Heritage and the Consumption of Places
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only clearly definable at the moment of consumption. We can only conclude that heritage tourists are not a distinguishable group of tourists and that tourists are not a distinguishable group of people. Heritage tourists are merely tourists who at that moment are consuming heritage while tourists are merely people travelling.
What is consumed? Tourists make use of various heritages in various ways. The resources used in the production of heritage tourism products have four characteristics especially relevant here. The first, and most obvious of these, is variety: an enormous heterogeneity of heritage goods and services are consumed by tourists whether intended for them or not. An inventory of such resources would be inevitably incomplete. The occasional attempts to at least list the most patronised facilities, such as major museums, exhibitions, sites or monuments, ignores both the many smaller and more specialised attractions and seriously overlooks many more commonplace facilities that nevertheless are seen by the tourist as an important part of the heritage experience. ‘Place specific tourism’ uses the sidewalk cafes in Paris, the bazaars in Istanbul, the floating markets in Bangkok, the canals in Amsterdam and the like as a generalised heritage; identifying and characterising the specific place experience. The mundane characteristics and just ways of life of places are critically important tourism heritage attributes. Conversely there is nothing that has not the potential to become tourism heritage, as almost everything can be associated with the creative products of mythology, history, literature, cinema or television. Secondly, and resulting from the above diversity, heritage is a ubiquitous resource. Although some places can be associated with particularly renowned historical events, personalities or structures, all places have a past, whether currently recorded in history or not, and all peoples have a heritage, whether currently interpreted as distinctive or not. A ubiquitous resource endows everywhere with the possibility of producing heritage products on a tourism market: and this universal possibility intensifies the competition within that market. As the opportunity for entry increases so the chance of success for any one place narrows. Thirdly, heritage goods and services are multi-used. They have a wide variety of users other than tourists. In particular they have important tasks of local socialisation and political legitimation. The identity of places, at scales from the local neighbourhood to the international, is strongly dependent upon its distinctive historical heritage and its characteristic vernacular elements, which are expected to convey the value and norms of that society. This wide and well researched field has many practical implications for the management of resources that were created for, and dominantly 11 serve, other uses. Finally, and stemming directly from the previous point, tourism is generally making use of resources which were not originally produced for a tourism market and which are currently owned and managed by those who are unaware of, indifferent
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