by myself. Now I have a lot of recipes and every day I try to make one recipe for home-style cooking’’ – respondent 20

The owner was very happy with the help of the tourists as they have learned him some new computer skills and now he is able to manage these things by himself. The owner of the puppet show also received help from a tourist who came to visit his puppet show many times. He helped the

59 puppet master to create information sheets for the tourists, containing information about the history and puppets in different languages. The owner of the Thanakha garden restaurant also explained that a tourist helped her to create the food menu’s and the owner of cooking class 2 received help from tourists regarding social media. Considering the interviews and the experiences I have had during the data collection period, I really had the strong feeling that the tourists want to help the local community and want their lives to improve. Besides that, especially in the village Nyaungshwe the hosts were very welcoming and eager to help the tourists as well. Next to these new skills, the interaction with the guests also helped the hosts to learn more about the guests’ cultures.

5.2.4 Caring

Caring about each other is another characteristic of the host-guest encounters. I noticed that overall the hosts take their work very seriously. They want to do their work well and it is important for them that the tourists have a good experience. The owner of the leg rowing class explained that for him it is important that the tourists take the activity seriously when they decide to participate:

‘’ I want you to believe you can do it. When you decide by looking, when you see the leg rowing sign and though ’ohh it is very very difficult, I won’t be able to do it’, I don’t like that kind of thinking. When you saw it, it means it is possible to do that, that’s why people make the activities for tourists. So of course, if it is impossible I won’t be advertising for it.’’ – respondent 13

The respondent thinks it is important that tourists believe they can do it. Considering observation 6, when I participated in the leg rowing class I also noticed that the teacher took his role very seriously and really wanted that I and the other participants learned how to row with our leg. He had really thought about how to teach tourists the skill as a small gantry was built on a raft in the water where we could practice. The host first of all tested which peddle was the most comfortable for us and explained us how to stand and move our leg. Later on he was sitting in the canoe and gave us feedback and tips how to improve our technique. He furthermore tried to make us feel comfortable and confident by giving compliments when we were doing well. He also said that we did not have to worry and that he would not let us fall into the water. In the end when we had to stand and paddle on the canoe, he explained that he would hold our hand first and when we felt confident we could try it ourselves. These details gave me the impression that the owner took his job very seriously and found it important that the participants felt good as well.

One of the owners of cooking class 1 explains that tourists often invite him to eat together with them after they have cooked but he explains why he usually does not do it:

‘’60% after cooking they invite me ‘hey, Lesly why you don’t eat with us?’. When it is a couple, I don’t join much but if they are alone I join and I eat together. I really have to eat what he cook and I talk a lot. Maybe for one scoop of rice we say 100 words. But you know the reason, we don’t want to disrupt them. We want them to eat, that is our local people’s hospitality and respect.’’ – respondent 20

Even though he liked to interact with the tourists and talk with them, he wants to give them the time to enjoy the food which they have cooked. He cares about the tourists which I also noticed when I

60 participated in the cooking class myself. During the cooking class he explained that he works with people from a lot of different cultures and therefore the first thing that he liked to do is making everyone happy. He wants the tourists to be happy and he wants to deliver good quality food. Besides that he showed a lot of interest in the participants by asking questions about their personal lives and he tried to spread his attention so that everybody could learn. The teacher of cooking class 3, the puppet master and the majority of the employees of the workshops were also very concentrated and quite serious about their work.

Tourists also care about the local community. They find it important to see that the local community is doing well and that their working conditions are good. They care about the locals and like to see that the hosts enjoy their work. All the tourists that went to the puppet show explained that the puppet master was very enthusiastic and passionate about his work. A Dutch tourist told me the following:

‘’But it really was a very nice dude and you could feel that this was just his life, so that it really was his passion and his life. Yes, I thought that was very nice to see. You feel it […] I think that when it’s about puppets he can keep on talking for hours and eh I think that if you would ask him to teach it to you he would be happy to do that. He was so enthusiastic about it.’’ [own translation] – respondent 14

So, seeing that the puppet master was so passionate about his work gave the tourist a good feeling about the activity. Similar explanations were given by tourists about the teachers in the cooking classes, the leg rowing class and about some employees at the workshops. Regarding the workshops at the lake, a few tourists explained that before they went on the boat trip, they were concerned about the working conditions of the hosts. They heard from other tourists that there was child labour which was unacceptable for them. Later on, after they talked with the hosts, they realized that some children were just playing around and helping out their parents at the workshops because the summer holidays of the schools had just started. Tourists also mentioned that they thought the employees at the workshops worked very hard but they did not feel sorry for them.

A French tourist that went on the boat trip did not really like to see the different workshops at the lake because she had the feeling it was too touristy. It was however important for her that the local community was doing well and she hoped that the work was good for the employees and that tourists are able to help them by buying the handicrafts. Most of the tourists had a good feeling about the working conditions of the hosts, they explained that they saw the employees together taking a break, having a tea and they explained that they were laughing, which indicated for the tourists that the employees were doing well.

According to Edensor (2001), tourist performances can be focused on ‘the self’. Some tourists want to explore new identities on their holiday, they want to find their authentic self which they hope to find by encounters with the host community. A Dutch couple that participated in cooking class 3, explained that they were seeking a local experience, they wanted to cook in the traditional way. Due to their travel experience, they were however able to reflect on their own needs, the need of the host and the ‘authentic’ experience (Edensor, 2000):

‘’Well, we never cooked with charcoal before. [...] Well it’s a bit, we always say to each other that it is kind of ‘false romance’ I would call it because for us it is for example very nice to see a farmer ploughing his land with two oxen and that is kind of a ‘romantic’ setting for us but the farmer, he would rather have a tractor with a plough instead of that he has to walk behind the oxen. I am sure about that.’’ [own translation] – respondents 48

They admit that for them it is nice to see the local way of life which in some cases can be still quite primitive compared to ‘western’ standards. But at the same time they realize that the host would probably like to have the modernized equipment like they have back home which makes the experience for them like ‘false romance’ because only they get what they want to experience but the host does not. To me, the fact that they realize this shows that they have empathy for the host.

Even though the encounters were situational, the fact that the tourists were concerned about the hosts, shows that they are not only self-centred which is important for healthy relationships (Trauer and Ryan, 2005). The ‘self’ does however also play a role in this. Another Dutch couple which participated in cooking class 1 explained that they really liked that part of their money they paid for the cooking class is used by the owners for charity:

‘’A thing which is maybe not directly related to the cooking class but which I really liked is that we only found out once we were there that she is also quite active in other projects next to her work for orphans and yes, I thought that was very nice and beautiful. And she also teaches English classes and stuff like that now that they are having holidays. Yes, that makes it just a bit, yes, better spent money or something, at least for your own feeling.’’ [own translation] – respondents 11

So, once the tourists realized that 15% of their money was used for charity by the hosts, they had a better feeling about the activity and they felt that their money was more useful and better spent which gave extra value to their experience. Knowing that their money is used for charity makes the respondents feel like better tourists which is good for their ego. Furthermore, some tourists that participated in cooking class 3 explained that for them it is important that the host is passionate about her work because this is needed in order to teach the tourists the skill which shows that the concern about the locals also contains self-interest of the tourists.

5.2.5 Staged performances

Overall, hosts like to accommodate tourists but in some cases, hosts also put up acts in order to make more money from tourists which was not appreciated by tourists.

A number of hosts explained to me that they would like to give tourists what they want. Previous experiences with tourists, conversations with friends and other sources of information, gave them the idea of what tourists like to do and see in the research area and therefore they try to accommodate tourists with this kind of experience. One of the owners of cooking class 1 explained that when she was young, her father used to invite tourists to their home and he explained her what tourists like:

‘’One thing that surprised me was that my father started to know exactly what tourists like. He already told me to keep the tradition and whenever foreigners would visit my home, he told me ‘please, show your traditional dress’. [...] Even he was wearing the traditional clothes which is made by hand you know and also he told me like ’everywhere must be clean, foreigner like clean and also foreigner like vegetables and fruit’. [...] They want to learn about the way of local life, how is our culture so this is what I want to share.’’ – respondent 1

This quotation shows that the host has an idea of what tourists like and she tries to provide them this in her cooking classes. In my opinion, this is an example of a staged performance (Edensor, 2000). Before the lady started her cooking class, certain adaptations have been made to their normal way of life in order to accommodate the tourists. In the quotation the respondent already mentions that tourists like to see hosts wearing traditional clothes, they like a clean environment and they like to eat their food in a certain way. These factors have all been taken into account in the cooking class. Regarding observation 3 and 7, the cooking class took place in the garden of the owners and had nicely been decorated with bamboo huts and flowers. The environment was very clean and familiar as children were playing around and other family members were helping out. This setting was something that I personally really liked and which was mentioned by other tourists as well. During the cooking class, traditional looking aprons were provided for the participants and the other owner of the cooking class, respondent 20, explained that all the meat was without fat as tourists do not like fat. These are just some examples of things that were done in order to accommodate tourists. The owners of cooking class 3 also explained that they want to show tourists their traditional way of cooking because this is what tourists want:

