| Abstract: | When individuals go on vacation they take on a temporary “vacation identity.” Vacationers use props, behaviors, and interactions with traveling companions to define and bound the experience as separate and different from everyday life. Data are drawn from twenty in‐depth interviews and participant observation with sixty international tourists in China during the summer of 2008. Vacationers' participation in rites and routines and impression management techniques helped them construct a personally meaningful, yet short‐lived identity. The results underscore the influence of others in identity construction and point to the importance of a nonpresent other in creating and presenting identities. |
