There has been wide consideration of the concept authenticity within the tourism literature as many academics and scholars feature it as part of their study or research. Originally used in the museum
context to describe objects as they appear or as they are claimed to be (Trilling 1972), the study of authenticity has experienced continuous growth over the last 40 years within tourism literature (Tribe et al. 2012; Xiao et al. 2013). With all the debate of the use, meaning and importance of authenticity in different fields from the 1960s, the term authenticity continues to be multifarious and mystifying today. A diverse range of terminology has been associated with the concept of authenticity, for example, adaptable, multifaceted, subjective, slippery, problematic, ambiguous, elusive and so on (Wang 1999; Costa and Bamossy 2001; Steiner and Reisinger 2006; Chronis and Hampton 2008).
Authenticity is not tangible but rather a perception of, or the significance of, something that needs assessing (Brida et al. 2013). In the tourism literature of social sciences, authenticity has featured within different streams such as being a marketing tool when holiday trips are promoted by offering experiences like the ‘real’ Africa or ‘hidden’ Asia. This concept within the tourism context is associated with cuisine, festivals, rituals, products, a travel, a journey or an undertaken holiday. For Sharpley (2008), authenticity on one hand can be used to differentiate the niche versus mass tourism products where the mass tourism indicates inauthentic. On the other hand, something authentic is to some extent very closely associated to everything that is associated with a culture. In such a case, something can be authentic or claimed to be authentic if it has been produced or it is part of the custom and traditions within a host community. In this sense, authenticity can represent a traditional culture, the origin, the real or the genuineness.
Festivals, as cultural products, are perceived as authentic by tourists if the festivals are carried out by the local community as per their traditions and customs (Brida et al. 2013). According to Brida et al. (2013), authenticity plays an important role in making cultural festivals successful. It helps attendees assess both the value and quality of the experiences and the cultural products (Kim and Jamal 2007) thereby influencing their satisfaction from attending a cultural event and their loyalty towards the event (Brida et al. 2013) or loyalty towards the destination (Kolar and Zabkar 2010;
Bryce et al. 2015). The authenticity of cultural festivals is a major factor of motivation for tourists to attend festivals to explore culture (Chang 2006) and to experience the uniqueness of the festival and its symbolic meaning (Getz 2008; Gursoy et al. 2006; Castéran and Roederer 2013).
Since the original attempts to define authenticity, other scholars have shown their interest by interpreting the term as seen in literature (Selwyn 1996; Grayson and Martinec 2004). These authors have debated the term authenticity by discussing its diversity, for example MacCannell (1973) has discussed staged authenticity as opposed to true authenticity, Selwyn (1996) has debated hot versus cool authenticity while Grayson and Martinec (2004) have argued on indexical authenticity as opposed to iconic authenticity. Although there was an attempt to argue on what authenticity really meant, these authors failed to give a concrete definition of authenticity. As such, Bruner (1994) argues that the term authenticity is too vague and has several meanings. This is also supported by Van Leeuwen (2003) who acknowledged the fact that authenticity is a socially
constructed phenomenon but eventually it remains an evaluative concept despite the fact that it may be assessed methodically. As a consequence, the mystery about what “authenticity” really means still remains to be solved.
Blended with tourist activity and experience, authenticity was brought to life in sociological studies on motivations and the experiences of tourists through the work of MacCannell (1973, 1976).
Although MacCannell’s approach formed the concept of authenticity, it has been criticised by those who find that authenticity is less strict a concept than MacCannell thought it to be at that time.
Thereafter, debate on authenticity has been burgeoning in the tourism literature (Moscardo and Pearce 1986; Cohen 1988; Wang 1999). Cohen (1979) has partly agreed with MacCannell concerning the search for authentic experiences, but he argued that authenticity is fluid because it is a ‘socially constructed concept’ and therefore its meaning remains flexible. He also stated that the motivation to travel does not in itself explain what tourists seek as a travel experience. For instance, DeLyser (1999) has shown that authenticity is not an end result or even an initiator of travel, but as a matter of fact it is a vehicle through which tourists or visitors come into contact with, or interact with, each other, and with the tourist site. Similarly, such developing and pragmatic approaches are apparent in research that analyses authenticity in relation to the significance of its context (Cohen 2003), in connection to those who benefit from it (Barthel-Bouchier 2001) and its association to the discerning abilities of those who are involved (Johnson 2007).
The concept of authenticity is often viewed as problematic (Buchmann et al. 2010) due to its limited usage (Cohen 1988) which has resulted in the burgeoning of various theoretical standpoints (Rickly-Boyd 2012). Certain scholars have even considered either replacing the term or entirely discarding it (Bruner 1994; Jackson 1999). However, divorcing from authenticity is not the real solution to the problem especially because the term has experienced an outburst and embracement of the term authentication (Xie 2011; Cohen and Cohen 2012). Consequently, other scholars for example Wang (1999), have attempted to redefine the term authenticity by justifying and enhancing the explanatory power of the concept through the introduction of ‘existential authenticity’, which is based on the personal feelings that arise during activities and not on objects. As such, authenticity remains a modulate concept given that different stakeholders (academics, scholars, businessmen and individuals) perceive it differently, which increases the schism of how these stakeholders view social reality and how they understand the very nature of authenticity. For this reason, there have been systematic debates on authenticity within the sociology of culture and the social psychology (Vannini and Williams 2009). Such debates have been common only in the last twenty years whereas the tourists’ experience, of an inauthentic and authentic nature, of travel in search for the authentic, and of the authenticity of rituals, cultural expressions and artefacts created for tourists have been the subject of debate and research for a longer period in the field of tourism and travel studies (Wang 1999; Olsen 2003; Reisinger and Steiner 2006). Jamal and Hill (2002) have stated that people interpret authenticity in tourism experiences, objects and events in many ways, thus making it more difficult to define and describe the concept.