‘’According to our experience when they come and visit Myanmar they would like to know about our tradition, our culture. So when we show our tradition they are very happy. [...] so when they arrive here they would like to free their mind and we have to give them what they would like to taste.’’ – respondents 49.1

For the owners of the cooking class it is important that tourists are happy and because they think that tourists like to see their traditions, they will show this to them. This has also been mentioned by the owners of the Thanakha Garden restaurant. The puppet master also explains that tourists travel because they want to see traditions. He explains that when hosts no longer show their traditions, he thinks that tourists will stop travelling:

‘’People they travel and I know in my heart that when I will keep the traditional puppet show, people will keep coming. When there is no tradition, tourists won’t travel. This is very difficult you know. I know that all people travel and visit for old traditions and I keep the tradition exactly’’ – respondent 27

For the puppet master it is important to show his ‘exact’ tradition. Regarding observation 8 and 13, I noticed that a very old tape had been used and during the interview, the puppet master explained that the tape was made in 1980 by his grandfather. The performance the puppet master gave is also the same as many years ago and within his family, the same types of puppets are used. His family used to perform for tourists for a long time already so the puppet master has kept this tradition. He explained however that in the past they also used to perform shows for locals during festivals and

63 these shows would take the whole night. This show however, which is only performed for tourists only took 20 minutes in which eight different types of puppets are introduced and their dances are shown. So, even though the puppet master has been performing the exact same show for tourists for many years, the original puppet plays that were performed for the Burmese public used to be quite different.

The workshops at the lake are also places where staged performances take place. The owners of the workshops explained in the interviews that the handicrafts have been made for many years and really are a tradition of the region. The workshops however, are especially created for the tourists so the tourists can see how the products are made. Considering the boat trips, some tourists had the feeling that the local people were putting up an act for them. They had the idea that some employees only started to work once they arrived and that their normal life is not like this, so that it’s ‘staged’. Tourists had very negative feelings about this because they explained that for them this experience is not ‘real’ and they prefer to see the ‘real’ life of the local people at the lake. So, they perceived the performances as inauthentic which has also been explained by MacCannel (1973). A German tourist who did the boat trip explained that she really did not like to see the fishermen put up an act:

‘’They are just there for show. I didn’t like that at all. Cause it’s so staged. And then it’s so much nicer cause when you go out on the lake you see the fishermen really fishing you know and then it’s nice if you can take pictures but I don’t like taking pictures of them putting on a show for you.’’ – respondent 16

Like almost all the other tourists that were interviewed about the boat trip, the German tourist did not like the show of the fishermen because this experience felt not ‘real’ for her. She preferred to see the normal lives of the locals instead. Two Dutch tourists who visited the cigar making workshop explain that they did not really like this experience either because they had the feeling it was set up for tourists:

‘’But I also think it really was due to the setting because if they would have been sitting in a circle it would have been different. [...] And if you would sit in a circle you would be able to chat with each other and then I would understand it because that would also be ten times nicer for them. But it was really, over here it was really more setup for tourists [...] It really had a touristy setting, I also think it really was for the tourists.’’ – respondents 43

The tourists explain that due to the setting they really had the feeling that the workshop was set up for tourists because normally when you are working for yourself you will not sit with your back towards the other. They also explained that at the weaving workshop everything seemed to be more practical positioned which gave them a more authentic feeling about the workshop. So when tourists had the feeling something was really ‘staged’ and set up for them, negative feelings arose.

The Inle lake itself and the workshops that are provided at the lake are the highlight of the research area and are therefore also already quite developed activities. Looking at my observations which I have made by being a participant and which I made at the different workshops after I conducted interviews (observation 10 and 11), I also had the feeling that at some places the locals were putting

64 up an act. I for example noticed that the girls at the paper making workshop were working very hard when I arrived and they were showing me the process of the paper making. I stayed for a while at the workshop and noticed that the girls stopped working and started again once new tourists arrived. This also happened at the silver smith. The fact is however that all the products are really produced at the Inle Lake but a lot of the employees work at their homes. The employees working at the different workshops also make the handicrafts and have the right skills but besides that, an important role for them is to show the tourists the process whereas the employees that work in their homes are just working by themselves.

5.2.6 Commercialization

As tourism is growing in the research area, some of the creative tourism activities have become more commercialized than others which influences the encounters between hosts and guests. Two Dutch tourists that participated in cooking class 1 had the feeling that the owners of the cooking class were not honestly interested in them but more interested in their money. One of the respondents explains that only in the end, when the course had to be paid, one of the owners started to show interest in her and started talking about her charity:

But I had the feeling that in the end, when she was telling the whole story that it was yes, that it was maybe kind of commercial, that is was very rehearsed […] she was like ‘chop chop chop’ and she snarled at the other people in Burmese, then she just wanted everything to be done and only in the end she was really like ‘ohh I am so happy that I got to know you’ and stuff like that. So it is really nice to see that she does so much for her community but it was a bit double. But that’s of course also because it is going so well and it really becomes sort of a business. Then you lose it you know, that kind of honesty maybe. […] But it was all a bit ehh well timed.’’ [own translation] – respondents 12

The girls had the feeling that it was all a bit too ‘well timed’. So, they had the idea that an act was put up by the hosts in order to gain money from them. This gave them a negative feeling because it made them feel like they were not special for the hosts but just two other tourists. Several tourists that did the boat trip furthermore explained that some hosts were really pushy and trying to sell them stuff at the different workshops, even when they expressed not to be interested. The pushiness of the hosts made some tourists feel uncomfortable and I observed that it also influenced their behaviour.

When participating in the boat trip myself, I noticed that at the shopping area of the workshops there is often a person that walks along with you in order to help you if you have any questions about the products. Some tourists however explained that it made them feel uncomfortable and obligated to buy something. I noticed that sometimes tourists were looking around in the shops and when they were approached by a local that worked in the shop, they left. It also happened that tourists made a quick walk through the workshop and went right back to their boat. Some tourists explained to me that they did not like the workshops because they thought that the locals only wanted money from them so in advance of the boat trip they were already a bit resistant towards the workshops. Other tourists however did not have these feelings and mentioned that in their opinion the hosts were not pushy compared to other destinations they had visited in the past. So, this is something very personal. The majority of tourists did however mention that the products at the workshops were too expensive compared to the prices at the market. Some tourists furthermore

65 explained that they were a bit disappointed at the workshops because the behaviour of the host seemed to change once the host realized that the tourist was not going to buy anything. This mainly happened at the cigar workshop where two Dutch tourists went as well. One of the explained how the behaviour of the host changed:

‘’In the beginning she gave us a lot of attention and she was very sweet [...] But at the moment she realized that we were not going to buy anything she did not do anything anymore. [...] Three times I tried to say thank you, three times, but I was not able to make eye contact with her anymore [...] Then you feel more like ‘the tourist’ again. […] Then it’s more about your money than about you as a person. I think that’s mainly it. Then you are perceived as the white person who has money and therefore we are nice because they have money and they can buy from us.’’ – respondent 43.2

The lady changed her behaviour once she realized that the tourists did not want to buy anything and this made the tourist a bit said. She explains that it made her feel like the host was only interested in her money and not in her as a person. So the hosts are putting up a performance (Edensor, 2000) by doing nice to the tourists in order to gain their money. The workshops at the lake exist for many years already and the number of tourists visiting the lake keeps increasing. One host explained that in the high season more than a hundred tourists visit her workshop so whereas for the tourist the encounter with the host is a new and exciting experience, I can understand that the hosts, after seeing so many tourists every day, lose their interest in the tourists and focus on making money.

5.3 Experiences

The encounters between hosts and guests, which have been discussed in the previous section, are an essential part of the creative tourism experiences of hosts and guests. There are however also other factors that have influenced the creative tourism experiences, which will be discussed in this section. The experiences of the hosts will first of all be discussed, followed by the experiences of the guests.

5.3.1 Experiences hosts

The experiences of the hosts have mainly been influenced by the encounters with guests as discussed in the previous subchapter. Hosts perceived it as positive when tourists showed interest in their culture (5.3.1.1) and negative feelings sometimes arose when this was not the case. Some other factors that can lead to negative feelings of the hosts have furthermore been discussed in this section (5.3.1.2).

