A Touristic Trip Out of the World: Metaphor Analysis of Space Tourism

Abstract

The desire to explore space and the development of space technologies push many companies to work on space and building a life in space. Considering that space studies are quite costly, tourism can be a very important source of income to meet these costs. Space tourism is a type of tourism that is experienced by very few people because it is not yet expensive and widespread, but it is a type of tourism that more and more people want to experience day by day. The aim of this study is to determine the perceptions of potential tourists towards space tourism through metaphor method. In this context, potential tourists were asked through which metaphor they explain their perceptions of space tourism. In order to collect data, "Space tourism is like............. Because........." questionnaire form was used to collect data. The answers obtained from a total of 104 potential tourists were coded and categorized by taking into account the common features and justifications of these codes. These categories are: Learning, mystery, emotion, negative, new living spaces and fiction. After the coding and categorization of the participants' answers, the codes in the categories were visualized with the "WordArt" word cloud program.