Abstract

Through the analysis of qualitative interviews, this article describes the identity construction and experiences of the participants of a tourist experiment of a "reality village", a new form of holiday based on mechanisms similar to the reality show tv format. Whilst in a traditional tourist village the tourist buys entertainment in the form of sports and past-times, in the "reality village" the participant buys, above all, a televisual experience, and in this way experiments with a new form of management and sharing of the remembering and celebrating of their tourist experience. The article analyzes the parallels between this new form of tourism and the cultural form now known as reality tv, discussing the forms of the construction of identity of the persons/participants and, furthermore, it engages with the role of the restraints relative to the rights over one's own image. The efforts of one part of the public to appropriate the mechanisms of celebrity are suspended, in fact, on the threshold of the contractual obligations between producers and participants in the holiday.