Historical Notes
Tourism is a relatively new social phenomenon that
has resulted from a number of recent historical developments,
including the advent of new transportation and communications
technologies, and increased leisure time and improved
living conditions throughout much of the world.
Modern “tourism” (as
we understand the term today) began in the first half
of the 18 th century as a pastime for young aristocrats
and English, French, and German intellectuals. These
privileged groups started to embark on voyages of discovery
and leisure through the Mediterranean countries, following
a standard itinerary known as the
Grand Tour.
This newfound interest in travel continued throughout
the 1800s and into the 20 th century, when additional
social classes also began to engage in travel for enjoyment.
With Roosevelt’s
signing of the New Deal in 1932 and Western Europe’s
reconstruction and economic growth following WWII, more
and more people had the time and money for leisure travel,
and this once elitist activity was transformed into mass
tourism.
The origins of industrial tourism
In order to understand the uniqueness
of cultural tourism, and in particular industrial tourism,
it is first necessary to reflect on the transformations
tourism has undergone during its relatively short history.
With
the advent of mass tourism, leisure travel was transformed
from a socially stratified activity into an international
industry enjoyed by the majority of the population. Once
tourism is understood in this way – as
an organized, standardized, repetitive, and even reductive
undertaking – it is possible to also view it as
an educational experience.
Recently, tourism has been
expanded to include new categories such as adventure,
cultural, ecological, wine and gastronomical, etc. The
increasing differentiation of the tourist industry poses
three main challenges:
- mechanisms for allowing ever-increasing types of consumers to have access to
their preferred pastimes
- the evolution of tourist sites
- management of tourist offerings.
The first two problems seem to be interrelated, since
changes in tourist offerings are closely related to the
evolution of demand.
The origins of “cultural tourism” – and
its subset, “industrial tourism” – began
in the 1980s, when a number of groups, including community
associations, non-profit foundations, private individuals,
and scholars began to recognize that they shared a common
set values and goals. Together, these disparate groups
came to be viewed and defined as a “cultural community,” and
began to raise awareness of the benefits of preserving
and promoting their common cultural heritage.
One event
in particular symbolizes the deep changes in the nature
of tourism that have recently occurred. In 1980, Olivetti
decided to sponsor a traveling exhibition of horses from
the Venetian Saint Marco Basilica (in addition to its
restoration project it was conducting). The extraordinary
success of the exhibition revealed that there was widespread
public demand for cultural appreciation events. The concept
of “cultural tourism” emerged from this experience.
The exhibition was made possible by new regulations adopted
during the last several decades that allowed for private
individuals’ entry into the cultural preservation
system. This change facilitated the organization of the
exhibition, and its use of traditional travel itineraries.
Since then, the concept of “cultural
assets” has
been extended to include new areas of society. Traditional conceptions of culture
were previously restricted to assets with historic, artistic or ecological importance.
Today, however, our conception of culture also includes assets that have material
importance. As a result, a large number of museums dedicated to the anthropological
aspects of culture have been created. During the 1990s, this new treatment of
the concept of cultural assets was extended to include examples of industrial
history.
As early as the 1980s, Italian intellectuals (influenced by the art historian
Eugene Batistes) began to draw on the experiences of 1950s Great Britain to discuss
a new concept known as “industrial
archeology”. They
used this term to refer to out-of-use industrial facilities that could be considered
testimonies to the Industrial Revolution. The first scientific surveys of these
facilities were conducted during this period and revealed that if the facilities
were not protected for their cultural importance, they ran the risk of being
destroyed. Luckily, by the end of the 1990s, the growing construction of corporate
museums began to draw attention to the ways in which industrial facilities could
become part of our cultural heritage. This synthesis resulted in the concept
of industrial tourism.
Tourist offerings have grown richer thanks to these new segments of cultural
tourism. Examples of industrial
archaeology are now placed side-by-side other
types of cultural and industrial assets and help provide an educational function.
The inclusion of corporate
archives and museums, manufacturing enterprises, banks,
insurance companies, chambers of commerce, transportation infrastructure, community
buildings, and “industrial villages” within the
cultural preservation system allow the different phases of industrial development
to be examined, and these sites are now considered essential to the promotion
and appreciation of the region’s cultural heritage.
In the past, there were
sometimes too few urban and exurban travel itineraries, tourist guides, and tour
operator training courses established to effectively promote industrial tourism.
Today, however, the field of industrial tourism has closely
linked the concept of tourist demand with the identification
of new tourist destinations. The systematic, integrated
management of tourist offerings will only be possible through
the definition and development of local tourist systems.
New travel itineraries will be able to develop the opportunities
offered by new industrial tourism destinations once they
are evaluated and included within a regional marketing
plan.
