Holiday travel offers the opportunity for self-definition and enhancement of social prestige. Due to the growing importance of self-expressive values within the ongoing course of individualisation, tourists increasingly make use of their travel experience to self-present in a positive way. Yet, tourism studies have not investigated what tourists actually want to communicate about themselves when representing their travel experience through the display of souvenirs. Using semi-structured qualitative interviews, this study examines touristic self-expression and exposes the self-concepts attached to and communicated through the display of souvenirs as material symbols of travel experience. Results show that tourists often have a clear intention to express positive self-messages when showing their souvenirs to others. Souvenirs are used to represent personal character traits, social affiliation to in-groups and neo-tribes, and to demonstrate individual travel history. This article adds to the discussion of individual ascription of meaning to the tourist experience and souvenirs, and gives an insight to the function of souvenirs for self-expression and social exchange.

假日旅行为自我定义和提高社会声望提供了机会。由于自我表达价值在个体化过程中的重要性日益提高，游客越来越多地利用自己的旅行经历以积极的方式自我呈现。然而，旅游业研究并未调查游客通过展示纪念品来代表自己的旅行经历时实际上想要传达哪些自我信息。本研究使用半结构化的定性访谈，考察了旅游者的自我表达方式，并揭示了作为展示旅行经历的重要象征的，通过纪念品展示而得以传播的自我概念。结果表明，游客向他人展示自己的纪念品时，通常有明确的意图表达积极的自我信息。纪念品用于代表个人性格特征，与群体内和新部落的社会联系，并展示个人的旅行历史。本文增加了对游客体验和纪念品的个人意义归属的讨论，并深入了解了纪念品对于自我表达和社会交流的功能。