5.3.1.1 Tourists showing interest in local culture

Hosts really appreciated when tourists interacted with them and showed interest in their work and in the local culture because it made them happy and feel proud of their culture and work. Negative feelings furthermore arose for some hosts when tourists did not show any interest in them. With the help of a translator I talked with some women that work at the paper making workshop and they explained that when tourists show interest in their work, they feel proud of what they do:

‘’They are happy to show this. Because the tourists are very interested to see it. That’s why they are so happy to show them and then they are so proud for it.’’ – respondents 37

Besides that, the interaction with the tourists gives them a good feeling. Employees of the paper making workshop explained that they prefer it when tourists come by themselves because when they come with a guide they will not interact much with the tourists because the guide will explain them everything. When the tourists come by themselves they interact more with the employees:

‘’it makes her happy that sometimes foreigners want to learn what they are doing here. So, she shows them directly. [...] This makes them more familiar with each other, more friendly each other between the foreigner and local [...] Like even they can’t speak English but they were so happy for it.’’ – respondents 37

When tourists interact with them they feel a connection and it makes their day more special. Some of the tourists that did the boat trip also recognized that the employees of the different workshops on the lake appreciate it when you show interest in their work. They explained that once the employees felt that they were really interested, they started to smile at them. For the tourists this was an indication that the employees appreciate it when they show interest in their work. Mietinnen (2006) explained that when experiences are co-created by hosts and guests, the experience can contribute to the self-esteem of the host community. In the fragments, it becomes clear that the interest of the tourists in the work of the hosts and the interaction between them, gives the hosts a better self-esteem. I also think that this cultural pride will furthermore help to preserve the culture of the hosts as explained by Tan, Luh and Kung (2014).

Not showing interest in the work of the locals however is something that is perceived as negative by the hosts. With the help of a translator I also talked with one of the employees at the cheroot making workshop. She really liked that I showed interest in her and explained that sometimes she is a bit sad when tourists do not try to interact with her:

‘’You are very interested in her, that makes her happy. Some people come here and they are very kind and that makes her happy. But, when tourists come here and don’t ask her anything and don’t try to speak with her she is sad.’’ – respondent 29

The owner of the paper making workshop and silversmith furthermore explained that they feel a bit sad when tourists come to their workshop while it seems like they do not want to be there. They explained that many boat drivers do not speak English and do not explain the tourists what they can see at the workshops, so the tourists think that there is only a shop and think they have to buy something. The owner of the leg rowing class furthermore explained that it is important for him that the tourists take the class seriously and he does not like it when the tourists think they cannot do it and are only worried about falling into the water. So, showing interest in the work and culture of the locals in an important factor that contributes to the experience of the hosts.

5.3.1.2 Negative experiences

As explained in chapter 3, section 3.6, the hosts hardly seemed to have any negative experiences or might not have felt comfortable sharing these with me. I think that in case of the employees this might have been caused due to the hierarchy at work and them being scared to lose their job. Furthermore, I think that due to the hosts’ past, considering the political situation in Myanmar, hosts still do not feel comfortable to criticize and talk about negative encounters. I will however discuss the things that have been mentioned by the hosts. Some hosts mentioned that they felt uncomfortable when the tourist was not satisfied with the experience. One of the owners of cooking class 1 explained that a couple seemed to enjoy his cooking class and gave him a tip, but afterwards wrote a bad comment about the cooking class on TripAdvisor. He felt a bit sad about this and wished the couple would have told him during the cooking class because then he could have done something about the problem. The owner of cooking class 2 furthermore explained that once a tourist got angry with him when he asked the tourist to pay for the cooking class because the tourist booked the class via someone else and did not know the exact price but thought it would be cheaper. The owners of cooking class 1 also mentioned that some tourists try to get a discount for the cooking class but often this is not a problem for them. A number of hosts furthermore explained that sometimes problems occurred in the past because they did not know how to use social media and therefore responded very late to (potential) clients.

5.3.2 Experiences Guests

This section contains the factors that have influenced the creative tourism experiences of guests. Authenticity and uniqueness (5.3.2.1) are factors that have influenced the experiences of guests in a positive way and standardization was perceived as negative. The group size (5.3.2.2) also influenced the experiences as some tourists liked to have the feeling they were alone whereas for others, the other participants made their experience more positive. Finally, the duration, price and quality of the creative tourism activities (5.3.2.3) are also factors that have influences the guests’ experiences.

5.3.2.1 Authenticity and uniqueness

A lot of tourists which were interviewed were talking about authenticity. They liked to see the real life and have experiences like and with local people. The concept authenticity was often used in hand with unique and individual experiences which gave the tourists a special feeling. A German tourist who participated in cooking class 3 explained that she really liked the cooking class because it was a very local experience:

‘’I think also the fact that they don’t have this cooking class every day. Because I think it’s not well established here yet because yeah not so many tourists know about it. [...] The husband working in the restaurant and she is working in the kitchen with the daughter just sitting next door. I liked that it was not made up for us and that it was really her kitchen where she also prepared her own meals for herself and for her family.’’ – respondent 47

The respondent first of all liked that the cooking class is not every day which gives the experience a kind of exclusiveness. She furthermore liked that it is not very well developed yet because this makes it feel very real and makes the experience more special. She does not want to participate in a professional cooking class but liked to see the real life of the hosts. She liked that it is very homely because this gave her the feeling that the life of the hosts would be the same if she would not have been there. So the fact that it was not set up for tourists but that it is like their normal life was important to see for the tourist. She furthermore liked that local products were used in the cooking class. Several tourists mentioned that they liked the unprofessionalism of the hosts. It seems that when the activity or the skills of the host are not very professional, the tourists see it as something real and authentic. They do not want to see something perfect but like to see how it really is. Two Dutch tourists, who participated in cooking class 1 also explained that for them the cooking class was not authentic because everything went too smooth and was well-managed.

Watching the movie was a very authentic experience for a German tourist, respondent 18. For him the imperfection also added value to the experience. He explained that the fact that the film was not perfectly made, made the film really authentic for him as it was a typical Asian movie. Besides that, he felt like all his experiences in Myanmar fell into place when watching the movie so for him this was a very special experience. According to MacCannel (1976) and Bauman (1996), western tourists are alienated from the modern and inauthentic world they live in and try to find authenticity in the ‘other’ who is the host at the tourism destination. Tourists like to experience the ‘romantic’ picture they have in their minds of the ‘primitive’ host community. Therefore they liked it that the hosts are not very professional and perceive it as inauthentic when the hosts are professional because the latter is closer to the situation back home. In the western countries, things are often very organized and well-managed so when tourists experience this at the host community, it does not feel authentic for them.

Tourists furthermore liked to have unique experiences. A German tourists that went to the puppet show explained what she liked about the show:

‘’It is really, yeah it’s really interesting. I have never seen anything like it. Cause I think, I think there is not so many puppet shows anymore. Also in Myanmar. I think this is pretty unique.’’ – respondent 15

The tourist really liked the puppet show because it is something which does not exist at many places anymore and therefore she found it very interesting. A Dutch tourist who participated in the leg rowing class furthermore explained that the activity and the setting really made her experience special:

‘’Because this is something which I think is so old, which they really have been doing for a long time and yes, it is just really special to be able to do this yourself, to also have this experience. […] Because actually in the rest of the village there were no tourists which also actually felt very special. I actually really liked that because then it really feels like you end up in the ‘real’ life. [own translation] – respondent 51

In the quotation she first of all explains that she felt very special to be able to participate in the leg rowing class because the leg rowing is a very old tradition at the Inle Lake. Besides that, the setting

69 also made her experience special because the leg rowing class was in a village at the lake and there were no other tourists. Because there were no other tourists besides her and the other participants, she felt like she was experiencing the ‘real’ local life which gave her a special feeling. A lot of the tourists who did the boat trip really had a positive experience at the weaving workshop because here they have seen something which is new to them. At the weaving workshop, the hosts show the tourists different types of weaving, including lotus weaving which was for all the respondents I spoke with something new. They had never seen this before and therefore it was perceived as a special and unique. Two Dutch tourists, that went to the weaving workshop explain that for them the workshop felt very authentic and real:

‘’because it is the real work and they were really working for their money with their full focus and that made is also more interesting [...] it felt like real and not like they did it for the tourists. – respondents 43

So, the tourists find it important that the workshops they visit really exist and are not just set up for tourists because when they are set up for tourists they perceive it as inauthentic. This is in accordance with the staged authenticity theory of MacCannel (1973) as the tourists perceive something that has been created for tourists, as fake or inauthentic. The tourists had the feeling that at the weaving workshop, they had reached a back region, where locals are themselves and do not play a role. They explained that they had the feeling that the employees always work like that, that the factory is always there so this made the experience more ‘real’ for the respondents. According to MacCannel (1973), tourists want to enter these ‘real’ back regions because they are associated with authentic experiences and intimate relations. This was also the case with the respondents because having the idea that the experience was real, made them feel less like standard tourists. They said that they do not want to be like a standard tourist because they want to have a unique experience and they want to be more involved. They also explained that this has something to do with their own ego, with their identity:

