HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHIES OF TOURISM AND HERITAGE

This chapter examines the role of historical geography in understanding the development of certain elements of tourism, particularly cultural heritage-based tourism. It includes discussions of the main thrusts of historical geographys contribution to understanding tourism, particularly in the realm of heritage tourism. It reviews how historical geography defines, dissects, and analyses heritage-based tourism. To do this, the chapter examines three primary relationships between historical geography, heritage and tourism. First it analyses the crossovers between tourism and landscape, arguing that cultural landscapes can be seen as significant heritage tourism commodities. Likewise, and through the same processes, tourism functions as a modifier of cultural landscapes as places evolve through a life cycle of discovery to full-out tourist destination. The same section also considers how tourism itself is a heritage landscape that continues to regenerate itself as tourism grows and feeds off itself through time. Secondly, the chapter examines human mobilities in considerable depth, arguing that tourism is a significant manifestation of human mobility and that other mobilities often disregarded by tourism scholars have may overlapping characteristics with tourism and should not be entirely discounted or analysed separately from tourism because of their shared features. Finally, the chapter provides an understanding of pilgrimage and religious tourism as salient manifestations of historical geographies and heritage tourism, highlighting the evolution of ancient pilgrimages into more hedonic experiences that resemble more traditional manifestations of tourism. In short, the chapter focuses on how the past (heritage) and its tourisms are interpreted and understood through the lens of historical geographies.