The ideal of authenticity can be characterized by either nostalgia or romanticism. It is nostalgic because it idealizes the ways of life in which people are supposed as freer, more innocent, more spontaneous, purer, and truer to themselves than usual (such ways of life are usually supposed to exist in the past or in childhood). People are nostalgic about these ways of life because they want to re- live them in the form of tourism at least temporally, empathically, and symbolically. It is also romantic because it accents the naturalness, sentiments,and feelings in response to the increasing self-constraints by reason and rationality in modernity. Therefore, as a contrast to the everyday roles, the tourist role is linked to the ideal of authenticity. Tourism is thus regarded as a simpler, freer, more spontaneous, more authentic, or less serious, less utilitarian, and romantic, lifestyle which enables people to keep a distance from, or transcend, daily lives. The examples include camping, picnicking, campfires, mountaineering, walk-about, wilderness solitude, or adventures. In these activities they do not literally concern themselves about the authenticity of toured objects at all. They are rather in search of their authentic selves with the aid of activities or toured objects.

"I am convinced that the spontaneous judgment of the public is always more authentic than the opinion of those who set themselves up to be judges of works of art."