‘’Maybe it is just a bit of an ego-thing. With ‘the tourist’ I always imagine like a standard person from Japan with a big camera and I do not want to be like that. [...] and I actually think that nobody wants to be the standard tourist. [...]Yes, so that you are there as a tourist and now you are there just as a person who finds it interesting to see the real local life or something .’’ – respondents 43

So they want to be perceived as a normal person by the hosts and not as a tourist. They want to have an intimate relationship with the hosts opposed to an exploitative relationship as ‘the tourist’ is often perceived as a source of money by the hosts. Similar feelings have been expressed by other tourists that did the boat trip. Tourists did not like it when they had the idea that the activity was too touristy and commercial because it gave them the feeling that their experience was standard; like the experience of any other tourist in the research area. Two Dutch tourists that participated in cooking class 1 explained that in their opinion, the class was too well managed and commercial:

‘’It’s just a pity that once these kind of things become a success they are a bit exploited you know. But well, you cannot really do something else in Myanmar . You kind of follow the crowds [...] And if there then is at a certain point a place which becomes a bit popular it is right away so Then everybody goes there, yes. [...] Because sometimes I have done things while I was travelling of which I really thought

‘woow this was a great experience’ or just because of the people. But I just found that Sue, I hardly spoke with Sue and Lesly and ehm I don’t know, I thought it was a bit too commercialized.’’ [own translation] – respondents 12

The respondents are seeking unique and authentic experiences but these two respondents explain that it is quite hard to get these experiences in Myanmar because the country is just opening up for tourists and only certain areas in the country are accessible so everyone goes to the same places and you kind of have to do what everyone else does.

5.3.2.2 Group size

The group size is another factor that influenced the experience of the tourists. For some tourists being with other people made their experience more positive while for others being in a group impeded their involvement with the hosts and the activity. For the activities which were in general less ‘touristy’, tourists liked to do the activity in a group with like-minded people whereas in case of the boat trips, which is an activity that more tourists do in the research area, tourists liked to have the feeling that they were on their own and they liked to get all the attention of the hosts at the different workshops. For some of the tourists who did activities in which their involvement was quite high, like with the cooking and leg rowing classes, the aspect of being in a group was quite important for their experience. For one of the Dutch tourists that participated in the leg rowing class, being in a group made her experience more positive:

‘’That’s what I also really liked, so that you did not have to go one after another but that we could start at the same time with the three of us. [...] because it really was quite difficult and of course it was new so then you do want to do something like this together I think. Then it’s less, then you share it with each other and you can ask ‘hey, how is it going with you?’ yes, then you can have a look how the other is doing.’’ [own translation] – respondent 51

The activity was something new for the respondent and she perceived it as quite difficult. Therefore she liked that she could share her experience with the other participants because it made her feel more comfortable and it encouraged her to master the new skill. As explained by Richards and Wilson (2007), tourists’ performances first of all influence their own holiday but besides they are also part of the experience of other tourists. So, the performance of the other participants influenced the experience of respondent 51 in a good way. A Dutch couple that participated in cooking class 1 explained that they actually did not learn that much in the cooking class but they still really enjoyed doing the activity together with other like-minded people:

‘’This was really more of a group thing and that is actually what I really liked about it. The focus was also just much more on eating together and being together. I thought that was really nice. And also a very eh nice setting. We also had a nice group so that is also important. Yes you know, you are also kind of dependent on the other people you are with.’’ – respondents 11

So, the tourists really enjoyed the social aspect of the cooking class. They did however realize that their experience was dependent on the other participants and could have been different with another group. These tourists were very open towards the other participants and towards the hosts

71 which is according to Trauer and Ryan (2005) an important aspect of fulfilling tourist experiences. Most of the participants of the cooking classes explained that they liked to do the activity in a group but it was important for them that the group size was not too big because then the hosts might not be able to give them enough attention. So, getting enough attention of the host is important. Respondent 12.1, a Dutch tourist who participated in cooking class 1, explained that the group size of the class was too big and that she hardly interacted with the teachers. This was one of the factors that made her experience negative.

The boat trip is the highlight of the research area and is the most ‘touristy’ activity. Especially for the tourists that went on the boat trip it was important not to have the feeling that the activity was very touristy. Even though they knew that a lot of tourists went to the lake, they liked to have the feeling that this was not the case. A Dutch tourist explained how being at the workshop with only two tourists made her feel:

‘’That also plays a part that you are not like one of the hundred others who are there even though you know that there are of course more tourists and that is fine but now it was really unique to just be with the two of us and that they gave you their full attention and that they could take it slow and explain it slowly.’’ [own translation] – respondents 43.2

She realizes that there are of course many tourists at the lake but being alone with her friend at the workshop made her experience more unique. She liked to get the full attention of the hosts because it made her feel special. According to Richards (2012), tourists find it important to have unique and personalized experience because through these experiences they can express their identity. I think this is partly the case because the girl also explained that she does not want to be like the standard tourist. However, she later on also explained that she liked to be perceived by the hosts as a ‘normal’ person and not as a tourist with money. So I also think that this experience made her feel like the encounter was more balanced. A German tourist, respondent 46, also explained something similar. She also liked to get the attention of the hosts and had the feeling that because there were not so many other tourists, the experience at the workshops were more ‘real’ because the hosts were not repeating a standard sales talk to many tourists. Even though it might have been standard phrases, the fact that she was alone with her friends at the workshop made it feel different.

5.3.2.3 Duration, price and quality

The duration, price and quality of the creative tourism activities are furthermore factors that have influenced the experiences of tourists. For the majority of the activities, the tourists were satisfied with the duration. However, some tourists explained that the boat trip took too long and they explained that their boat driver had not communicated the duration and different stops of the boat trip clearly with them. The tourists liked to have transparency about the duration, price and activity itself in advance and some problems arose when this was not the case. Two German tourists that participated in cooking class 2 did not know that there were different options and prices for the cooking class and only found out afterwards what the price of the cooking class was:

‘’If they would have told us per person $35 for this outdoor experience in the floating garden we would have said ‘sorry eh for this experience per person in this country with these salaries here, it sounds a little bit too much’. [...] We would have negotiated. At least we would have had the chance. We didn’t. No information at all! We went back here and we were highly surprised to learn that it’s per person $35. [...] The gentleman was very nice, very talkative, very informative but the food he was cooking was poor.’’ – respondent 21.1

The ladies thought the cooking class was too expensive and were not satisfied with the cooking skills of the host. Whereas some tourists explained that they like the ‘unprofessionalism’ of the hosts because it makes the experience more authentic, it is however important that the price meets the quality of the activity. In this case, the German tourists thought that the price of the activity was not justified. This however depends on the perception and previous experiences of the hosts as another German tourist, who also did cooking class 2 was totally fine with the price and thought the food was great. Some other tourists mentioned about cooking class 1 and 3 that it could have been a bit cheaper as well and as mentioned before, tourists thought that the products at the workshops at the lake were overpriced. Regarding cooking class 3, respondents furthermore mentioned that the cooking class could have been managed better which would improve the quality of the class. Overall, the tourists were however satisfied with the duration, price and quality of the activities.

5.4 Evaluation of the encounters

This section contains the evaluation of the host-guest encounters starting with a discussion whether the creative tourism encounters between hosts and guests encourage sustainability (5.4.1). Besides that, in the section that follows is discussed how the creative tourism encounters between hosts and guests have influenced the nature of the host-guest relations (5.4.2).

5.4.1 Sustainability

Tourists overall really valued the natural, cultural and personal resources of the hosts which made the hosts feel proud and helped to preserve and develop these resources (Swarbrooke, 1999). Through the interaction with the hosts and by seeing them work, a lot of tourists really started to admire the people and their skills. This was actually for all of the activities. The tourists did not feel sorry for the locals but did often mention that they were doing really hard work. On the boat trip, the tourists were especially astonished by the (lotus) weaving workshop. At the lotus weaving workshop the root of the lotus flower is used to make a string which is used to weave different products.

Several tourists explained that they were very impressed with the work of the women. They were first of all impressed how much work and time it took in order to make the different products and besides that, a lot of tourists really admired the weaving techniques and creative ideas of the hosts. Several tourists were also very impressed by the skills of the guys working at the silversmith which is explained by a German tourist that visited the silversmith:

‘’We went also to the jewellery, the silver making. That was actually very impressive. He made little fishes. They were actually moving out of, they were tiny and he was making them out of the silver. And I couldn’t imagine how anybody could be so talented to make such small things and that was so nice to see that they really make it there’’ – respondent 16

The tourist really admires the work of the employees at the silversmith and thinks they are really talented. The tourists were overall also really impressed by the skills of the puppet master. They did not have very high expectations of the show but in the end all really liked it. Tourist told me that after the show they realized how hard work it was as the puppet master was all sweaty afterwards. They furthermore were impressed by the tricks and movements he could make and the tourists really liked to see the puppet master move behind the stage. Regarding observation 8 and 13, I could see that many tourists really enjoyed the puppet show as they were laughing out loud, giving a loud applause and they were thanking the puppet master after the show for his performance.

