Visitor Attractions and Events

Locations and linkages

Adi Weidenfeld, Richard Butler, Allan M. Williams

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781138824713
• eBook ISBN: 9781317580249
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Hospitality, Travel & Tourism Industry
• Index: Business

Both visitor attractions and events play pivotal roles in the appeal of tourism destination regions to visitors by virtue of being the main motivator of tourist trips and determining consumers' choices. However, more recently visitor attractions have become more multifaceted, have proliferated and fragmented in terms of form, location, scale and style, and their role is undergoing major changes in a post-modern world as a result of consumer demands and competitive innovations.

Visitor Attractions and Events for the first time theoretically and empirically explores the relations between events and attractions to offer new thinking of the role of space and place in shaping development, management practices and strategies in the sector as well as future implications. The book reveals how location is pivotal in the development, planning, and management of visitor attractions and events. Whereas the location of natural attractions is relatively fixed in space and their locations cannot be predetermined or relocated, human-made or contrived attractions are more influenced by the planning process in the context of the locational decision-making process. Competition and cooperation between visitor attractions and the aspects which shape these relations, including complementarities, compatibility, knowledge spill overs and diffusion of innovations, product similarities and spatial proximity remain largely ignored in the visitor attraction sector and thus are major elements in the focus of this book. Comparative examples ranging from small to major attractions in a wide variety of locations are included.

This significant volume will appeal widely to all those interested in the visitor sector, such as tourism, events, leisure studies, destination management and sociology.

Part I
Introduction

The visitor attraction and event sectors

1
Introduction

Tourism is concerned with people travelling to and from destinations, and in most examples of academic research this is for leisure purposes (including enjoyment, relaxation, excitement, socialising and exercise). The destinations tourists visit are in themselves attractions, in the sense that such places draw or attract visitors, normally to see and experience particular features or ensembles of features, some of which may be uniquely found in specific locations. A destination is regarded by Buhalis and Cooper (1998:325) as ‘the raison d’être for tourism, providing an amalgam of tourism products such as facilities, attractions, and activities, which respond to the needs and wants of tourists’. Thus locations with the only, the largest, the smallest or the oldest examples of phenomena tend to become popular with visitors, although that is greatly influenced by the development of accessibility and the provision of necessary facilities and services for tourism. For example, Latvia has become a tourist destination in the last decade, with Riga, its capital city, the prime attraction for tourists to that country. The old town of Riga is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and has a number of impressive and visually appealing buildings within the boundaries of its historic walls. Each of these buildings is a minor attraction in its own right, and worth seeing, although, like the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland, probably not worth going to see on its own (Boswell, 1952). Rather it is the combination of so many heritage attractions in a small area that makes Riga an important tourism destination, allied with relatively recent substantial improvements in accessibility from international tourist markets resulting from budget airlines services, and the establishment of a considerable number of hotels offering good quality accommodation at prices below those prevalent in most western European capitals. Riga, therefore, illustrates the complexity of attractions in the tourism context; the need for a large enough set of individual attractions (or a truly unique or distinctive feature with massive drawing power), good mass transport facilities, a positive destination image, the provision of associated services such as accommodation and places of entertainment, and an atmosphere and image of security and hospitality. In short, attractions and events represent major elements in the tourism system, but are features that are dependent on other elements within that system to generate visitation and operate successfully.

Attractions and events come in a variety of forms and scales and, as Lew (1987) notes, much depends on the perceptions and tastes of tourists, with some attractions being seen as one of many attractions in a place, while others are destinations in their own right. In other words, some attractions appeal to visitors and residents because they are inextricably linked to a system of attractions, while others are the raison d’etre of a visit to that destination. They reflect not only the present but also the past tastes and preferences of tourists, because the latter have become articulated and locked into both images and investments in the built environment. Moreover, some are well known and popular at the international level while others will only be known and visited at the local level.

Law (2002) notes that, based on surveys of the relative importance of attractions in drawing visitors to a destination, attractions can be categorised as the sole reason for visiting a destination, one among a range of reasons, and/or one of (virtually) no importance in attracting visitors. Some serve roles as protectors of heritage while others pose threats to heritage, some remain highly popular for decades or longer, while others have short lives as viable economic enterprises. Above all, they are dynamic, reflecting and being modified to meet the changing tastes of tourists, the evolving nature of the destinations in which they are located, and structural changes in societies, as well as continually competing with other attractions for visitors.

