Heritage trails are a unifying mechanism within the urban cultural tourism landscape and this article explores these tourism products against the principles of experience design suggested by Pine and Gilmore.1 Content analysis of trail brochures and leaflets incorporated both qualitative and quantitative dimensions in order to ascertain whether these are positioned as products or experiences. The results indicate that whilst trails utilize some of the approaches recommended by Pine and Gilmore,2 there is still considerable scope for improvement in terms of their positioning and presentational format, if they are to maximize their potential.
Trails and routes are increasingly ubiquitous features within the tourism landscape and although their role and usefulness as applied tourism products has been analysed, they remain undertheorized within the academic literature. This article addresses this gap by exploring the role of trails within the socio-cultural construction of space. In particular, the potential function of trails in creating themed, static spaces is analysed and the concept of museumisation is employed to further illustrate the capacity of trails to reconfigure spaces within specific cultural framings which may exclude local identity and yet are consumed by the unquestioning visitor. However, the article goes on to use more recent paradigms such as tourism's performance turn and the associated concept of embodiment to further explore the trail's potency in promoting a more engaged, multi-vocal and sensory experience of place. Using these contemporary approaches to the role of the tourist and the cultural construction of place, the article employs a range of examples to argue for the efficacy of trails as flexible, interpretive tools that allow a multiplicity of stories to be told and encourage visitors towards a more engaged interaction within the spaces through which they tour.
This paper explores the significance of trails within local government cultural strategies by presenting the results of an audit of 1000 trails, content analysis of local cultural strategies and a series of interviews with local government cultural officers. It highlights the growing sophistication of trails as flexible and multi-faceted products promising an array of social, environmental, cultural and economic benefits. However, key issues emerge as challenges for local government cultural officers. These include the need for a realistic assessment of the relative importance of competing rationales, the design of methodologies to enable evidence-based policy making and more effective engagement with commercial organisations.
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