Unravelling imaginative heritage.: Understanding a city through its crime fiction

This paper focuses on media tourism - people travelling to places associated with film, TV-series, games or other forms of popular culture. In order to investigate the roles and impacts of the multiple stakeholders that are involved in this booming phenomenon, the concept ‘imaginative heritage’ is introduced. In particular, we refer to the multitude of popular, fictional narratives that have been projected upon or appropriated by specific sites throughout time and that together make up an important part of local place identity. As is argued here, imaginative heritage results from an active involvement of not only locals, fans and tourists, but also the media industries, the tourism industries and the local governments. By applying this concept to cases of crime fiction tourism and addressing the power configurations behind these heritage and tourism practices, this paper aims to contribute to a more holistic understanding of media tourism and, more in particular, the reciprocal nature of the relation between popular crime fiction, heritage and place

Como ser un turista oscuro: Análisis del comportamiento del turista a través de una serie documental

Over the past few decades, dark tourism has become increasingly popular. The level of participation of the dark tourist within a dark site underlies the variety of experiences that can be produced, depending on the type of audience engagement. This study attempts to design the discourse of a performance-based typology of dark tourism, built on the rep-resentations of tourists’ participation within the Netflix documentary series Dark Tourist. As screen tourism can influence behavior patterns, a typology of spectator, spect-actor, and actor roles is presentedEn las últimas décadas, el turismo oscuro se ha vuelto cada vez más popular. El nivel de participación del turista dentro de un sitio oscuro subyace en la variedad de experiencias que se pueden producir, según el tipo de participación de la audiencia. Este estudio intenta dise-ñar el discurso de una tipología performativa del turismo oscuro, construida a partir de las representaciones de la participación de los turistas dentro de la serie documental de Netflix, Dark Tourist. Dado que el turismo de pantalla puede influir en los patrones de comporta-miento, se presenta una tipología de roles de espectador, actor-espectador y actor

Popular Culture Tourism: Conceptual Foundations and State of Play

Popular culture tourism encompasses a range of expressive practices that attract fans traveling to destinations associated with their fandom pursuit. However, scholarship on this multifaceted phenomenon is today over-fragmented and obscured by separate disciplinary agendas and priorities. We argue that the scope and breadth of popular culture tourism calls for its interdisciplinary treatment as a distinct field. Through a scoping literature review, this paper identifies the foundational elements of its conceptual and ontological roots, extracting key insights and discursive themes that can help establish a comprehensive perspective on the study and management of popular culture tourism. Our inquiry builds common ground that can shed light on the complexity of popular culture expressions and enable their strategic role as a destination placemaking tool. Thematic areas of convergence resulting in the emergent configuration of the field are delineated, and primary research questions for the comprehensive study of popular culture tourism are outlined.publishedVersio

Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism 2022

This open access book presents the proceedings of the International Federation for IT and Travel & Tourism (IFITT)’s 29th Annual International eTourism Conference, which assembles the latest research presented at the ENTER2022 conference, which will be held on January 11–14, 2022. The book provides an extensive overview of how information and communication technologies can be used to develop tourism and hospitality. It covers the latest research on various topics within the field, including augmented and virtual reality, website development, social media use, e-learning, big data, analytics, and recommendation systems. The readers will gain insights and ideas on how information and communication technologies can be used in tourism and hospitality. Academics working in the eTourism field, as well as students and practitioners, will find up-to-date information on the status of research

Travels from Winterfell to King’s Landing: The imaginary geographies of Game of Thrones and the creation of new transnational heritage landscapes through pop-culture

