The interview in tourism research

The aim of this chapter is to outline some of the ways that interviews can be used, and used well, in tourism research. This includes addressing strategic questions like ‘who to talk to?’ and ‘what to talk about?’ as well as employing some of the widely used techniques that make ‘talking to people’ a more productive research method. The interview is a method that responds well to addressing the earlier quantitative bias in tourism research. It is also good for addressing tourism within complex contemporary settings and is able to address the multiplicity of meanings, experiences, signs, influences, politics and, more generally, relations that are associated with tourism. The chapter will discuss some of the important characteristics of the interview method in tourism research. This includes talking to tourists, to hosts or local communities and to the widely variant tourism industry as well as the form of interview structure and its effect on research findings. The chapter will outline the differences between two key types of qualitative interviews – the semi-structured interview format and the unstructured ‘in-depth’ interview – as well as discuss the role and influence of technologies on the method in tourism research. Throughout this discussion, the chapter will draw upon examples from existing research, and draw extensively from a case study of a research project that involved interviews with the professionals associated with the development of a tourist precinct. Describing how the interview method unfolded in practice highlights the often unpredictable nature of interviews and the rich vein of knowledge this can assist to produce.