Madonna,Glamour and Politics: Nation Branding and Pop Concerts in the Promotion of Montenegro as an Elite Tourist Destination

Tourism is a strategically important industry for Montenegro, which especially since the restoration of its statehood in 2006, is utilized by the governing structures to enhance the country's economy and symbolic representation. Tourism also serves as a vehicle to depart from the socialist past, as a significant effort and money are invested in rebranding Montenegro as a Mediterranean tourist destination offering natural beauty, coastal folklore and “spectacular” entertainment and pop culture events. This article focuses on music events contributing to the development of “pop/rock tourism”. In the past few years, Montenegro has staged performances by some of today's biggest music stars and thus tries to boost Montenegro's image as an attractive and, above all, exclusive tourist destination in the Mediterranean. Their organization has been supported by the current political and economic elite with an aim to produce a prominent commercial effect but also to refurbish the state image on the international tourist market.     

Post‐conflict Heritage and Tourism in Cambodia: The Burden of Angkor

The World Heritage Site of Angkor is enduring one of the most crucial, turbulent periods in its 1200‐year history. Since the early 1990s over 20 countries have contributed millions of dollars to help safeguard and restore its temples. As one of Southeast Asia’s premier destinations, Angkor has also seen a 10,000% growth in international tourist arrivals in just over a decade. The challenges arising from the intense convergence of these two paradoxical and unstable agendas—heritage conservation and tourism development—are greatly compounded by Cambodia’s need to recover from war and turmoil. This paper explores the critical trends that have surfaced at Angkor and why the challenges posed by surging tourism have been inadequately addressed. It argues Angkor’s dominant role within Cambodia’s post‐conflict heritage and tourism industries requires closer, more critical attention given recent events in the country. This article is the summary of Winter's book Post‐conflict Heritage, Post‐colonial Tourism (Routledge 2007).     

Communism,Heritage and Tourism in East Asia

This study examines the linkages which connect Communism, heritage and tourism with reference to selected East Asian states which are governed by Communist regimes or have recent experience of Communist rule. Aspects of the heritage of Communism are seen to be of interest to tourists, but related visitor attractions also have a wider social and political significance and illustrate how tourism can be employed as a hegemonic tool and propaganda vehicle. Heritage, including that of Communism itself, thus serves as economic, social and political capital within a Communist context where the defining characteristics of government give rise to a distinctive relationship between political systems, heritage and tourism.     

Tourism and Tragedy: The Memorial at Belzec,Poland

In 1942, within in a period of 10 months, 500,000 people were systematically murdered in a specially built death camp at Belzec, Poland. When it had served its purpose the Nazis demolished it, and to hide its existence, grassed the site over, allowing the atrocities performed there to remain virtually hidden from public view for over 60 years. In 2004 an important new Holocaust memorial, covering the whole death camp area, was opened. Visually striking, this conceptual art/architectural artwork affectively elicits strong visitor responses. I explore ways in which the materiality of the reconfigured site makes the invisibility of such horror and collective loss paramount. My interpretation and visual analysis shows how ‘memory work’ can operate through viewer experience. This paper locates Belzec within its historical context and includes a related discussion about Polish–Jewish relationships up to the present. As a significant heritage site, Belzec’s new role in Polish Holocaust tourism is examined.     

Tourism in Ethnic Communities: Two Miao Villages in China

The paper is concerned with the ways in which ethnic culture is presented and experienced by tourists with particular reference to two villages in China inhabited by members of the Miao minority group and popular with visitors. The study is based on qualitative and quantitative data derived from primary and secondary sources and findings reveal contrasts and similarities within and between destination residents and visitors regarding attitudes to tourism and its cultural impacts, especially in terms of authenticity. While the cases display unique features, their analysis affords more general insights into the characteristics of this particular form of heritage tourism and its consequences.     

JFK and dark tourism: A fascination with assassination

Abstract

This paper sets out to explore the phenomenon that the authors have entitled Dark Tourism and to analyse evidence of its existence in the context of sites associated with the life and death of the former US President, John F. Kennedy (JFK). These sites present front‐line staff, curators, and development bodies with dilemmas concerning legitimacy of presentation/representation and lead to questions about the, often cited, educational mission, of such attractions. The media has had a central role in the development of this phenomenon and documentation and illustration via news and film has been central to much of the interpretation of JFK and the Kennedys. This paper considers media fascination with this subject and examines exploitation of this interest at three, contrasting sites.     

Dracula's castle in Transylvania: Conflicting heritage marketing strategies

Abstract

Transylvania, situated beneath the Carpathian mountains, is one of the travel frontiers of Europe and the most romantic province of Romania. To most of its visitors, Transylvania is associated with haunted castles and vampires, thanks to the literary character Dracula. Even though Bran Castle appears to form the perfect home for a vampire count, this heritage destination is surrounded by debate because of the conflicting marketing strategies adopted by various organisations for the specific purpose of increasing the profits made from tourism. This paper explores issues of marketing, policies for interpretation and the understanding of heritage sites within a formerly socialist society in transition to a market economy. It analyses potential promotional, advertising and interpretive strategies which could be applied to Bran Castle, and offers solutions to produce a better understanding of the role of heritage tourism in a transitional economy.     

Museums as Leisure

Museums are shifting from a focus upon education alone towards an accommodation of leisure markets. The authors do not consider these concepts of education and leisure, often presented as oppositional, to be irreconcilable within museum practice. Nevertheless, it is apparent that museum practice is changing, in part as a response to the pressures and opportunities of becoming assimilated into leisure markets, predominantly, but not only, as touristic attractions and often as key resources in local economic development. Stakeholders such as users, citizens or governments appear to be unconcerned about these changes in emphasis, whilst some within professional museum practice (also stakeholders) do not wholeheartedly welcome the moves. The authors argue that, historically, museums have been attributed a role in 'entertaining' users and that, in part at least, this was accepted by practitioners where the primary orientation was acquisition and conservation within the project of modernity. In such circumstances, the consumption of museum services was seen as mainly for academic, or educational, utility. More recently, consumption of museums shows evidence of being at least equally associated with meaning as well as utility, i.e. that exhibitions contribute to the assembly of particular lifestyles associated with touristic behaviour.     

Ethnic Heritage as a Tourist Attraction: the Peranakans of Singapore

Singapore's multiculturalism is an important theme in the country's destination marketing and the paper explores the manner in which ethnicity is depicted in promotional material and the forces shaping the decision-making process. The nature of Peranakan culture, a unique synthesis of Chinese and Malay influences, is the subject of particular discussion and its actual and potential role as a tourism resource is analysed. State authorities are seen to exercise considerable power, making use of tourism images to reinforce political ideologies through the communication of messages about preferred versions of identities. However, tourism representations also convey something of the complex realities of identity in Singapore and perhaps can assist in increasing awareness of, and protecting, the cultural heritage of more marginalised groups. Insights are thus offered into the relationship between tourism and ethnic heritage in plural societies and its management.     

Large Heritage Waterfronts on Small Tourist Islands: the case of the Royal Naval Dockyard,Bermuda

The paper examines the historical and present-day role of the Royal Naval Dockyard, a globally motivated waterfront development of recurrent local dominance in the affairs of a small island community. Its historical role as a bastion of imperial naval defence, the Gibraltar of the West, is reviewed from the Victorian era until 1945; and its recent and continuing revitalisation, as heritage for tourist-leisure adaptive reuse, is discussed and illustrated. Its relationship to naval/waterfront heritage-oriented innovation elsewhere is considered; and the risks of such developments for the identity and tourist-historic economy of this and possibly other (ex)colonial naval outposts are queried.