I Remember it Well: Epiphanies, Nostalgia, and Urban Exploration As Mediators of Tourist Memory

Abstract

This article takes the author's own nostalgic feelings for a now defunct theme park and translates these into an analysis of other people's tourism-related nostalgic experiences. In doing so, the article furthers discussion around nostalgia and memory within tourism and approaches new ground in the use of images, online forums, and urban exploration as mediators of individual and shared nostalgias. It has also been argued that while nostalgia is a key motivational factor in tourist decision making, it has not been fully explored. Furthermore, this article uniquely focuses on younger people where previous research has considered older age groups. As a consequence, the semiautoethnographic discussion, supported with quantitative and phenomenological content analysis of online forums, explores the creation of tourist epiphanies and identifies key themes around family, repeat visitation, and the preplanned creation of new nostalgias within hyperreal environments.