The tourists who participated in the leg rowing class also really admired the teacher of the leg rowing class and the local fishermen after doing the activity. Respondent 51 mentioned that she thought the owner of the leg rowing class was very creative. At this moment the tourism industry is developing in Myanmar and there are not that many activities to do yet. Therefore the tourist really liked that the owner of the leg rowing class came up with this unique and new activity. Besides that, when participating in the class, the tourist started to realize how hard it actually is to row with your leg and at the same time keep your balance and do other things with your hands. So after this experience she really started to admire this skill of the locals and the work of the local fishermen. It is interesting to find out that the tourists have admiration for the locals. This is in my opinion very important because this makes the relationship between tourists and locals more equal. In general, tourists feel often sorry for the locals in developing countries but regarding the interviews and observations of this study I can tell that the tourists do not feel sorry for the locals but admire their skills and creativity.

As explained in the theoretical framework, the interest of tourists can help to sustain the local culture and traditions which has also been mentioned by a number of business owners. Certain activities are not popular (anymore) among the locals but can be sustained due to the interest of the tourists. The owner of the silversmith explains that their shop is not very popular among the locals because the jewellery is too expensive for them. Besides that, the local people and domestic tourists are not interested in the process of the silver making because they already know it, whereas for the international tourists it is something new and different to see:

‘’My father told me that the local people cannot buy our jewellery because this is a little bit expensive and they only want to wear the gold. So, the silversmith is a little bit unpopular you know and now the tourism is very popular and we can do it and make it more beautiful. So tourism helps to keep our tradition. [...]If there is no tourism, maybe the silversmith will disappear’’ – respondent 33

So, for a number of workshops, the tourists make it able to exist. The owner of the paper making workshop furthermore explained that domestic tourists are not interested in the workshops but only want to buy the souvenirs. Foreign tourists however are interested to see the paper making process and contribute to the preservation of this tradition. The puppet master furthermore explained that he is worried that puppetry might disappear in the future when he will not be there anymore and will

74 not have a successor because nowadays he only performs shows for tourists whereas in the past he used to perform big shows for locals. He explained that the locals are not interested in puppetry anymore and prefer to watch television or do something else in the evening. This interest of the tourists and disinterest of the hosts can be explained due to the fact that for tourists these activities are new and typical for the research area which attracts them to go. They furthermore assume that this will give them a unique experience whereas for the hosts it is not special to do or see anymore. Regarding the workshops, it is however important to mention that the locals do buy the products like the cheroots and clothing that are produced at the workshops, but they often buy these products at the local market and do not go to see the production process at the workshops.

Accoring to Jelinčić and Žuvela (2012), in creative tourism, natural, cultural and personal resources are valued and enriched which was also the case with most of the selected creative tourism activities. However, regarding the boat trips, I sometimes had the feeling that the natural and cultural resources were exploited and commercialized in order to make money from the tourists. At some of the workshops, the area of the shop was much bigger than the space where the workshop was showed and besides that the products were highly overpriced. Even though in my opinion some of the workshops at the lake were commercialized, these businesses do employ a lot of local people and stimulate economic development (Marques, 2012).

In order to develop the creative tourism activity, the hosts have mainly used and developed their existing cultural and personal resources which is more sustainable than using tangible resources (Tan, Kung and Luh, 2014). Some hosts explained that they just show and explain the tourists what they normally do and they want to share these traditions with the tourists. Even though on one side tourists stimulate the preservation of the local culture and traditions, on the other side tourists also influence and change the lives of the hosts as explained by Swain (1978). Some hosts for example explained that they want to develop their business and make it more professional, which will change the business. Some other changes that I have observed are the inequality of people that have a job in tourism compared to people who do not. Hosts furthermore explained that the increasing tourism contributes to the pollution of the environment and cultural changes in the lifestyles of especially younger people can be seen.

5.4.2 The host-guest relations

The majority of the hosts and guests have positive feelings about the creative tourism encounter and experience and the overall relationship between them is balanced. Because the activities lasted only for a certain time during one day, it was difficult for the hosts and guests to fully engage in intimacy with each other and to get enduring involvement instead of situational involvement (Trauer and Ryan, 2005). Deeper involvement however led to more intimate relations between hosts and guests. The concern of the hosts and guests about each other first of all showed their empathy. Besides that, the hospitality of the hosts really gave the tourists a sense of belonging which was important for them because it made them feel like their relationship was balanced and more intimate. It made the tourists feel more comfortable which also influenced their behaviour towards the hosts in a positive way.

The participation of the tourists in the creative tourism activities often brought the hosts and guests closer to each other because it encouraged the involvement and interaction with each other. The intensity of the participation and interaction between hosts and guests however differed among the creative tourism activities which also influenced the host-guest relationship. Based on my own experiences of the different activities, I can say that I had a more intimate relationship with the hosts of activities in which my participation and involvement was higher. This was often also the case for other tourists but participation does not necessarily mean that there is also more interaction between hosts and guests because sometimes the group size was quite big which impeded the host- guest encounter and intimacy of the relationship. The learning aspects in all the activities were perceived as highly positive by the tourists and it also empowered the hosts and balanced the host- guest relationship. All the activities contained some learning aspects but this was the highest for the leg rowing class and the cooking classes, where the overall involvement of tourists was also the highest.

Even though the overall host-guest relationship is balanced, for some of the encounters the nature of the relationship was unbalanced because either the host or guest was acting only out of self-interest. This mainly occurred at the workshops at the lake. The encounters that were characterized by commercialization and staged performances were by tourists perceived as negative because it gave them the feeling that hosts were only interested in their money and not in them as a person so these encounters were not balanced and somehow exploitative. Hosts also explained that they felt sad when tourists did not show any interest in them and did not try to interact with them. Some tourists at the workshops only walked in and took pictures of hosts without further interacting with them or buying any products. Besides that, there were also tourists that did not want to visit certain workshops but were brought there by their boat driver which influenced their mood and behaviour towards the other hosts that were met during the boat trip.

6. Conclusion & Discussion

Helps to sustain but also makes them dependent on tourism 77

The objective of this research was to get a deeper understanding of creative tourism taking place in the village Nyaungshwe and at the Inle Lake in Myanmar and more specifically to get a deeper understanding of the interactions between and experiences of hosts and guests that participate in creative tourism activities in the research area. In this chapter the main findings of the study will be discussed and the research questions will be answered in the conclusion (6.1). The discussion (6.2) contains reflections on creative tourism, interaction theories and the research itself and the last section gives recommendations (6.3) for future research and about the potential to develop creative tourism in the research area.

6.1 Conclusion

At the Inle Lake in Myanmar creative tourism has become increasingly important. Ten creative tourism activities have been identified which make up a big part of the activities in the research area. For this study, six of the creative tourism activities have been selected covering the four different types of creative tourism (buying, seeing, tasting and learning). These activities have furthermore been selected based on their accessibility, popularity and characteristics of the research area.

In order to study the interaction between hosts and guests, I first of all looked at the motivations of hosts and guests for participating in creative tourism. Hosts were mainly driven by material needs. Tourists’ motivations were predominantly based on psychological, social and emotional needs. Material needs play an important role for the hosts because the creative tourism activity is their work and in most cases their main source of income. Hosts were however also led by their passion and for some hosts it was important to be able to support the local community and give other locals the chance to work and develop themselves. Hosts furthermore wanted to please the tourists by providing the tourists with the creative tourism activity after the tourists suggested this to them. Making the decision based on suggestions of tourists also shows that the hosts trusted the opinion of the tourists and believed that it would work out well. Finally, I felt that the majority of the hosts was very proud of their culture and job and therefore being able to share their culture, knowledge and skills was another motivation for them to participate in creative tourism.

Tourists were mainly encouraged to participate in creative tourism by their quest for authentic and unique experiences. Having an authentic experience was perceived by tourists as something unique, as the local life they liked to experience is very different from their own lives back home. Tourists furthermore seek these kinds of experiences because they want to be different and by participating in the activity they can express their identity. Tourists were also driven by the need to learn. They liked to learn about the local culture and for the tourists that participated in the cooking classes in particular it was important to learn a new skill. This is in accordance with the movement in society towards ‘skilled consumption’, meaning that tourists want to develop a new skill on their holiday. Tourists were furthermore seeking relaxation and entertainment and decisions to participate in creative tourism were made based on recommendations of others.

