Maori tourism: Image and identity - a postcolonial perspective

This paper is a study of the tourism-identity nexus in the representation of Maori culture in Aotearoa New Zealand. It draws on postcolonial theory to critically examine national and regional promotion of Maori culture in a tourism context. It aims to identify points of difference that might assist development of Maori tourism while highlighting how such differences challenge the pervasiveness of the legacies of colonialism in tourism. The study, based on qualitative interviews with Maori tourism operators, identifies that tribal identity as attached to storytelling provides a means to diversify the Maori tourism product, but also acts as a counter-narrative to the homogenous identity of Maori culture as promoted by the national tourism body. Results reveal that Maori tourism operators are increasingly engaging with a third space - a hybridity - which re-inscribes the dualisms of colonised and coloniser.