Abstract
Anthropology of tourism represents a relatively new and dynamically developing sub-discipline and thematic field of socio-cultural anthropology. The pivotal research topics of anthropology of tourism are authenticity and tourism imaginaries.
The main objective of the paper is the theoretic analysis of particular approaches to studies of authenticity as they have been developed since the 1970s. Special attention is paid to the phenomenon of tourism imaginaries that have been the subject of anthropology of tourism since the 1990s.
Therefore, the paper includes typologies of these categories as well as further elaboration of the category of tourists' perspective including how it is made more accurate in theory and gradually differentiated. The paper presents the development of research terms and categories in a wider context of the development of anthropology of tourism and analyses of power relations that affect relations between guests and hosts.