Based on these different needs, hosts and guests participated in creative tourism activities in which encounters between hosts and guests took place. The host-guest encounters are first of all characterized by the hospitality of the hosts. For the hosts it was important to make the tourists feel

78 welcome during the activity as hospitality is part of the hosts’ culture. Some hosts however made an extra effort to welcome the tourists because they had good experiences with other tourists in the past and built up relationships with them. The hospitality of the hosts made the guests feel like they belonged to the local community. This is an important aspect of the encounter because this also gave them the feeling that they were perceived as equal persons by the hosts and not as a tourist with money.

The participation of both hosts and guests in the creative tourism activities encouraged interaction between the hosts and guests and it brought them closer together. Besides that, the participation helped hosts and guests to learn about each other’s cultures and gain new skills. Tourists were overall very eager to learn and showed a lot of interest towards the hosts. They furthermore expressed that the teaching techniques and the trust they had in the host helped them learn. The hosts took their work very seriously and it was very important for them to teach the tourists well which shows that they care about the tourists and the quality of the service they deliver.

Tourists were also very involved with the hosts and for most of them it was important to see that the local community is doing well and that their working conditions are good. Tourists realized that their self-interest is not always what is best for the hosts which illustrates their empathy for the hosts. The involvement with the hosts sometimes also continued after the creative tourism activity as some hosts afterwards received help from tourists to improve their business and tourists taught hosts several computer skills. Staged performances also took place during the encounters as hosts tried to accommodate tourists by providing the tourists with what they think the tourists want. They were informed about what tourists like and prepared themselves ‘backstage’ and made adaptations to their normal way of life. Even though the hosts did this with the best intentions, sometimes the tourists had the feeling that the host was putting up an act, which was not appreciated by the tourists because it made them feel like they were fooled and it gave them the impression that the hosts were only interested in their money and not in them as a person. Tourists had similar feelings of creative tourism activities that were quite commercialized like the boat trip and cooking class 1 because during these activities the behaviour of the hosts towards the tourists sometimes changed when opportunities to make money arose.

The host-guest encounters form an essential part of the creative tourism experiences of hosts and guests. Other factors that have also influenced the creative tourism experiences of guests are first of all authenticity and uniqueness. ‘Real’ authentic experiences gave tourists the feeling that they experienced something unique and it gave them the feeling that they were closer to the local community; it gave them a sense of belonging. This sense of belonging made them furthermore feel like they were perceived as equal human beings by the hosts.

Group size is another factor that influenced the experience of the tourists. It was apparent that for the boat trip, which is the most popular and commercialized activity in the research area, tourists liked to have the feeling that they were on their own at the lake and did not like to see other tourists whereas for the less popular activities like the leg rowing class, tourists liked to be in a group and share the experience with like-minded people. The group size furthermore influenced the ability of tourists to interact and connect with the hosts. Overall, being able to connect with each other was important for hosts and guests. Hosts perceived it as positive when tourists showed interest in their

79 culture and negative feelings sometimes arose when this was not the case. The hosts liked to explain tourists about their work and culture because it gave them a special feeling.

Regarding the evaluation of the encounters, hosts became empowered by playing the role of a teacher which made the host-guest relationship more balanced because tourists were not gazing upon the hosts but expressed their admiration of the skills and creativity of the hosts. Especially in the activities where the host had an active role as a teacher, the host was perceived as a source of knowledge tourists wanted to learn from. This contributed to the self-esteem of the host community and encouraged cultural pride which is needed in order to sustain the local culture and traditions.

The overall relationship between the hosts and guests is balanced and it was apparent that hosts and guests care about each other and like to co-create creative tourism experiences. As activities lasted only for a limited time during one day, it was difficult for the hosts and guests to fully engage in intimacy with each other, but for the activities in which the tourists were deeper involved, the host- guest relationship was more balanced and intimate compared to activities with little involvement. The commercialization of activities and the staged performances however made the tourists sometimes feel exploited and made the relationship in some cases unbalanced.

6.2 Discussion

The discussion starts with a reflection on creative tourism in general (6.2.1), followed by a reflection on creative tourism in Myanmar (6.2.2). Thereafter, the interaction theories that have been used for this study will be reflected (6.2.3) and the last section ends with a reflection on the research (6.2.4).

6.2.1 Reflection on creative tourism

In my opinion, the production of creative tourism is not necessarily something new because certain creative tourism activities have been existing for many years in the Inle Lake region already. However, the results of this study show that there is a shift in the quest of tourists which influenced the development of the ‘learning’ type of creative tourism and can be perceived as a new phenomenon.

Most of the creative tourism activities which have been categorized as ‘tasting’, ‘seeing’ and ‘buying’ were already present in the Inle Lake region for many years. It was however striking to see that the majority of tourists expressed their interest for the everyday culture and willingness to connect with the local people, which is a typical aspect of creative tourism. Tourists also expressed their quest for authentic and participative experiences towards hosts, who responded to this by developing new ‘learning’ creative tourism activities like cooking classes and a leg rowing class.

It was also obvious that tourists were seeking customized experiences and disliked readymade and standard experiences. Referring back to figure 3, this study confirms that for tourists it was important to be able to participate in the activities as it first of all brought them closer to the local community and besides that, it made their experiences more personal and helped them to construct their identity. Participation furthermore helped hosts and guests to gain new skills and increased their cultural capital. The degree of tourists’ participation and involvement was however different among the creative tourism activities and co-creation only took place in the ‘learning’ type of creative

80 tourism activities of which the involvement of the tourists was the highest. For the other activities, the interaction between hosts and guests was overall quite short and tourists were not always able to really participate in these activities. So, even though the hosts and guests influenced each others’ experiences, in my opinion co-creation did not take place in the other type of creative tourism activities.

This study furthermore confirms that notions of authenticity can shift among the different forms of creative tourism that are displayed in figure 2. In terms of buying, products were perceived as authentic by tourists when they were made of the available natural resources and were produced in the research area. Being able to see how the products were produced furthermore attached the products with a unique memory of the destination. In the ‘seeing’ activities, tourists’ notion of authenticity shifted towards learning about local traditions and getting a sense of the local life. In the activities where tourists could taste the creative performances of locals, they were often concerned about the realness of the hosts’ performances. Tourists were seeking to enter the so called ‘back regions’ which are places where the hosts can be themselves and do not perform an act. Tourists wanted to reach these back regions because it made them feel closer to the hosts and it gave them the feeling like they were perceived as an equal person which was important for their ego. It was however interesting to see that some tourists perceived certain activities as authentic experiences whereas others perceived these experiences as inauthentic or staged. Finally, the ‘learning’ activities are characterized by existential authenticity as tourists explained that their participation in the activities gave them a sense of belonging and made them feel like they were living like a local for a while.

So, regarding the results of this study I only perceive the ‘learning’ form of creative tourism as a new phenomenon as was described in the introduction of this thesis because in this form of creative tourism, tourists are highly involved and co-creation between tourists and hosts can take place. Besides that, this form of creative tourism helps tourists to construct their identity and enables tourists to temporarily feel like a local resident.

6.2.2 Reflection on creative tourism in Myanmar

A thing which was very apparent in Myanmar was the cultural pride of the locals. The people really enjoyed showing and explaining tourists about their culture and seemed offended when comparisons were made by tourists to the culture of other Asian countries. I think this can partly be explained by the political situation of the country. After many years of suppression, locals are now finally able to show the world what they have to offer. In Myanmar, over a hundred different ethnic groups exist of which five are living in the research area of this study. These ethnic groups have all maintained their own customs and way of life and form a valuable part of the countries cultural resources. So, in my opinion, the new political situation makes room for the development of creative tourism but only to a certain degree as the tourism industry is still highly controlled by the government. Only certain regions in the country are accessible for tourists and tourists are not allowed to stay in the homes of locals which restricts the development of creative tourism in Myanmar to temporary activities and situational encounters between hosts and guests.

In the Inle Lake region, all the four types of creative tourism (buying, seeing, tasting and learning) exist, but creative tourism has not been fully optimized. At the moment, the ‘tasting’ form of creative

81 tourism, which in most cases is accompanied with ‘buying’, dominates. A lot of workshops exist where tourists can observe the creative performances of hosts that are making handicrafts. Tourists liked to ‘taste’ these creative performances of the hosts because it gave them knowledge about the local culture and it was a way to express their identity. The interest of tourists in their creative skills furthermore made the hosts feel proud and appreciated. Because hosts only gain money of tourists by selling their products at these workshops and often pay commission to boat drivers that bring tourists, their behaviour was sometimes however influenced in a negative way. Some hosts were quite pushy in their way of selling which influenced the host-guest relationship. Besides that, in this form of creative tourism, tourists did not really participate and the interaction between hosts and guests was quite limited.

