Cultural sites, also known as ‘built’, ‘constructed’ or ‘human-made’ sites, are as or more diverse than their natural counterparts. Categories of convenience include pre- historical, historical, contemporary, economic activity, specialised recreational and retail. As with natural sites, these distinctions are often blurred when considering spe- cific attractions.
prehistorical
Prehistorical attractions, including rock paintings, rock etchings, middens, mounds and other sites associated with indigenous people, occur in many parts of Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United States and South Africa (Duval & Smith 2013).
Many of these attractions are affiliated with surviving indigenous groups, and issues of control, appropriation, proper interpretation and effective management against exces- sive visitation therefore all have contemporary relevance (Weaver 2010a). A distinct category of prehistorical sites is the megalithic sites associated with ‘lost’ cultures, which are attractive because of their mysterious origins as well as their impressive appearance. The New Age pilgrimage site of Stonehenge (United Kingdom) is a pri- mary example. Others include the giant carved heads of Easter Island and the Nazca rock carving lines of Peru.
historical
Historical sites are distinguished from prehistorical sites by their more definite associations with specific civilisations or eras that fall under the scope of ‘recorded his- tory’. As with ‘heritage’, there is no single or universal criterion that determines when a contemporary artefact becomes ‘historical’. Usually this is a matter of consensus within a local community or among scholars, the assessment of a particular individual, or simply a promotional tactic. Historical sites can be divided into many subcategories, and only a few of the more prominent of these are outlined below.
Monuments and structures
Ancient monuments and structures that have attained prominence as attractions within their respective countries include the pyramids of Egypt, the Colosseum in Rome and the Parthenon in Athens. More recent examples include Angkor Wat (Angkor, Cambodia), the Eiffel Tower (Paris, France), the Statue of Liberty (New York, USA), the Taj Mahal (Agra, India), the Kremlin (Moscow, Russia), Mount Rushmore (South Dakota, USA) and the UK’s Tower of London. Sydney’s Harbour Bridge and Opera House also fall in this category. Beyond these marquee attractions, generic structures that have evolved into attractions include the numerous castles of Europe, the Hindu temples of India and the colonial-era sugar mills of the Caribbean.
Battlefields
Battlefields are among the most popular of all tourist attractions, which demonstrates, ironically, that the long-term impacts of major wars on tourism are often very positive (Butler & Suntikul 2012). Battle sites such as Thermopylae (fought in 480 BC between the Spartans and Persians), Hastings (fought in 1066 between the Anglo-Saxons and Normans) and Waterloo (fought in 1815 between the French and British/Prussians) are still extremely popular centuries after their occurrence. The emergence of more recent battlefields (such as Gallipoli and the American Civil War site at Gettysburg) as even higher profile attractions is due to several factors, including:
• the accurate identification and marking of specific sites and events throughout the battlefields, which is possible because of the degree to which modern battles are documented
• sophisticated levels of interpretation made available to visitors
• attractive park-like settings
• the stature of certain battlefields as ‘sacred’ sites or events that changed history (e.g.
Gettysburg as the ‘turning point of the American Civil War’ and Gallipoli as a cata- lyst in the forging of an Australian national identity)
• personal connections — many current visitors have great-grandparents or other ancestors who fought in these battles. Indeed, World War Two battles such as D-Day (the day in 1944 when Allied forces landed in France), Stalingrad (the high water mark of Germany’s Russian invasion) and the Kokoda Track campaign in Papua New Guinea are still being attended by surviving veterans.
Other war- or military-related sites that frequently evolve into tourist attractions include military cemeteries, fortresses and barracks (e.g. the Hyde Park Barracks in Sydney), and defensive walls (e.g. the Great Wall of China and Hadrian’s Wall in England). The Great Wall attracts an estimated 10 million mostly domestic tourists per year (Su & Wall 2012). Battlefields and other military sites are an example of a particularly fascinating phenomenon known as dark tourism, which encompasses sites and events that become attractive to some tourists because of their associations with death, conflict or suffering (Dale & Robinson 2011). Other examples include
assassination sites (e.g. for John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King), locations of mass killings (e.g. Port Arthur (Tasmania), the World Trade Center site, and Holocaust concentration camps) and places associated with the supernatural and occult (e.g.
