Highlights
•Exploring business travel as contemporary mobility.
•Develops the concept of the ‘business tourist gaze’.
•Examines the role of technology in family life for business tourists.
•Business travel contesting the everyday and the exotic, and destination disconnect.
•Empirical qualitative data collected on UK based business tourists.
Abstract
This paper reflects on business travel as a contemporary form of mobility and how it relates to family life. Through qualitative research with business travellers, insights are gained into the role digital technology plays in enabling connections to home and family. The paper argues that technology affords a ‘business tourist gaze’, characterised by a focus on ‘home’ rather than ‘away’ as might be the case for leisure tourists. The paper discusses how, through the business tourist gaze, the boundaries between the everyday and the exotic are dissolved and the business traveller is disconnected from the destination, simultaneously absent whilst present both at the destination and at home. Theoretical understandings of the business tourist experience are offered.
Keywords
Business travel; Tourist gaze; Mobilities; Digital technology