Books

Tourism in European Cities

The Visitor Experience of Architecture, Urban Spaces and City Attractions

The book considers the tourist experience and the various elements that shape it. It explores the relationship between tourist activity, on the one hand, and architecture and the built environment, on the other. Cities often turn to tourism in their efforts to enhance their competitiveness and therefore a proper understanding of the role of the built environment is essential for tourism professionals and academics. The book talks about the way cities are changing and the role tourism plays in these changes.

The book also discusses other important topics namely visitor attractions, city resources for tourism, walkability of cities, historic areas, iconic architecture and major events. The book is intended for use by students and academics of European universities that offer programmes in tourism studies or urban geography. It also will be of interest to students of urban planning and architecture, and anyone keen to learn more about tourism and European cities.

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Chapter Five:

City Resources for Tourism (2) – Visitor Attractions

Visitor attractions have a crucial role in the development and success of tourism destinations. There are several resources that must be present for a city to be effective as a tourism destination but it is visitor attractions that play the most vital role. This chapter helps understand the nature of attractions. It introduces the variety of visitor attractions and consider their varying role in different city destinations. The attraction could be a historic building, a monument, a museum, a church or an architectural icon among other things. It could also be an urban space such as a city square, a garden or a pleasant street

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Chapter Ten:

Architecture and Tourism

The chapter debates how architecture and the built environment provide the setting within tourism activity takes places. In particular it takes a look at how many cities across Europe have developed new museums with the intent of generating more tourism. Iconic architecture is often used by cities to enhance their attractiveness in the context of increased competition between cities.

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Tourism & Place

Understanding the Visitor Experience

Have you ever visited a place, thoroughly enjoyed it and then wondered what was it about the place that you liked? Did you ever reflect about your tourism experience? This is what 'Tourism and Place' is about. It debates the tourism experience and reflects on what makes for an interesting and enjoyable experience.

Tourism & Place is intended for the international market particularly for students and academics of tourism management and urban geography. It is also useful to practitioners working on tourism product development. It helps them understand better what the tourism experience involves and thus enables them to propose and implement improvements to the city’s tourism product.

The book is also of interest to people who like to travel.

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Chapter One

Introduction

The search for meaning is part of human nature and of daily life. This aspect of human behaviour extends to tourism since, for many tourists, the vacation is also a search for what is meaningful. Tourism & Place is about how visitors seek meaning from a place and the way that the seeking of meaning is relevant to their tourist experience. The book contends that the meanings associated with place can be broadly categorised into six types or ‘dimensions’. Namely: (i) History and narrative (ii) Local life and local identity (iii) Appreciation of human activity and achievements (iv) Aesthetics and visual significance (v) Spirituality and religion (vi) Appreciation of the natural world. This and more are explained in Chapter 1.

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The tourist experience of historic places

The traditional approach to tourism as a service has been replaced with increased focus on the tourism experience. This book considers the tourism experience of historic urban spaces from two distinct yet overlapping approaches, namely urban design and tourism studies. Broadly, the book is divided into three parts.

The first looks at the theory and explores what literature says about features and aspects of historic areas that are most influential to the experience of the visitor. The second part is a case study and presents research on the experiences of tourists in Valletta, a fortified historic city overlooking Malta’s Grand Harbour. The third part develops a model, based on the theory and on the case study, that helps explain how tourists experience historic spaces.

The book proposes a practical use of this model for the assessment of the tourism potential of an urban area.

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