There is general consensus that a tourist refers to a person who travels outside of their home community. However, this movement is where agreement tends to end. Discussions continue about how far the individual has to travel in order to be considered a tourist. Distances from 50 to 100 miles one way are commonly used to designate a tourist, although in some renowned destinations, such as the state of Florida in the United States, traveling across a county line either for business or pleasure or staying in rented accommodations for less than six months designates a tourist.
Early definitions
The Florida designation raises two other contentious issues related to the tourist definition debate, one is length of stay and the other is purpose of the trip. An overnight stay or 24 h away from home has been commonly used to distinguish a tourist from a day tripper or excursionist. Indeed, one of the first definitions of an international tourist used a 24 h stay in another country as one of the...
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Gibson, H.J. (2016). Tourist. In: Jafari, J., Xiao, H. (eds) Encyclopedia of Tourism. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01384-8_589
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