II. Main Cultural products 6. Arts and Crafts

Section 6.3: Time is Money

If we knew what the tourist would like, we would know what kind of services and products to offer to him and how to build our marketing strategy. But the tourist himself does not know what he wants to buy or where he wants to travel. Something, however, can be expected:
The tourist wants to escape the rat race and enter the wheel of fortune, out of the perpetual motion machine. The tourist misses something, which is more than what satisfies his daily needs. The tourist is bored. He wants to pay for enjoyment, new experiences, memories that he can look back on in the future. He is in a hurry, but never gets to his destination. He is greedy for new experiences, because his free time has been paid for at a high price. A tourist wants to experience and buy something unique.

More than seven percent of the world's population are already tourists, and they live in our planet's richest countries. Tourists are becoming the world's largest nation. Working time is life sold away for the salary. Working time is governed by the strict law of earnings. Slavery has been abolished, but most of their life time people serve the employer to earn their living. During the class society a gentleman did not work, the work was only for the enslaved and the underprivileged. Today in the western rich world things have turned to the contrary. Everybody works, even the millionaires take care of their responsibilities around the clock. Everybody is busy; the busier you are the more important you are. The work has become life’s most important element. To be compensated for the time donated to work the free time earned is subject to annual negotiations on the labor market and this sometimes results in conflicts, strikes and lockouts in the Western world. In spite of the democratic legislation, the struggle of time and money is tight, people get burn-out and most of the things have only money as value. The global time and money game is played by faceless players far from the everyday economies of the tourists. Money and jobs are often transferred to places where the human time, the working hours are cheap or the human time can be replaced by a machine, and the machine´s calendar is it´s manual without holidays.

Inside every person there lives a small tourist. The tourist needs his break from the pressure. PhD Tom Selänniemi encapsulates this subject in the Aurinkomatkat Suntours 40th anniversary book:

"The key factor in tourism is time. In a modern society, the time usage is strictly regulated - we do not own our time anymore, because we have sold it to the work place, to volunteer activities, etc. It is often the free time, the time outside work, that is filled with home works or it is filled with watching television, the commercial entertainment. A situation has arisen where we have to buy time for ourselves. Perhaps the most obvious form of buying time is a holiday purchase." Tom Selänniemi (2003).

The precious vacation time is bought by the worker from the employer and only during a vacation the real life is lived. Time is money also during the holiday. The arts and objects the tourist wants should bear unique values and stories, and those stories are the old myths retold again and again in millions of new interpretations of modern times.

Tourism professionals have an important role when planning the content of tourist´s holidays. Products should be developed and designed with professional attitude combining in products the traditional stories and the deep wishes of the tourist for a good holiday. When the tourists are on vacation, we are at work. Good design also pays good profits.

6.2.3. Arts and Crafts and the National Image

6.3.1. The Markets of Meanings