What Is A Visitor Attraction?

The definition of a visitor or tourist attraction may seem straightforward, and most people may feel they can intrinsically identify one without a definition. Yet, there has been much debate academically on what constitutes a tourist or visitor attraction. Is a shopping center considered the attraction, or are individual stores considered attractions? Individual stores may not be the draw for the visitor, but collectively they become a place of attraction. If that shopping center was built to meet the needs of local residents, does not market to tourists, and is simply a functional place to purchase goods, can it fall into the category of a tourist or visitor attraction even if tourists do visit? If a place is not managed by an organization or company, like a scenic view for example, can that be considered an attraction? It would be attractive to visit, but how would it fit into the conversation around the tourist economy? Is the identification of attractions dependent on how the attraction is managed, on whether the attraction draws visitors to a destination, or on some other attribute?

This textbook uses the term in its broadest sense to denote any site that attracts and is visited by tourists. Therefore, the term  visitor attraction designates a broad array of places, including historic sites, buildings with remarkable architecture, hiking trails, botanical gardens, theme parks, wildlife zoos, museums, art galleries, shopping centers, unique parks, picturesque lakes, and waterfalls among others.

Because this chapter uses the term attraction in the broadest sense of the word, it also intentionally uses the term “visitor attraction” instead of “tourist attraction.” It does so because the term “visitor” denotes both tourists and residents who are not tourists. Many local residents enjoy visiting the same places that tourists enjoy visiting. Residents who visit attractions but do not stay overnight in accommodations in the destination are often labeled “day-trippers”, “same-day visitors”, or “excursionists” (United Nations World Tourism Organization, 2010).

A visitor attraction can be a festival like Burning Man—a large-scale arts event held annually in the desert in northwestern Nevada. It can be human-made, such as Mount Rushmore National Memorial in South Dakota, which boasts massive carved depictions of U.S. presidents on its cliff face. An attraction can also be natural, such as the Arches National Park in Utah, which features over 2,000 natural stone arches. Nature in its pristine form, such as remote parts of the Amazon or northern Canadian tundras, can also be visitor attractions. City centers, such as Paris or London, or active cultural centers, such as the pueblo villages of the Hopi that sit atop three towering mesas in Arizona, can be visitor attractions. Sites where popular movies were filmed can be visitor attractions, such as Skellig Michael, the island off the coast of Ireland where Star Wars: The Last Jedi (2017) was filmed. Visitor attractions continuously emerge and evolve based on societal change and pop culture. They are as diverse as people’s interests.

Commodification of Sites

The term “attraction” can be perceived as callous in reference to some cultural or historic sites as it implies amusement and entertainment, when the nature of the place may be religiously and culturally sacred to groups of people or may be macabre in nature. It is uncomfortable to label the former Nazi concentration and death camp of Auschwitz, for example, an attraction. Nonetheless, the death camp attracted over 2 million visitors in 2019 (Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, 2020).

Developing a “visitor attraction” from a natural, historic, or cultural site has been referred to as the “commodification” of the site. In other words, commodification occurs when a place and the story of that place are bought and sold for financial gain. Even if admission to such a site may be free, the gift shops, restaurants, tour guides, and other products that capitalize on the place, in effect, commodify it.

The term commodification can have negative connotations, referencing the dilution of cultural authenticity, the trivialization of difficult histories, or the imprisonment of natural places. Tourism development has led to all of those things, and developers that focus on profit instead of sustainability and community engagement continue to capitalize on tourists’ eagerness to consume natural, historic, and cultural sites.

Tourism and the visitor attractions at its foundation intertwine with social, political, environmental, and cultural values and issues. As changes take place within cultural systems and visitor influx shifts, inherent struggles arise. As a result, responsible tourism development should focus on and respond to local community needs in order to minimize negative impacts and to enhance the positive effects of developing attractions. A few of the upsides to responsible tourism development include site preservation, cultural preservation, job creation, economic vitality, education, and cultural understanding.

An example of the damage wrought to people when tourism exploits rather than works to heal a community’s painful experience can be found in the spike in visitors to New Orleans following  Hurricane Katrina. In August of 2005, Katrina, a Category 5 storm, devastated the city of New Orleans and surrounding areas, killing 1,833 people and causing nearly $108 billion in damages (National Weather Service, 2022). The Ninth Ward, in particular, experienced catastrophic flooding due to levee damage and storm surges. Shortly after Katrina devastated New Orleans, approximately 30 tour companies began offering trips around the Ninth Ward. The tour operators began leading these tours in response to tourist demand, yet the residents of the Ninth Ward—the victims of this disaster—were not consulted or involved. Neither did they receive compensation for the telling of their story (Slate, 2012). The Ninth Ward, one of the most impoverished parts of the city, received the brunt of the storm. In turn, tour companies profited off the area’s devastation, pain, and death.