The fantasy series Game of Thrones (2011–2019) has become a global pop-cultural phenomenon with a reach far beyond the television screen. Through extensive on-location filming, the series has linked its diegetic world of Westeros and Essos to countless heritage sites across Northern Ireland, Croatia, Spain, Iceland, Malta and Morocco, overcoding them with their on-screen identities through narratives and special effects. Fictional locations such as ‘Winterfell’ or ‘King’s Landing’ have since become popular tourist destinations, leading to an emergence of countless tours, experiences, products, and destination marketing intended to sell the ‘authentic’ fantasy to those who are seeking these imaginary geographies. However, Game of Thrones’ manifestations across its filming locations go beyond tourist products but created a complex landscape of new spatial, visual, material, and performative signifiers. Re-framing and restaging scenes, dressing up and using fictional toponyms while documenting and sharing these performances through social media photography have territorialised the diegetic heritage of Game of Thrones onto the filming locations. These practices have created liminal spaces that share aspects of pilgrimage, heritage- and nation-building processes, and established a new transnational heritage space with its own transnational imagined community, habitus and ‘hyper-traditions’. Furthermore, these new diegetic heritage landscapes are affecting previously established global perceptions and local identities. The post-conflict contexts of Northern Ireland and Dubrovnik illustrate how asserting new narratives, even if they are entirely fictional, can both overcome and create dissonant heritage as well as resolve and evoke memory conflicts. A multi-sited visual ethnography has been undertaken across Game of Thrones’ filming locations in Northern Ireland (UK), Dalmatia (Croatia) and Andalusia (Spain) to examine not only how Game of Thrones specifically has impacted the filming locations but how modern mass-media, social media and pop-culture is affecting how heritage is created, used and engaged with in the 21st century

Tourism and heritage in the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone

Tourism and Heritage in the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone (CEZ) uses an ethnographic lens to explore the dissonances associated with the commodification of Chornobyl's heritage. The book considers the role of the guides as experience brokers, focusing on the synergy between tourists and guides in the performance of heritage interpretation. Banaszkiewicz proposes to perceive tour guides as important actors in the bottom-up construction of heritage discourse contributing to more inclusive and participatory approach to heritage management. Demonstrating that the CEZ has been going through a dynamic transformation into a mass tourism attraction, the book offers a critical reflection on heritagisation as a meaning-making process in which the resources of the past are interpreted, negotiated, and recognised as a valuable legacy. Applying the concepts of dissonant heritage to describe the heterogeneous character of the CEZ, the book broadens the interpretative scope of dark tourism which takes on a new dimension in the context of the war in Ukraine. Tourism and Heritage in the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone argues that post-disaster sites such as Chornobyl can teach us a great deal about the importance of preserving cultural and natural heritage for future generations. The book will be of interest to academics and students who are engaged in the study of heritage, tourism, memory, disasters and Eastern Europe

Authenticity and the Use of Multimedia at Cultural Tourist Attractions

Within the area of cultural attractions new developments in modern technologies have brought changes as to how culture and heritage are presented and interpreted. This has evoked debates whether such sites can still be regarded as authentic. While researchers have investigated these issues on a theoretical basis, the perception and experience of authenticity as well as the use of modern interpretative tools have been treated separately and still lack empirical investigation. Therefore, this study explores the perceptions and experiences of authenticity at cultural attractions where modern technologies are applied. The central research questions are: (1) How can the key concepts of authenticity, multimedia and experience of cultural attractions be brought into an integrated measurable model? (2) What are the determinants of an authentic attraction and an authentic experience? (3) What is the role of multimedia in the visitor experience of a cultural attraction? In order to provide answers to these research questions a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods was applied. In the first stage, focus-group discussions, expert interviews as well as a small scale quantitative study at “Ceol” – The Traditional Irish Music Centre were conducted. Based on these findings and a thorough literature review a Structural Equation Model was developed. This model incorporates visitor satisfaction, site specific attributes (including multimedia and perception of authenticity) and experiential aspects (i.e. experienced object-, personal-, and social authenticity). The model was tested using data from different sites in two different cities. These included The Guinness Storehouse in Dublin, a modern-type attraction in which multimedia constitutes an integral element of the experience, and the Sisi Museum in Vienna, an old established museum where audio-guides are offered. II The findings revealed that object- and personal authenticity proved to be important concepts. However, the role of experienced social authenticity needs further investigation. The results also show that technology does not undermine the authenticity of a site - many visitors prefer to experience an attraction without such tools and in addition the use of an audio-guide did not lead to a higher satisfaction with the site. The suggested model can be regarded as a promising basis for further modelling the visitor experience at cultural attractions

Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism 2022

This open access book presents the proceedings of the International Federation for IT and Travel & Tourism (IFITT)’s 29th Annual International eTourism Conference, which assembles the latest research presented at the ENTER2022 conference, which will be held on January 11–14, 2022. The book provides an extensive overview of how information and communication technologies can be used to develop tourism and hospitality. It covers the latest research on various topics within the field, including augmented and virtual reality, website development, social media use, e-learning, big data, analytics, and recommendation systems. The readers will gain insights and ideas on how information and communication technologies can be used in tourism and hospitality. Academics working in the eTourism field, as well as students and practitioners, will find up-to-date information on the status of research