Dracula’s castle in Transylvania, and ‘haunted houses’). Holocaust sites are particularly intriguing because of the extent to which these have been developed as major tourist attractions not just in the Eastern European places where the Holocaust occurred (Podoshen & Hunt 2011), but also as ‘Holocaust museums’ in many cities around the world with no direct association to those events (Cohen 2011).
Heritage districts and landscapes
In many cities, historical districts are preserved and managed as tourism-related areas that combine attractions (e.g. restored historical buildings) and services (e.g. accommodation, restaurants, shops). Preserved walled cities such as Rothenburg (Germany), York (England), the Forbidden City (Beijing) and the Old Town district of Prague (Czech Republic) fall into this category, as does the French Quarter of New Orleans, USA. The Millers Point precinct of downtown Sydney is one of the best Australian examples, with its mixture of maritime-related historical buildings, small hotels, public open space, theatres and residential areas. Rural heritage landscapes are not as well known or as well protected. An Australian example is the German cultural landscape of the Barossa Valley in South Australia. Other rural regions, such as Australia’s Outback and the southern provinces of China, are developing heritage tourism industries that focus on the traditions and lifestyles of indigenous residents who still live there and often constitute the majority population. Such destinations usually generate controversy and raise questions as to the place and status of these people in their respective countries (see Contemporary issue: Experiencing a different China in Yunnan Province).
eXPeRIeNCINg A DIFFeReNT CHINA IN YUNNAN PROVINCe
The culture of indigenous people in southern China has become a major attraction for domestic as well as international tourists, and this exposure has had profound implications for the affected ethnic groups. This is illustrated by the World Heritage-listed town of Lijiang in Yunnan Province (Zhu 2012).
Dominated by the Naxi people, Lijiang is a tourism ‘hotspot’ that in 2009 attracted 7.6 million visitors to its ethnic performances and heritage sites. Tourists are drawn to ‘traditional’ cultural displays, the ‘authenticity’ of which is seemingly confirmed by the use of old male Naxi musicians in traditional costumes playing ancient-style instruments. A rustic stage setting completes the timeless effect. Such performances, however, are carefully choreographed illusions with substantial Han Chinese influence. Developed deliberately over a long period to meet the expectations of mainly Western audiences, the highly commercialised theatrical performances are strongly supported by government because ethnic minorities who preserve and
celebrate their ‘own’ culture are seen to be thriving under the embrace of the Socialist Motherland. To this extent, ethnic tourism in Lijiang and elsewhere is a projection of China’s soft power, especially to international audiences. For the Naxi, benefits do derive from an improved material standard of living and from opportunities to preserve some aspects of their traditional culture. However, associated costs include the reinforcement of stereotypes, with some performances emphasising a happy-go-lucky and simple lifestyle dominated by drinking and singing. Also disconcerting has been the influx of Han Chinese migrants to meet the demands of the tourism industry as Lijiang is increasingly integrated through tourism into the national economy. The mobilisation of tourism to achieve higher levels of ethnic autonomy and empowerment, as is evident in some parts of Australia and New Zealand (Weaver 2010a), has not yet occurred in southern China.
Museums
Unlike battlefields, museums are not site specific, and almost any community can augment their tourism resource inventory by assembling and presenting collections of locally significant artefacts. Museums can range in scale from high-profile, internationally known institutions such as the British Museum in London and the Smithsonian complex in Washington DC, to lesser known city sites such as the National Wool Museum in Geelong, Victoria, and small community museums in regional towns such as Gympie in Queensland. That museums differ widely in the way that items are selected, displayed and interpreted is an aspect of these attractions that has important implications for their market segmentation and marketing. Recent trends include the movement towards ‘hands-on’ interactive interpretation as a way of accommodating a new and more demanding generation of leisure visitors (Kotler, Kotler & Kotler 2008).
contemporary
Most contemporary attractions have some historical component, and it is even becoming increasingly common to describe phenomena from the latter half of the twentieth century as contemporary heritage, which further blurs the boundaries between past and present. To this category can be added the few remaining motels in North America and elsewhere built during the 1950s and 1960s in the futuristic
‘Googie’ style of architecture, which are the objective of much interest on the part of preservationists and historians of modernism (Hastings 2007) (see the case study at the end of this chapter). Ethnic neighbourhoods and gastronomic experi- ences, similarly, embody at least some history/heritage element as part of their attrac- tiveness, but still situate comfortably as contemporary phenomena for classification purposes.
