Tourism, conflict and contested heritage in former Yugoslavia

Abstract

Although, historically, there have always been travellers crossing the Balkan Peninsula, Todorova (1994) notes that early travellers were usually heading for important centres such as Constantinople or Jerusalem, and considered South-East Europe as a peripheral place where people were just passing through. The region is only really discovered in the eighteenth century along with an increasing interest in the East. More organised forms of tourism appear at the beginning of the nineteenth century, emerging first around railway lines and thermal therapy resources, and then expanding towards the coastlines. A large part of these developments took place in Croatia and the ‘Dalmatian Riviera’, but other regions also experienced the arrival of visitors and the first organised trip in Bosnia was proposed by Thomas Cook & Sons in 1898

Political disputes and consequences on tourism

“…Undoubtedly, the political stability had a positive effect on the tourism industry of the country and tourism was set as a priority and a vehicle for economic development and viability (House of Commons, Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, 2007). The same is applicable to Croatia and Slovenia, countries of the former Yugoslavia, which suffered from a four-year war (1991)(1992)(1993)(1994) and managed to recover and become important tourism destinations for not only the Baltic Region but also worldwide (Milekic 2015, Naef andPloner 2016). Other examples are the cases of Turkey and the countries in the Middle East such as the Syrian conflict, Israel and Palestinian conflict and in Africa such as Egypt, Libya and Tunisia, which dramatically affected the tourism industry (Neumayer and Plümper 2016).…”

Developing Border Tourism in Sota, Merauke through Tourism Festival

“…The latter"s contributions emerge from the site"s multi-layered cultural reality, which demonstrate built heritage as multifaceted living assets rather than physical residues from the past to be visited. As such, factual engagement of the locals can truthfully boost the site's futuristic policies including those cultural heritage-based touristic ones (Naef and Ploner 2016). More importantly, it can protect the site from some loose strategies of the site's authorities that usually present "heritage as… conflicting uses and purposes" in the way its cultural potential is "marketed…in tourism contexts", which leaves heritage "largely unrecognised or underrepresented" (Park 2014: 3).…”

The exotic veil: Managing tourist perceptions of national history and statehood in Oman

“…In some countries, the presentation of history is politically sensitive, ensuring that certain events are excluded from tourist narratives altogether. In other cases, political/ moral outrages such as the Holocaust or the Srebrenica genocide become the focus of tourist interest, with state-sanctioned narratives about such events constituting a key interactive feature of the visitor experience (Podoshen, 2017;Naef & Ploner, 2016). As Holguin (2005) observed, in Spain, the Franco era is rarely discussed in commercial tourist discourse, and remains obscured by state authorities.…”