New heights in climbing and tourism: Jordan's Wadi Rum

Wadi Rum's landscape is marketed and experienced as a gendered, racialized, and classed 'adventure space' through intersecting discourses of risk, extremism, and ethnic difference. The study reveals how Western climbing tourists perceive the site as a performance of extreme leisure, with marketing emphasizing its harsh environment, Bedouin inhabitants, and the climbers' need to conquer inhospitable summits. This analysis highlights the role of individual narratives in shaping perceptions of otherness and selfhood within tourism contexts.

Bott, E. (2013). New heights in climbing and tourism: Jordan’s Wadi Rum. Journal of Tourism and Cultural Change, 11(1-2), 21–34. https://doi.org/10.1080/14766825.2013.768253