The complex relationship between tourism and live music performances has received its share of light in past works on tourism and music. But while these works have been inspired by music spectacles, festivals or sacred religious rituals, many local forms of entertainment in the tourist and especially the hotel industry have gone unnoticed.The aim of this study is to focus on the tourists', singer-musicians', and hotel managers' experiences with live music performances and popular music in the hotel industry. Thus, to encourage dialogue between popular music and social science studies, and to show that by observing these different informants performance rituals, interactions and attitudes towards  travel, live music performances and popular music in the hotel industry, we could offer insightful guidelines to better understand the cultural significance of live music performances, often produced by a complex nexus of social, cultural, economic and political factors.

In this  study about the sacred (extraordinary) and profane (ordinary) experiences  with travel, live music performances and popular music, the research will  be  able to shed light on the full meanings of the tourist experiences in the hotel industry in Sharm EL Sheikh. In other words, by exploring the flow, musical worlds, music production, the politics of travel and songs, local identities, mobility and the distinct contexts of space, global tourism, modernization, world-system and dependency theories, as well as other themes such as the imagined community and cultural memory, I will be able to interpret the hosts and guests sacred and profane experiences in the hotel industry. Most importantly, as this research will  be using a multi-sited ethnographic approach, it will  draw special attention to the political environments of travel, live music performances and popular music in the hotel industry. While  on the one hand, these politics produce feelings of emancipation, solidarity, and exchange of knowledge in the world of arts and music production, on the other, they can also result in feelings of oppression and power and class struggles among the different groups of hosts and guests. While Cohen (2002) asks, what can live music performances and popular music tell us about cities? The purpose of this research is to ask what does the hotel industry tell us about live music performances and popular music?

Keywords: Hotel industry, Popular music, Performance, Space