As travel has become increasingly accessible and the growth of the tourism industry around the world rapidly spreads, the cultural traditions and heritage sites of native and marginalized peoples’ are becoming increasingly commercialized. The profit made from native and marginalized peoples should always trigger the question: who is making money from the tourism their culture and heritage draws? In addition, when a culture’s traditional and sacred places are commercialized for public consumption, the tourist experience may lack depth. If tour guides and visitors are not sufficiently educated about the nuances of the culture they are visiting, their lack of knowledge may serve to perpetuate stereotypes. In turn, the influx of tourists, especially to more isolated communities, can negatively impact a culture, inspiring youth to adopt the behavior, dress, and cultural traits of visitors. This compromises a coumminity’s culture and its heritage.

Tourism, however, can positively impact culture and society. If shared with and folded back into a community, tourist revenue can fund the preservation of heritage sites, revitalize customs and traditions, empower communities, and serve as a source of cultural pride. Tourism has the capacity to increase cross-cultural interactions and understanding between peoples.

In recent decades, sectors of the tourist industry have begun to reevaluate their approach to and interaction with natural and cultural sites with the express goal of enhancing cultural sensitivity. One example of increased sensitivity and respect can be found at Uluru, a large sandstorm formation in central Australia, also known as Ayers Rock. Visiting tourists used to ascend the sides of the rocks in mass. Climbing this sacred rock, however, was disrespectful to the Aboriginal people who viewed Uluru as spiritually significant. In deference to the sacred nature of the rock and out of respect for the religious views of the Aboriginal people, the Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park banned tourists from climbing in 2017  (BBC, 2019).

As the above examples demonstrate, tourists and the tourist industry must approach certain attractions with cultural sensitivity and understanding. Visitors to museums and heritage sites should be aware that the objects and places on display hold historically rich significance and culturally powerful meaning. In learning about an attraction’s history, significance, and meaning, tourists can simultaneously enrich and expand their understanding of other cultures.

Demand Generators vs. Visitor Amenities

As discussed in the previous chapter, increasing tourism demand serves as the main goal of most of the marketing and sales campaigns generated by DMOs, the travel trade, and other tourism promoters. As a reminder, tourism demand denotes the number of people who actually purchase tourism products, such as rooms at hotels or seats on airplanes. Tourism demand can be generated through the promotion of certain attractions that draw interest from tourists.

Not all attractions are demand generators. If the attraction is unique to a place and of high interest to the traveling public, it can drive tourism to the destination. However, some attractions draw fewer visitors and do not serve as a primary reason for tourists to visit a destination. Known as visitor amenities, these attractions may entice some to visit but are not themselves demand generators.

This section uses the terms ‘demand generator’ and ‘visitor amenity’ to describe in simplistic terms the roles of visitor attractions in the tourism space, as both of these types of attractions are important. The demand generators are necessary to a healthy tourism economy as they shape the image of the destination and influence visitation. Visitor amenities, in turn, round out the tourist experience by providing additional activities for visitors at a given destination.

Identifying the attractions that are demand generators plays an important role in destination marketing. However, classifying demand generators can be a subjective and ongoing task as tourist interests vary greatly. An attraction may be considered a demand driver for one segment of the population but not for others. For example, the North Bend, Washington, filming locations of the cult 1990s TV series Twin Peaks, including Twede’s Cafe, serve as demand generators for ardent fans, attracting thousands of visitors annually (Visit North Bend, n.d.). To non-fans, however, the cafe and other filming locations may be of mild interest and might be visited if time allows, but they are not the main draw to a destination.

In their book on Tourism Theories, Concepts, and Models, scholars Bob McKercher and Bruce Prideaux outline a taxonomy of attractions that illustrates the individualized, often unique, nature of the motivations that drive tourists to visit certain attractions. This classification system identifies the needs of the tourist (ie. the unique motivations for travel) and breaks out what types of attractions can satisfy that need. Progressing top to bottom, the identification of attractions that will meet the tourist’s needs becomes more specific. Below is an example of what a taxonomy of attractions may look like:

Fewer attractions will appeal to those traveling for specific reasons. For example, if someone is motivated to travel due to a personal quest to learn more about their genealogy, then they will visit a location relevant to their family history. Those traveling for more general reasons, such as the desire for relaxation and escape from their daily lives, will be drawn to a broader array of attractions, such as beaches, pools, resorts, and spas.

Since the needs and motivations of tourists are diverse, business plans, marketing plans, and tourism development plans should distinguish between what people do in a destination and why they visit. Most DMOs, tour operators, and other organizations that promote destinations focus on the more wide-reaching and general needs of tourists. As a result, their marketing efforts highlight attractions that will appeal to a general audience. However, marketing niche attractions that appeal to a specific audience can also prove advantageous in the competitive tourism marketing space.