Ethnic neighbourhoods
Large cities in Australia, Canada, the United States and Western Europe are becoming increasingly diverse as a result of contemporary international migration patterns. This has led to the emergence of neighbourhoods associated with particular ethnic groups and their reinforcement through explicit or implicit policies of multiculturalism (Collins & Jordan 2009). For many years such areas were alienated from the broader urban community, but now the Chinatowns of San Francisco, Sydney, Vancouver, New York and Toronto — to name just a few — have evolved into high-profile tourist
districts. This trend has been assisted by the placement of Chinese language street signs and the approval of Asian-style outdoor markets and other culturally specific features, such as gateway arches. The effect is to provide tourists (as well as local residents) with an experience of the exotic, without having to travel far afield. A sur- prising development has been the transformation of ghetto neighbourhoods such as Soweto, South Africa, into destinations that are attractive to white visitors whose negative images of such vibrant places are subsequently challenged (Booyens 2010, Frenzel, Koens & Steinbrink 2012).
Food and drink
While taken for granted as a necessary consumable in any tourism experience, food is increasingly becoming an attraction in its own right, as illustrated by the experi- ence of all the ethnic urban neighbourhoods mentioned above and numerous other destinations (Hall & Gossling 2012). In places such as Singapore, culinary tourism is encouraged not just to compensate for the lack of iconic attractions but also to rein- force the country’s desired image of harmonious multiculturalism (Henderson 2004).
For any place, food and drink are means by which the tourist can literally consume the destination, and if the experience is memorable, it can be exceptionally effective at inducing the highly desired outcomes of repeat visitation and favourable word-of- mouth promotion. Increasingly prevalent are strategies to feature distinctive local food and drink, thereby emphasising the destination’s unique sense of place while simul- taneously encouraging economic, cultural and environmental sustainability (Hall &
Gossling 2012).
A particularly well-articulated form of culinary tourism in some destinations is wine tourism (Croce & Perri 2010). Scenic winescapes are the focus of tourism activity in well-established locations such as the Napa Valley of California, the Hunter Valley of New South Wales, the Clare and Barossa Valleys of South Australia, the Margaret River region of Western Australia and in emerging locations such as Canada’s Niagara Peninsula (Bruwer & Lesschaeve 2012). The more established regions have all ben- efited from a pattern of producing reliably high quality wines, a strong and positive market image, well-managed cellar door operations, and exurban locations. However, while tourism seems to be highly compatible with the wine industry, attendant chal- lenges include:
• internal competition among producers that impedes collective marketing and management
• increasing competition from new regions that diverts visitors and dissuades repeat visitation
• difficulties in concurrently managing the tourism and production aspects of business
• increased urbanisation and exurbanisation that reduce the winescape’s aesthetic appeal and relaxed lifestyle.
economic activity
‘Living’ economic activities such as mining, agriculture and manufacturing are often taken for granted by the local community, and particularly by the labour force engaged in those livelihoods. However, these activities can also provide a fascinating and un usual experience for those who use the associated products but are divorced from their actual production. At a deeper level, the widespread separation of modern society from the processes of production in the postindustrial era, and the subsequent desire
to participate at least indirectly in such activities, may help to explain the growing popularity of factory, mine and farm tours.
Canals and railways
Recreational canals and railways provide excellent examples of functional adaptation (the use of a structure for a purpose other than its original intent). As with factory, mine and farm tours, such adaptations are associated with the movement from an industrial to a postindustrial society, in which many canals and railways are now more valuable as sites for recreation and tourism than as a means of bulk transportation for industrial goods — their original intent. England is an area where pleasure-boating on canals is especially important, as the Industrial Revolution left behind a legacy of thousands of kilometres of now defunct canals, which have proven ideal for accom- modating small pleasure craft (Fallon 2012). A similar phenomenon is apparent in North American locations such as the Trent and Rideau Canals (Ontario, Canada) and the Erie Canal in New York State.
specialised recreational attractions (sras)
Of all categories of tourist attraction, specialised recreational attractions (SRAs) are unique because they are constructed specifically to meet the demands of the tourism and recreation markets. With the exception of ski lifts and several other products that require specific environments, SRAs are also among the attractions least constrained by context and location. Their establishment, in other words, does not usually depend on particular physical conditions. SRAs are in addition the attraction type most clearly related to the tourism industry, since they mostly consist of privately owned businesses (the linear SRAs discussed below are one exception).