In the ‘learning’ form of creative tourism, hosts provide tourists with a service, by teaching them a new skill for a fixed price, which takes the insecurity of gaining money away. In my opinion, this has influenced the host-guest encounters in a positive way. At the moment, this type of creative tourism is however scarce in the research area as only a few cooking classes and one leg rowing class exist. The rich natural and cultural resources of the country and mind-set of the people do however provide opportunities to further develop this form of creative tourism. The learning aspects in all the activities were perceived as highly positive by the tourists and it also empowered the hosts and balanced the host-guest relationship as explained before. All the activities contained some learning aspects but this was the highest for the leg rowing class and the cooking classes, where the overall involvement of tourists was also the highest.

In my opinion, creative tourism is a viable livelihood alternative for the local communities in Myanmar. The results of this study show that creative tourism activities can be created by developing the available natural and cultural resources like the leg rowing practice and traditional handicraft techniques that are used at the Inle Lake. Due to the rapid development of the tourism industry, the Inle Lake region is changing. Positive changes are the development of infrastructure and higher income for hosts that work in the tourism industry. Creative tourism also contributes to the economic growth in the region as the creative tourism activities that have been identified make up a big part of the tourism activities in the research area. Besides that, hosts are able to make a living from their creative tourism businesses and they provide jobs for the local community who can use their existing creative skills to make money or learn these skills at the business before they start working.

However, being fully economically dependent on tourism can in my opinion be quite problematic because the political situation in the country is still unstable which in the past caused a global boycott against tourism in Myanmar. At the moment there is a difference in the economic dependency on tourism among the different creative tourism activities. The products that are produced at the workshops at the lake are also sold at local markets and shops and are exported to other parts of the country. The owners of two of the cooking classes also have a restaurant where they sell food to locals and the leg rowing teacher can also make a living from fishing. Hosts of other creative tourism activities do however mainly depend on the money of tourists.

6.2.3 Reflection on interaction theories

In order to study the interaction between hosts and guests in creative tourism, four theories have been used which are theories regarding change and power relations, social exchange, intimacy and staged performances. In this section I reflect how these theories have helped me to conduct this study and interpret the final results.

The social exchange and intimacy theory helped me the most for this study because these two theories contain structured processes in order to explain the interaction between hosts and guests and made me aware of the different stages regarding the interaction. This helped me to create the conceptual framework and interview guide. The social exchange theory furthermore helped me to interpret the motivations of hosts and guests and think further about the underlying needs of both parties for participating in creative tourism. Besides that, the theory made me think about the exchange of benefits, which according to several scholars is the underlying basis of human behaviour. I recognized that indeed exchanges of benefits took place and tourist were in some cases unsatisfied when the exchange of benefits was in their perception unequal because the creative tourism activity was for example not worth the price.

However, intimacy theory helped me realize that host-guest encounters in creative tourism are not only based on an exchange of benefits. When analyzing the results, I recognized that hosts and guests also acted out of interest for each other and did not expect to have a benefit in return which shows their empathy for each other. This theory was furthermore useful for this study because it is closely related to the creative tourism phenomenon and helped me to interpret the behaviour of hosts and guests. In chapter 2.1 it is explained that tourists seek intimate relations with the local community and act accordingly which I also identified in this study. Finally, social exchange and intimacy theory helped me understand how the encounter can influence the experiences of hosts and guests and the eventual host-guest relationship.

The theory of staged performances furthermore helped me to gain more understanding of the behaviour of hosts and guests in the creative tourism activities. This theory made me aware of the fact that some tourists prepared themselves for the creative tourism activities by taking recommendations of others which helped them to identify and prepare themselves as a certain type of traveller and to act accordingly. I also noticed that more experienced travellers were able to reflect on their own behaviour and the behaviour of the hosts. Besides that, the theory helped me to identify staged performances of hosts during the encounters and in the interviews it helped me understand how these performances influenced tourists’ evaluations of the encounters.

The theories on change and power relations mainly helped me to further think about the underlying power relations between hosts and guests and among the hosts in the Inle Lake region. It made me aware of the hierarchy at some of the creative tourism businesses and helped me understand the differences in the behaviour of the hosts with different functions. It furthermore made me realize that hosts in certain positions cannot just abandon tourism and end the interactions with tourists because they are economically dependent on them.

In conclusion, the four interaction theories have in my opinion formed a good basis for the study of host-guest interactions in creative tourism. It has however been difficult to implement all four of them and it might have been easier to work with two theories which would have been social exchange and intimacy theory as these theories have been most useful for this thesis. However, the other two theories also contributed to the study and gave me interesting insights.

6.2.4 Reflection on research

Whereas the focus in past research about creative tourism was mainly about either the side of the host or the tourist, this study contributes to the research on this phenomenon by looking at both sides of the equation.

However, in order to study the host-guest encounters in creative tourism, future research on this topic should concentrate on tasting and learning activities because in these activities the involvement of the tourist is higher and overall more interaction takes place between hosts and guests. For the seeing activities that have been included in this research, it was difficult to interview hosts and guests about the encounter because not much interaction took place in the activities. Nevertheless, the interviews were still interesting and did provide information about the motivations and experiences of the activities and the perception of either the host or guest.

The location of some of the interviews has furthermore influenced the data. In the beginning I found it difficult to find a suitable place to approach boat trip tourists and I conducted interviews at workshops at the lake or the jetty in Nyaungshwe. These were however quite hectic places and did not allow me to conduct in-depth interviews with the respondents. In a later stage of the data collection period I approached tourists in a bar/lounge and I have made appointments with tourists which worked out better and helped me to conduct longer and more in-depth interviews.

6.2 Recommendations

In this section, first of all practical recommendations (6.3.1) are given about the development of creative tourism in the research area. Besides that, recommendations for future research (6.3.2) have been given in the section that follows.

6.3.1 Practical recommendations for the research area

In the Inle Lake region creative tourism should be further developed as both hosts and guests expressed their interest in this. It is a pity that at this moment home stays are forbidden in Myanmar because tourists explained that they would have liked to stay with a local family because this brings them closer to the local culture and gives them the opportunity to establish more intimate relationships. Some hosts also explained that they would like to welcome tourists to stay with them in their house but that is at this moment not possible yet. However, regarding the boat trips, it did sometimes occur that boat driver brought tourists to their homes at the lake to have a break and drink a cup of tea.

In the data collection period, I have also had conversations with a number of farmers that live at the lake with the help of a translator. It makes them sad that tourists only pass by in boats and often take pictures of them but do not try to interact with them. The farmers explained that they would be happy to welcome tourists in their homes and guide them on a canoe through their floating gardens. This is actually what most of the tourists are seeking for as they want to experience the real local life. They were however shy and felt uncomfortable to approach the farmers. Therefore I think that a visit at a local farmer would be a good optional activity as part of the boat trips so farmers can also gain a bit of money from tourism. These visits can furthermore be developed as creative tourism activities. While guiding tourists through their garden, farmers could provide some information about their daily lives and work and involve tourists in their work by letting them for example row through the gardens themselves, plug the tomatoes or check the crops for any diseases so tourists can get an idea of how it is to be a farmer at the Inle Lake.

I also think that some changes should be made at the workshops at the lake. The income of hosts depends on the products that are being sold to tourists but a lot of tourists are only interested in seeing the creative performances of hosts or do not have enough money to buy the products. So, the hosts do not gain money of these tourists which in some cases influences their behaviour. Therefore I suggest that hosts should charge tourists with a small entry fee like €0,50 at the different workshops so they can still gain some money from tourists that do not want to buy any products. Another possibility is to develop ‘real’ workshops in which tourists can participate and for example learn how to roll their own cigar or make basic jewellery at the silversmith. This will provide another source of income for the hosts and it gives tourists the opportunity to develop their creative skills.

Originally, the different villages at the lake used to be well known for one handicraft in particular. So one village was known for the weaving whereas in another village mainly silversmiths existed. Nowadays I noticed that in some villages, hosts start to set up a business with handicrafts that are not typical for that village. In my opinion, hosts should be careful with this because it can destroy the brand and uniqueness of the village and create inequality among the hosts of the different villages. So I think that the different villages at the lake should stick to their original ‘brand’ which is determined by a specific handicraft because this gives tourists a reason to visit the different villages and workshops at the lake.

Finally, I think that hosts should try to involve the tourists more in the cooking classes and let them do more by themselves as this is a thing which was suggested by some tourists. Besides that, hosts should be careful not to make the group size of the cooking classes too big as it impedes the personal attention and learning process of tourists. So I suggest that one host should not teach more than three tourists at the same time unless tourists are fine with a bigger group.

6.3.2 Recommendations for future research

I first of all recommend to conduct further research on host-guest relations in creative tourism to extend the results of this study. In addition, it would be interesting to make comparisons between economically more and less developed countries to see whether there will be any striking differences in the host-guest relations.

