Oskaras Vorobjovas-Pinta

The shared oasis: an insider ethnographic account of a gay resort

The literature pertaining to critical tourism studies has sought to challenge the traditional scientific dichotomy between the detached researcher and research participant in the production of tourism knowledge. This article argues for the value of an ethnographic approach in further challenging that dichotomy, by way of a study seeking to better understand a specific culture in tourism: gay resorts. We aim to outline the methodological component of this research project, centred on a gay resort in Australia, and to argue for the value of ethnography in understanding other specific tourism cultures. Often a researcher’s proximity to and pronounced familiarity with a topic is obfuscated in service of ‘non-biased’ and ‘value-neutral’ results, but in this article, we attend closely to the value of insider research in critical tourism studies. The experiences reported here – around insider perspectives, rapport building, in-depth interviews, participant observations, becoming embedded in a research environment and respecting participants – are argued to have much wider currency.

‘It’s Been Nice, but We’re Going Back to Our Lives’: Neo-Tribalism and the Role of Space in a Gay Resort

This chapter offers a review of gay holidays at a gay resort within the scope of neo-tribal theory. Focusing upon the underlying neo-tribal characteristics such as fluidity in membership, shared sentiment, rituals and symbols, this chapter emphasises the importance of space as a point of coherence around which neo-tribes form. The chapter argues that space acts as an agency to enable the aforementioned characteristics. A sense of belonging, connectedness and affinity are the paramount qualities that define the internally embedded culture within a neo-tribe. Vorobjovas-Pinta concludes that space is a fundamental converging characteristic required for a neo-tribe to exist. Space is elevated in its relationship to neo-tribes, in the sense that feelings of collective ownership by the tribe of space, are constitutive of tribal identity itself.

The strange case of dating apps at a gay resort: hyper-local and virtual-physical leisure

The purpose of this paper is to report novel information about the use of gay apps by the patrons of an exclusively gay resort in Queensland, Australia. This novel research environment facilitates an understanding of the embeddedness of gay dating apps within contemporary gay culture and community and the spatial reorientation that comes alongside the juxtaposition of physical and digital geographies.,An ethnographic study was conducted at the resort, and qualitative data presented here are drawn from semi-structured interviews with 27 gay-identifying male patrons of the resort. Critical ethnography provided beneficial access to situated perspectives and realities.,These data indicate that gay apps remain a pervasive way of making connections, even in an environment where common homosexuality is a reasonable expectation and where open self-expression is permitted and even encouraged. This complicates assumptions that gay apps’ emergence was in response to a need for privacy or anonymity for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people in wider, straight society.,This paper reports the results of an ethnographic survey conducted in a highly novel research environment and particularly seeks to address divergent experiences of social and cultural change by LGBT people, including generational divides. It has value in demonstrating clear differences, ambiguities and mixed implications of gay apps and their relationship with changing LGBT spaces.