This study focuses on a peculiar trait in international tourism, the north-south flow of holiday makers from Finland to the Mediterranean countries and the Canary Islands. Finns very often refer to their holiday destinations in the above mentioned regions as "etelä", the south, without clearly specifying which exact location they talk about. The backgrounds and motives of Finnish tourists who chose Athens, Rhodes, Bodrum, Playa del Ingles and Aqaba as their holiday destinations are presented. Material from participant observation and discussions with tourists in these destinations are used alongside material from questionnaires and structured interviews to build a framework for the inquiry on who is the Finnish sunlust tourist, and what is the south where this tourist travels. The main material of the study is diaries written by the tourists while on holiday. These diaries are used to build an emic picture on the tourist experience. Very often critics of mass tourism as well as schola
rs in the field of tourism research express, either implicitly or explicitly, that mass tourism can not provide the tourists with authentic, real or profound experiences – mainly because the manufactured tourist destinations like Playa del Ingles on Gran Canaria are inauthentic in themselves. This study shows, however, that when one of the main reasons of travelling to such destinations is to get away from the context of everyday experience, the authenticity of the destination itself has little or no meaning. In fact, this analysis suggests that the more inauthentic or placeless the destination is the better are the chances for the tourist to "get away from it all". But escape is not the sole reason for this type of tourism, even though it is a major motivator. The tourist travelling in this type of tourism could be said to enter a liminoid stage (a manufactured fragmenta1y liminality) where he or she is freed from the everyday constraints. Thus, a holiday in the "south" makes it possible for the person to behave in another manner than at home, and the relative freedom of the liminoid might even entice the latent Other in the person to come forth. This change seems to make us more aware of our senses and also more sensitive to ourselves and our companions. The "south" is not experienced mainly with our sense of sight, as most theories on the tourist seem to do. Tactile stimuli are very basic to the holiday experience, as one of the tourists, who wrote a diary, shows, when she writes how wonderful it is to walk barefoot on the sand, just like when she was a child. Our basic sense, the sense of touch, is something we might not have time to employ in the everyday experience, but when we buy time for ourselves in the form of tourism, and are transferred to another state of mind, we may again feel things on our skin in a positively regressive manner. These experiences of the "south" are probably more of the subconscious type, and are rarely explicated, but they might be the reason why the Finns return year after year to the beaches of the destinations in the "south". While walking on the beach, the tourist may accidentally stumble on his or herself and, thus, the journeys to the denounced and denigrated inauthentic tourist ghettoes may well be significant for the tourist.
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