Nicola MacLeod

Packaging places: Designing heritage trails using an experience economy perspective to maximize visitor engagement

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.

Reading the Landscape: The Development of a Typology of Literary Trails that Incorporate an Experiential Design Perspective

This article explores the under-researched field of self-guided trails. The focus of the research is on the experiential aspects of self-guided literary trails from the perspective of both the developer and user. An examination of existing literature on self-guided trails and literary tourism was undertaken and supplemented with a review of experiential design principles. Content analysis of a sample of literary heritage trails was then carried out and three distinctive typologies were developed, informed by aspects of experiential design. The research reveals that few literary trails developers utilise these principles and the article concludes with proposals for the design of more effective literary trail experiences.

Putting down routes: an examination of local government cultural policy shaping the development of heritage trails

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.

A grey literature review of the Cultural Olympiad

This article considers the development of the UK Cultural Olympiad supporting Londons successful bid to stage the Olympic Games in 2012. It suggests that the Cultural Olympiad is a complex event itself and needs to be better understood if any impacts are to be felt in a meaningful sense. The event is thus considered through review of over 50 documents relating to its management, in the context of a number of identified themes: cultural development, developing institutional frameworks, social benefit, educational benefit and promotional benefit.

Understanding self-guided trails: two explorative typologies

Self-guided trails are a global phenomenon and the trails field continues to grow in size and diversity. They range from local to international, cover a variety of themes and are developed to satisfy a broad range of objectives from socio-cultural to environmental and economic. However, despite their proliferation, little research has been carried out in this growing field and there is a lack of strategy and co-ordination in the sector. This paper therefore explores the various attempts made by the authors to better understand the trails sector. In particular, it discusses two typologies that have been created to explore the management perspective and design aspects of trails. The first typology highlights scale and complexity as a means of differentiation which is a useful starting point for grouping these amorphous leisure experiences. From this generalist typology the researchers then moved on to a more specialist classification which explores the design aspects of trails. Three key trail elements have emerged from this research – the knowledge, reputational and creative components which are potentially useful in conceptualising the narrative and experiential dimensions of trail development and design.

The role of trails in the creation of tourist space

ABSTRACT 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 under-theorised 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.

Self-guided trails – a route to more responsible tourism?

ABSTRACT In recent years, the tourism industry has faced criticism by turning its attention to the development of more responsible tourism. This is a form of tourism that is mindful of the diverse needs of host communities, local business and the visitor. This paper investigates the development of more responsible tourism from the perspective of a popular tourist product – the self-guided trail or route. The trail or route provides a themed and interpreted journey through the urban or rural landscape, creating links between sites, attractions and other tourism businesses by providing information and storytelling along the way. These products have a global appeal and are becoming more prolific. Through a literature review on trails, the paper analyses their key characteristics and the rationales of developers and concludes that trails have the potential to contribute to more responsible tourism development. The paper proposes a series of planning principles which are derived from the literature and examples of good practice therein which may assist trail developers in creating more responsible tourism routes and trails. The discussion concludes with a case study of a project in Cornwall in the south-west of the UK, where responsible planning has underpinned recent trail development.