Consuming Heritage Places: Revisiting Established Assumptions

Abstract

This article poses a seemingly simple question, ‘How do tourists consume heritage places?’ The answers to this question are, however, more complex and yet underpin many of the decisions of policy-makers. Yet, the question is rarely posed by either academics or by policy-makers in either tourism or place management, largely because it is assumed that the answers are either well-known and even self-evident or are not relevant. The attention of place planners and managers is generally focused on the detailed marketing and management of tourism in heritage places rather than on the broader assumptions upon which it is inevitably based. The argument here is that these usually unexplored assumptions need to be questioned if problems are to be avoided, issues resolved and potentials realized. These assumptions have been grouped here into three broad categories. First, there are assumptions about the market for heritage, of which tourism is only one part; secondly, assumptions about the behaviour of the heritage tourist on holiday, and finally, assumptions about the relationship of the heritage tourist and the heritage place.

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