This book examines contemporary performances of authenticity in travel and tourism practices. It re-thinks and re-invests in the notion of authenticity as a surplus of experiential meaning and feeling. Drawing on a range of perspectives and cases, it explores how the feeling of authenticity within places is produced.

From the highly influential concept of ‘staged authenticity’ discussed by Dean MacCannell, to the general claim of longing for authenticity on behalf of all Western consumers, made by Joseph Pine and James Gilmore, it is obvious that the concept of authenticity is still worth considering. This ground-breaking book re-thinks and re-invests in the notion of authenticity as a surplus of experiential meaning and feeling that derives from what we do at / in places. In Re-investing Authenticity - Tourism, Place and Emotions international scholars representing a wide range of disciplines, examine contemporary performances of authenticity in travel and tourism practices: From cultural place branding to individual pilgrim performances; from intensified experiences of imaginary crime scenes to the rhetorical features of the encounter with the traumatic and; from photography performing memories of place to experiences of wilderness producing excitement, this book demonstrates how the feeling of authenticity within places is produced.

Chapter 1 Performative Authenticity in Tourism and Spatial Experience : Rethinking the Relations Between Travel, Place and Emotion - Britta Timm Knudsen and Anne Marit Waade

Section One: Staging and Practicing Authenticity

Chapter 2 Staging Places as Brands: Visiting Illusions, Images and Imaginations - Anne-Britt Gran

Chapter 3 The City In-Between: Communication Geographies, Tourism and the Urban Unconscious - André Jansson

Chapter 4 'The Summer we all went to Keuruu': Intensity and the Topographication of Identity- Niels Kayser Nielsen

Section Two: Branding and Materializing Authenticity

Chapter 5 Authenticity and Place Branding: The Arts and Culture in Branding Berlin and Singapore - Can-Seng Ooi and Birgit Stöber

Chapter 6 On the Management of Authenticity: Culture in the Place Branding of Øresund - Søren Buhl Hornskov

Chapter 7 A Ferris Wheel on a Parking Lot: Heritage, Tourism, and the Authenticity of Place in Solvang, California - Hanne Pico Larsen Section Three: Re-writing and Re-mediating Authenticity

Chapter 8 Travel and Testimony: The Rhetoric of Authenticity - Dan Ringgaard

Chapter 9 Cool Kullaberg: The History of a Mediated Tourist Site - Karen Klitgaard Povlsen

Chapter 10 Crime Scenes as Augmented Reality: Models for Enhancing Places Emotionally by Means of Narratives, Fictions and Virtual Reality - Kjetil Sandvik

Chapter 11 Murder Walks in Ystad - Carina Sjöholm

Chapter 12 Negotiating Authenticity at Rosslyn Chapel - Maria Månsson Section Four: Re-empowering Authenticity

Chapter 13 Making Pictures Talk: The Re-opening of a 'Dead City’ through Vernacular Photography as a Catalyst for the Performance of Memories - Mette Sandbye

Chapter 14 Globe1: A Place of Integration or an ‘Ethnic Oasis’? - Sine Agergaard

Chapter 15 Online Tourism: Just like Being There? - Jakob Linaa Jensen Section Five: Embodying Spatial Mythologies

Chapter 16 Journeys, Religion and Authenticity Re-visited - Torunn Selberg

Chapter 17 Walking Towards Oneself: The Authentification of Place and Self - Jesper Østergaard and Dorthe Refslund Christensen

Chapter 18 Thrillscapes: Wilderness Mediated as Playground - Szilvia Gyimóthy