Tourism is one of the largest industries in the world, a central element and an important social power in modern societies, with broad economic, cultural and international significance. Smith (1989: 1) gives the following definition of a tourist: ''...in general, a tourist is a temporarily loved one who voluntarily visits a place far from home for the purpose of experiencing a change.'' As pointed out in Reader 1, one of the characteristics of the social practices described as "tourism", states Urry (1990), is that: ''It is a recreational activity that presupposes its opposite, regulated and organized work. This separation between work and leisure is a characteristic of modern society. Being a tourist is the essential characteristic of being modern.''In its course, the nature of tourism has gone through many transformations to get to what it is today. Over the last century and a half, mass tourism has spread widely across North America and Europe, undergoing historical changes and developments. A significant feature of modern-day experiences is that of being a tourist. Travel marks a person's status and is considered essential to their life and especially their health. As pointed out in Reader 1, Urry (1990): “If people don't travel, they lose status: travel is a marker of status. It is a crucial element of modern life to feel that travel and vacations are necessary. “I need a vacation” is the safest reflection of a modern discourse based on the idea that people's physical and mental health will be restored if they can only “get away” from time to time. ''Before the 19th century only a limited number of people from the lower classes traveled only for pleasure and without any connection to their work. This does not mean t…… middle of paper…… linked to commodification, signage and consumerism. While modern tourism is focused on the representation of signs connected to real sites, postmodern tourism is characterized by the simulation of signs, which have no connection with reality but with the tourist's interpretation of what is real and what is not it is. By analyzing tourism in the light of both modernism and postmodernism, we can delve deeper into all aspects of tourism, as an economic and cultural practice. As Osborne has argued (in Bonami and Widholm et al., 2005: 107), “it has become commonplace to assume that while modernity is about new forms of experiencing time, “postmodernity” marks a revolution in spatial relations. But this is too simple. The two dimensions are inextricably linked to each other. Changes in the experience of space always imply changes in the experience of time and vice versa.’’