This article explores the extent to which three critical concepts in the sociology of tourism–‘authenticity’, ’sincerity’, and the ‘tourist gaze’–can assist in understanding both the tourist setting and tourist experience on the small Greek island of Symi. The article initially provides a content analysis of the ways in which the image of Symi as a tourist destination is signified in a sample of British tourist companies’ literature. Noting that authenticity, sincerity and the tourist gaze appear to be contextual, that is, negotiated in encounters between tourists and locals, it then provides an ethnographic analysis of selected contexts for such encounters, and argues that such analysis is the only way of interpreting them. On this basis, it questions whether the notions of authenticity, sincerity and the tourist gaze are of utility in analysing these encounters. It concludes that the notions of ‘tourist performance’ within a ‘social dialectics’ are more useful.
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