Transformations in Destination Texture: Curry and Bollywood Romance in the Swiss Alps

This article takes heterogeographical approaches to understand Bollywood-induced destination transformations in Switzerland. Positioned within the theoretical field of mediatized mobility, the study contextualizes Bollywood-induced tourism in Europe the concept of texture. Textural analysis (based on Lefebvre’s trialectics of space) combines the analysis of material performances and communicative representations converging in the production/consumption of tourism spaces. The article contributes threefold. First, it reviews the phenomenon of nonwestern popular cultural tourism through the theoretical lens of mediatized mobility. Second, the article offers methodological reflections on textural analysis and strategies to capture the entanglements of popular cultural representations and performances simultaneously. Third, through an analytical deconstruction of Bollywood’s imaginaries and disruptive new tourism practices in Switzerland, it discusses the placemaking potentials and challenges of concurrent narratives in cosmopolitan tourism destinations.