‘Exceptional Visitors’: Dimensions of Tourist Responsibility in the Context of New Zealand

Within the responsible tourism debate, the tourist is often at best overlooked, and at worst represented as abandoning all sense of responsibility while on holiday. This paper argues that tourists are an untapped resource, they can make positive contributions while on holiday, yet the literature focuses on the other stakeholders. A starting point, therefore, is to place the visitor at the centre of the responsible tourism debate by exploring what it means to be a responsible tourist. This is undertaken in the context of New Zealand. Using two comparative case study sites and semi-structured interviews with industry representatives, expectations of what it means to be a responsible tourist are explored from the industry's perspective. It is concluded that responsible tourist behaviour is multi-faceted and complex, with several dimensions and degrees of dimensions. Enacting generic meanings of responsibility is context-dependent and the onus may fall back to the destinations to guide and direct tourists appropriately.