This volume endeavours to portray this complexity by exploring the nature of attractions and events and the differences between them, how they affect their host destinations and how they are modified through redevelopment, competition, cooperation, knowledge transfer, innovation and interaction with other elements in their destinations and further afield. This introductory chapter begins with a discussion of what we understand by attractions and events, and their various forms and roles, in order to provide a context for the subsequent chapters, which are then briefly introduced.

Despite their importance in being akin to ‘the jewels in a crown’, that is, the features which draw tourists to a location, there has been comparatively less written on attractions and events compared to many other aspects of tourism in general (Watson and McCracken, 2002, Weidenfeld and Leask, 2013). Whether this is because their importance and contribution tend to be taken for granted, or because these sectors lack the sub-disciplinary focus that hospitality provides for the accommodation sector is not clear, but there are significant theoretical and empirical gaps in our understanding of attractions, gaps which this book seeks to address.

Recent research has made significant advances in addressing some of the gaps in the literature on attractions. Lew (1987) proposed a useful framework for research on visitor attractions involving three perspectives: ideographic, organisational and cognitive. Subsequently, Swarbrooke (2002) and Walsh-Heron (1990) focused on the nature of visitor attractions and events as businesses and related micro-management issues, such as marketing, human resources and design. A more recent volume by Fyall et al. (2008) added to our knowledge of the development of the sector and addressed specific topics, including marketing and aspects of different types of attractions. An even more current book on visitor attractions by Edelheim (2015) focuses on the nature of identity, memory, narrative and performance in the context of managing the tourist experience offered by visitor attractions. However, none of these books addresses issues related to working relations among visitor attractions and events in general, and between them and the destinations they are located within in particular. This volume takes a more geographical approach to studying visitor attractions and events by considering the spatial relationships amongst them, and with other businesses, in the context of their regional distribution and location.

Spatial relationships

Spatial relationships can be expressed by distance, topography, travel/walking distance, compactness, different spatial patterns of settlements and roadways, zoning, land-use and also in terms of their impact on the business environment. Spatial configuration (or organisation) of a tourism space such as destination regions refers to where attractions (as places) are situated. Every aspect that is influenced directly by spatial factors such as unique location within a certain environmental setting, proximity, clustering, relative distance and spatial organisation (or spatial pattern) can be regarded as a spatial relationship. There are ‘no rigid deterministic [spatial] relationships between a particular form of sector organization, inter-company relations, and a particular geography of the supply chain’ (Hudson, 2001:201), and even in networked just-in-time systems, component supplier companies can be situated in adjacent locations or literally on the other side of the world (Sadler, cited in Hudson, 2001).

This book views spatial relationships from a broader geographic angle, considering environmental and locational aspects as well as social relations between actors. Spatial relations affect mobilities, whether they are economic, cultural, political or environmental, in production and consumption spaces including the interrelated mobilities of goods, information, services and financial transactions (Shaw and Williams, 2004). Spatial relationships underlie planning tools, which influence strategic spatial planning such as for determining optimal locations. They are a key part of understanding relationships in the world economy (Venables, 2005) and are pivotal in economic geography, which is about ‘the geographical variation in what firms produce, how they produce it, their linkages with other firms, labour relations and access to finance’ (Sheppard, 2000:176).

In other industries production depends on material interchanges between spatially adjacent processes such as bulk chemicals and steel. In tourism, supply and demand sit together in the same locations, where the customers come to the suppliers and not vice versa. Therefore, as far as the production of tourism is concerned, the location is often an inextricable part of the tourism product (Bærenholdt and Haldrup, 2006). Tourism destinations are, in most cases, networked ubiquitous just-in-time systems, where suppliers operate simultaneously, e.g. transporting tourists to and within a destination and accommodating, catering and entertaining them, which makes spatial proximity between them essential. Thus, spatial relationships within and between tourism spaces, which form one of the foundations of tourism (McKercher and Lew, 2004), are given further attention in this volume.

Understanding attractions and events

Definitions

Part of the reason for the relative neglect of attractions and events centres on definitional difficulties, a problem which has longed affected tourism in its entirety (Butler, 2015). Finding a definition that is widely accepted throughout the academic literature has proved difficult as Leask (2010), Leask and Fyall (2006) and Swarbrooke (2002) have pointed out. This is in part because what may be viewed as a visitor or tourist attraction can take a wide variety of forms depending on context and viewpoint, while also being influenced by scale and size.

An ‘official’ definition of a visitor attraction is provided by VisitEngland (2013, 2015):

an attraction where it is feasible to charge admission for the sole purpose of sightseeing. The attraction must be a permanently established excursion destination, a primary purpose of which is to allow access for entertainment, interest, or education; rather than being primarily a retail outlet or a venue for sporting, theatrical, or film performances. It must be open to the public. . . attracting day visitors or tourists as well as local residents.