Golf courses
Golf courses are an important SRA subcategory for several reasons, including:
• the recent proliferation of golf facilities worldwide (more than 30 000 by the early 2000s)
• the relatively large amount of space that they occupy both individually and collectively
• their association with residential housing developments and integrated resorts
• their controversial environmental impacts, especially in water-scarce destinations such as Cyprus (Boukas, Boustras & Sinka 2012)
• their status as major event venues (e.g. golf tournaments, wedding receptions).
In addition, high concentrations of golf activity, in areas such as Palm Springs, California, and Orlando, Florida, have led to the appearance of golfscapes, or land- scapes where golf courses and affiliated developments are a dominant land use. The Gold Coast is the best Australian example of a golfscape, with some 30 courses avail- able within council boundaries, and others approved but not (yet) constructed.
Casinos
For many years, casinos were synonymous with Monte Carlo, Las Vegas and few other locations. However, casinos have proliferated well beyond these traditional strong- holds as governments have become more aware of, and dependent on gaming-based revenues. Casinos are now a common sight on North American Indian Reserves, in central cities (e.g. Melbourne’s Crown Casino and Brisbane’s Treasury Casino), and as Mississippi River-style gambling boats in the American South and Midwest. One resultant economic implication of this proliferation is the dilution of potential markets.
An interesting development is the transformation of Macau, China into the Chinese version of Las Vegas (Wan & Li 2013). Increasing competition has prompted the Las Vegas tourism industry to erect ever larger and more fantastic themed casino hotels (e.g. Excalibur, Luxor and MGM Grand) which increasingly blur the distinction between accommodation and attraction. The concurrent development of fine dining opportunities is an additional attempt to attract new visitor segments. Though ideally intended to attract external revenue, casinos such as Jupiters Casino on the Gold Coast are also attractive to local residents, and their presence is often therefore controversial due to the possibility of negative social impacts (see chapter 9).
Theme parks
Theme parks are large-scale, topical and mostly exurban SRAs that contain numerous subattractions (e.g. rides, shows, exhibits, events) intended to provide family groups with an all-inclusive, all-day or multi-day recreational experience. The Disney-related sites (e.g. Disneyland at Anaheim, California; DisneyWorld at Orlando, Florida; and Disneyland Paris) are the best known international examples, while the Gold Coast theme parks (e.g. Dreamworld, Sea World and Warner Bros. Movie World) are the best known Australian examples. Theme parks provide a good illustration of social engineering in that they purport to offer thrilling and spontaneous experiences, yet in reality are hyper-regulated and orchestrated environments that maximise opportunities for retail expenditure by visitors (Rojek 1993). It is largely for this same gap between perception and reality that many of the indigenous villages in China’s Yunnan Province have been described as ‘ethnic theme parks’ (Yang 2010).
Scenic highways, bikeways and hiking trails
Linear recreational attractions are sometimes the result of functional adaptation, as for example canals (see above) and bicycle and walking trails that are constructed on the foundations of abandoned railway lines. The Rails to Trails Conservancy is a US-based organisation that specialises in such conversions. In other cases linear SRAs are custom built to meet specific recreational and tourism needs. The Blue Ridge Parkway and Natchez Trace are US examples of custom-built scenic roadways, while the Appa- lachian Trail is a well-known example of a specialised long-distance walking track (Littlefield & Siudzinski 2012). A variation of the road theme is the multipurpose highway that is designated, and modified accordingly, as a scenic route. A nostalgia- focused US example that illustrates the concept of contemporary heritage is the old Route 66 from Chicago to Los Angeles, which was the main way of travelling from the north-eastern United States to California in the 1950s (Caton & Santos 2007).
Australian examples include Victoria’s Great Ocean Road and the Birdsville Track from Marree (SA) to Birdsville (Qld).
Ski resorts
More than most SRAs, ski resort viability is dependent on the availability of spe- cific climatic and topographical conditions, although the invention of affordable snow-making technology greatly facilitated the spread of the industry into regions otherwise unsuitable. Famous ski resorts such as Vail and Aspen (Colorado, USA), Zermatt and St. Moritz (Switzerland) and Whistler (Canada) attest to the transfor- mation of formerly remote and undesirable alpine locales into popular pleasure periphery destinations. A process of consolidation, however, is now evident, with the number of ski areas in the United States declining from 745 to 509 between 1975 and 2000 (Clifford 2002). Concurrently, the average size of resorts has increased and