As the tourism industry is rapidly growing in Myanmar, it would be interesting to conduct the same study in the future, after for example five years. I expect that in the future the host-guest relations will be different as already the number of visitors in the research area gradually increases and the continual interaction with different tourists causes social-cultural change among the hosts. Besides that, I think that in the future, travelling in Myanmar will be more accessible for different types of tourists which may also influence the host-guest relations. At this moment, in my opinion the tourists that visited Myanmar were mainly ‘responsible’ travellers that have informed themselves about the culture and history of the host society and try to travel in a responsible way. But this may change in the future.

At the Inle Lake, another attraction which was part of the boat trips was a visit at the longneck women, also called Padaung. The Padaung are originally from Kayah state, which is situated south of the Inle lake. The Padaung have been oppressed in Myanmar and many of them fled to Thailand about twenty years ago where they are a tourist attraction which now is also the case at the Inle Lake. At the lake, the Padaung are situated in souvenir shops where tourists can take pictures of and with them. Researching this topic was beyond the scope of this study but it would be interesting to find out more about their situation and look at the encounters between tourists and the Padaung and the experiences of the encounters.

Finally, cultural festivals form an interesting topic of study in Myanmar. Social events like festivals, give tourists the opportunity to engage in the life of the locals like an ‘insider’. During these events, tourists and locals co-produce cultural experiences whereby the local culture is used as a source of inspiration for creativity. Almost every month, a number of festivals take place in Myanmar which are often related to Buddhism and are characterized by certain rituals that are carried out by the hosts. Some examples of national festivals are the water festival, which is Myanmar’s New Year or the festival of lights which is characterized by fire-balloon competitions. A festival which yearly takes place at the Inle Lake is the pagoda festival which lasts for 18 days and is known for the leg-rowing races that are held on the channels between the villages at the lake by the Intha. This festival could be used as a case study to look at the encounters and experiences of hosts and guests.

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Appendices

Appendix I Interview Guides Interview Guide Tourists Date and Time: Name Participant: Activity: Contact Details: Location: Introduction Introduce myself and the study Ask for permission to record the interview Ask if interviewee wants to stay anonymous Give an indication of the duration of the interview Motivation What was your motivation to do this activity? Why this one and not another one? How did you find out about this activity? Did you have any expectations? The Experience and Encounter Can you explain what you did during the activity? How did the host behave during the activity? Were your expectations met? Why (not)? What did you think of the duration and price? What did you think of the group (size)? Evaluation of the encounter How do you feel about the host and his/her behaviour? Keywords for probing: interaction, friendliness, hospitality, service, knowledge, skills, communication What did you (not) like about the activity? Do you have any suggestions for improvement? Would you recommend others to do this activity? Why (not)?

Ending Ask if the interviewee has any questions / wants to add anything Ask if interviewee is interested in final results Thank the interviewee

Interview Guide Hosts Date and Time Name Participant: Activity: Contact Details: Location: Introduction Introduce myself and the study Ask for permission to record the interview Ask if interviewee wants to stay anonymous Give an indication of the duration of the interview Motivation How did you get the idea to do this work? What work did you do before and why did you decide to start this job? What do you like most about your job? Do you know why tourists come to your business? The Experience and Encounter Can you explain something about your work, the activity you provide? How do tourists normally behave? Evaluation of the encounter How do you feel about tourists and their behaviour? Keywords for probing: interaction, friendliness, interest, willingness to learn, respect local culture Do you have any really good / bad experiences with tourists? Has a lot changed since more tourists come? Ending Ask if the interviewee has any questions / wants to add anything Ask if interviewee is interested in final results Thank the interviewee

Appendix II List of Respondents

Interviews ranging from 04:22 till 20:00 minutes Respondent Nr. Respondent Date and Time 3 (p23) Israelian tourist movie 10/03/2015 at 21:00 4 (p34) Movie maker 11/03/2015 at 10:30 5 (p45) Australian tourists boat trip 11/03/2015 at 15:00 6 (p48) Portugese tourists boat trip 11/03/2015 at 15:30 7 (p49) French tourists boat trip 11/03/2015 at 16:00 8 (p50) Brazilian and German tourist boat trip 11/03/2015 at 16:20 10 (p2) Owner Restaurant 14/03/2015 at 15:30 12 (p4) Dutch tourists cooking class 1 16/03/2015 at 20:30 14 (p6) Dutch tourist puppet show 18/03/2015 at 18:00 15 (p7) German tourist puppet show 19/03/2015 at 10:15 16 (p8) German tourist boat trip 19/03/2015 at 11:00 17 (p9) Dutch tourist leg rowing class 19/03/2015 at 11:30 18 (p10) German tourist movie 21/03/2015 at 21:00 19 (p11) Hungarian tourist movie 27/03/2015 at 16:00 21 (p14) German tourists cooking class 2 28/03/2015 at 14:45 22 (p15) Dutch tourist puppet show 29/03/2015 at 14:00 23 (p16) Dutch tourist cooking class 1 29/03/2015 at 14:30 24 (p17) German tourist puppet show 29/03/2015 at 15:45 25 (p18) German tourist cooking class 1 29/03/2015 at 16:30 26 (p19) French tourists puppet show 31/03/2015 at 19:40 28 (p21) Owner cheroot making 02/04/2015 at 10:30 29 (p22) Employee cheroot making 02/04/3015 at 11:00 30 (p24) Malaysian tourist boat trip 02/04/2015 at 11:30 31 (p25) Danish tourists boat trip 02/04/2015 at 12:00 32 (p26) Owner weaving workshop 08/04/2015 at 10:15 34 (p28) Employee silver making 08/04/2015 at 13:00 35 (p29) Belgian tourist boat trip and bakery 09/04/2015 at 13:00 36 (p30) Owner Restaurant 09/04/2015 at 15:00 39 (p33) Employee silver making workshop (explaining and 10/04/2015 at 11:00 selling) 40 (p35) Employee silver making workshop (making jewellery) 10/04/2015 at 11:20 41 (p36) Longneck girl at weaving / souvenir shop 10/04/2015 at 11:45 42 (p37) Australian tourists boat trip 10/04/2015 at 12:15 * The interviews that are written in red have not been used in the data analysis.

Interviews ranging from 20:01 - 1:26:32 minutes Respondent Nr. Respondent Date and Time 1 (p1) Owner cooking class 1 06/03/2015 at 11:00 2 (p12) French tourist cooking class 1 06/03/2015 at 12:00 9 (p51) German tourist cooking class 2 14/03/2015 at 14:30 11 (p3) Dutch tourists cooking class 1 16/03/2015 at 20:00 13 (p5) Owner leg rowing class and cooking class 2 18/03/2015 at 16:00 20 (p13) Owner cooking class 1 28/03/2015 at 10:30 27 (p20) Puppet master 01/04/2015 at 18:00 33 (p27) Owner silver making 08/04/2015 at 12:30 37 (p31) Employees paper making workshop 10/04/2015 at 09:30 38 (p32) Owner paper making workshop 10/04/2015 at 10:15 43 (p38) Dutch tourists boat trip 10/04/2015 at 21:30 44 (p39) English tourist boat trip 11/04/2015 at 11:45 45 (p40) French tourist boat trip 11/04/2015 at 14:15 46 (p41) German tourist boat trip 11/04/2015 at 16:00 47 (p42) German tourist cooking class 3 11/04/2015 at 17:00 48 (p43) Dutch tourists cooking class 3 12/04/2015 at 13:30 49 (p44) Owners cooking class 3 12/04/2015 at 14:30 50 (p46) Austrian tourists cooking class 3 12/04/2015 at 16:30 51 (p47) Dutch tourist leg rowing class 11/05/2015 at 12:30

Appendix III Overview of Observations

Obs. Nr. Activity Observation Method Participants Date and Time 1 Thanakha Participant Tourists in the 01/03/2015 at 19:00 Garden restaurant & one host 2 Boat trip Participant 04/03/2015 morning- afternoon 3 Cooking Participant Two American 05/03/2015 at 17:00 class 1 tourists & one host 4 Movie Participant +/- 20 tourists 10/03/2015 at 19:30 French watching the Touch movie 5 Tanakha Participant Tourists in the 13/03/2015 at 14:00 Garden restaurant & one host 6 Leg rowing Participant Two Dutch 19/03/2015 at 10:00 class tourists & one host 7 Cooking Non-participant Three Dutch 29/03/2015 at 17:00 class 1 tourists & two hosts 8 Puppet Participant 12 tourists 31/03/2015 at 19:00 show (French, Dutch, Spanish) & puppet master 9 Boat trip Participant 02/04/2015 morning- (cheroot afternoon making) 10 Boat trip Participant 08/04/2015 morning (weaving, - afternoon silversmith) 11 Boat trip Participant 10/04/2015 morning (weaving, – afternoon silversmith, paper making) 12 Cooking Non-participant Two Dutch 12/04/2015 at 10:30 class 3 tourists & one host 13 Puppet Participant +/- 16 tourists 16/04/2015 at 19:00 show