As Robinson notes (Chapter 13) there are good reasons for such a specific definition, including issues of quality control and commonality of purpose amongst members of an industry association, but in the context of tourism and leisure in general, some of the limitations of that definition present problems. While some aspects of the above description are appropriate, such as including a wide range of visitors from local residents and day visitors to tourists, other elements would appear to be misappropriate or too limited. To visitors to London or New York, retail stores such as Harrods in London and Macy’s in New York are truly significant attractions and very much part of the appeal of those cities respectively. Furthermore, in many cities leading museums and art galleries charge no admission fees, except for specific exhibitions, a situation which undoubtedly accounts for high visitor numbers in some circumstances (especially when there is bad weather!). The ‘permanent’ nature of an attraction is also a dubious element of a definition, given the socially constructed, as opposed to objective, nature of attractions. For example, Dismaland in Weston-super-Mare, in the UK, which opened for a limited period in 2015, was most certainly a visitor attraction, drawing over 150,000 people to the site (Harvey, 2015). However, it was never intended to be a permanent exhibition and has since been disassembled and the contents moved to Calais. Another problem with the above definition relates to a feature not being primarily a venue for sporting or theatrical performances. Sporting arenas such as Old Trafford (Manchester), Camp Nou (Barcelona) and Lords Cricket Ground in London (Cardwell and Ali, 2014) are now major visitor attractions even when games are not being played at the grounds concerned, as is the Olympic Games site in East London. Similarly the theatres on Broadway or in central London are major tourist and local attractions, contributing greatly to the visitor appeal of such cities. There is also a growing tendency for other types of tourism and non-tourism businesses to become visitor attractions to varying degrees. Some hotels, such as the Mirage and the Venetian hotels in Las Vegas, Nevada, in the US are visited by many tourists who are not staying guests at those hotels. Others may be a hybrid of a visitor attraction and another business, such as the Ice hotel in Jukkasjärvi, Sweden, which is both a provider of hotel services and a visitor attraction.

Finally, many attractions are free of charge for entry, certainly for visitors to see, and in many cases, to visit. Some of the great religious buildings of the world, military and other cemeteries, battlefield sites, and the historic parts of cities such as Bruges, Jerusalem, Venice and Hong Kong are open to visitors at no charge. Above all, many visitor attractions are natural features. This includes: beaches and geological structures: for example, the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland; the Grand Canyon in the US; living features such as the Great Barrier Reef in Australia and the wildlife of Africa; and water features including lakes (e.g. Titicaca, Como), waterfalls (e.g. Iguacu, Victoria, Niagara) and rivers (e.g. Amazon, Nile, Thames, Seine). While considerable cost may be involved in travelling to such features, they can be enjoyed free of charge on site, although additional elements and facilities or activities, for which fees are charged (such as boat trips, restaurants and sightseeing towers), often adorn or mar their vicinities. Some of these features are of such a size, in such locations or are locked into such complex relationships with their surroundings that management is limited if not impossible, and in many cases is related more to restrictions on development and visitor access and behaviour than to pro-active management of the feature itself.

Types of attractions

Given the challenges outlined above, it is tempting to define a visitor attraction in the widest and simplest terms as ‘a feature which draws visitors to it’, reflecting the enormous variety of features which are truly visitor attractions. The ownership and control of visitor attractions vary as widely as the type of feature involved; many are privately, and in some cases exclusively, owned and controlled, while others are public property with little or no control exerted on visitors or the feature. Some are managed and maintained by public bodies under direct government (at various levels) control, while others are managed and maintained by quasi-public bodies including National Park authorities and other conservation agencies such as the National Trust (UK) and similar organisations. Other charitable bodies operate many smaller and often more specialised attractions such as former residences of famous authors or painters. Yet other attractions are operated by single purpose organisations, sometimes family run and associated directly with the feature involved and not always operated as predominantly commercial enterprises. Many others are privately owned, including theme parks, and operate entirely as commercial enterprises, subject to the discipline of market forces, with little if any sentimentality and limited heritage considerations. The functions and roles of attractions are equally diverse and sometimes conflicting, including entertainment and amusement, heritage preservation, interpretation, education, physical activity and culture (Watson and McCracken, 2002). As tastes in the markets change, so too do expectations about the features and attributes offered at and by visitor...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Figures
• Tables
• Boxes
• Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• Part I Introduction The visitor attraction and event sectors
• Part II Economic and management aspects of the visitor attraction sector
• Part III Implications and trends in the visitor attraction sector
• Index