Authenticity, Landscape and Tourism

Both tourism and landscape academia heavily and passionately debate the authentic nature of both destination experiences and appearances. This paper attempts to bridge the gap between the concept of authenticity in landscape research and that in tourism studies. Using the landscape-related derivation of Popper's three world theory, the authors analyse various tourism and landscape-related phenomena that are typically used to determine authenticity in the two disciplines. As a result, they conclude that there is no such thing as an objectively authentic tourist experience, just as there is no such thing as an objectively authentic landscape. The appreciation of each is attained through the eyes and the perspective of the viewer and ultimately leads to a (social) construction of the authentic.