Türkiye’de Turizmin McDonaldlaştırılması: Turistik Bir Ürün Olarak Paket Turlar (McDonaldization of Tourism in Turkey: The Package Tours As A Tourism Product)

Abstract

There is an increasing focus on the “McDonaldization” presented by George Ritzer as a concept was little known in the 90s when his book “The McDonaldization of the Society” was first published, but later the concept in 2000s attracted much attention. Ritzer, explains the social life within the framework of four principles; productivity, accountability, forecastability and inspection and later by adding a fifth one, that is, rationality of irrationality, based on Weber’s rationality concept. He argues that these four principles are the main determinants of all social interactions from bussiness life to family life, from consumption and to education. The purpose of the study is to examine the package tours, which are important tourist products within the tourism practices in Turkey, by using qualitative research methods in the context of Ritzer's four basic principles. In the study, it is concluded that the package tours provide a productive way of making holiday, they are calculable in terms of the importance of quantity rather than quality, they are predictable in planning the holidays to the finest details, and they have the feature of controlling to regulate both the time and the behavior of tourist. Another conclusion of the study is that package tours with these four rational principles lead also to irrational results such as rationalization of entertainment.