History of Visitor Attractions

The history of visitor attractions is as old as the history of tourism itself. As explained in Chapter 1, early motivations for travel were often focused on visitor attractions with sacred or cultural significance. Religious pilgrimage to the Holy Land, Grand Tours of Europe to experience art and culture, and travel to the British seaside focused on visiting the attractions in those destinations: the religious and city centers, the museums, and the resorts.

Humans have a long history of collecting and displaying things as a means of attracting visitors. A museum dating from the 6th century B.C.E. was discovered during the 1925 archaeological excavation of the city of Ur in Mesopotamia (Museums of the World, n.d.). Holy relics, which are bones or objects associated with a saint or holy person, have been acquired and displayed in reliquaries for centuries, attracting Christian pilgrims to cathedrals, monasteries, and other religious sites across Christendom, from Rome to the Holy Land. Ancient Greeks and Romans filled their temples with artwork for display. And kings displayed the spoils of war in the halls of their royal palaces. Many also enjoyed keeping wild animals. In fact, the earliest known menagerie dates back to 2500 B.C.E. in Egypt, where rulers attempted to show their power and influence by keeping elephants, hippos, baboons, and various species of large cats.

The personal collection of Elias Ashmole, which included antique coins, books, and geological and zoological specimens, opened to the public in 1683 in the University of Oxford and is considered one of the first public museums (Alexander et al., 2010). The Louvre in Paris, France, displayed French royal collections to the general public for the first time in 1793 during the French Revolution. Charles Willson Peale’s Cabinet of Curiosities in Philadelphia opened in 1786 and was one of America’s first museums, displaying Peale’s own portraits of historical figures, bones of a North American wooly mammoth, and other art and artifacts that documented the history of the new world.

Models of the modern public museum and the modern zoological park emerged in the 18th century during the Age of Enlightenment. This was a period in European history when a range of societal values were centered on the development and promotion of science, reason, and logic. These values served to heighten the importance of displays based on taxonomy, which were ordered according to the classification of the objects on display. Zoological displays, as well, became more focused on research and science instead of simply curiosity. Since the 1980s, zoos have focused on replicating natural habitat and providing conservation sanctuaries suitable for research and the reproduction of species.

Other attractions emerged in the 19th century with the rise of leisure time and disposable income in the United States, including amusement parks and arcades. Some of the first amusement parks in the United States were established on Coney Island, including Sea Lion Park, which opened in 1895 and “pioneered the concept of charging admission to an enclosed park” (Sullivan, 2015, para. 16); Luna Park, which replaced Sea Lion Park in 1905; Steeplechase Park; and Dreamland. All of these parks had a unique character and competed with each other for visitors, offering rides, shows, carnival games, sideshow acts, daredevil acts. They also displayed elephants and even people from remote places, such as Inuit people (referred to as “Eskimos” at the time).

As for the first theme park, both Knott’s Berry Farm and Holiday World claim the title. Knott’s Berry Farm originated in the 1920s as a roadside fruit stand in Buena Park, California. The farm soon added a tea room, which became so famous for its fried chicken that guests would wait up to three hours for a table (Ellis, 2020). In the 1940s, the Knotts family, in an effort to entertain patrons, began building a ghost town replica, which, over the years, expanded into the western theme park it is today.

In 1946, Santa Claus Land opened in Santa Claus, Indiana. The park, leveraging the town’s unique name, offered an alpine village, toy shop, children’s rides, and a daily appearance from St. Nick. The park has expanded over the years to include additional holidays such as Halloween, Thanksgiving, and 4th of July and subsequently changed its name to Holiday World (Yesterday’s America, n.d.).

The concept of the themed, immersive park was undoubtedly pioneered by Walt Disney in the 1950s with the opening of Disneyland in Anaheim, California. Disney took amusement park ideas to new levels by extensively theming different “lands” around storytelling themes, decor, music, costumes, rides, shows, food, and overall atmospherics (Yesterday’s America, n.d.). In order to research the best way to attract and entertain tourists, Disney visited many amusement parks around the country to learn what made them successful. Imbued with creativity, Disneyland aimed to transport guests into fantastical, fully-realized worlds and its success catalyzed a new generation of similarly ambitious theme parks.

Walt Disney World Resort opened in 1971 in Lake Buena Vista, Florida, significantly expanding on Disneyland’s concepts with multiple theme parks, resort hotels, and dining and entertainment complexes. Other corporations like Universal and SeaWorld began building elaborate theme park destinations in Orlando, often competing directly with Disney World. Countless smaller amusement parks, theme parks, family entertainment centers, and more appeared across the country.

Another popular theme park, Six Flags Over Texas, opened in Arlington, Texas, in 1961, and focused each of the six sections of the park on four different countries (France, Spain, Mexico, and the United States) and the Confederacy, each of which governed Texas at one time (Yesterday’s America, n.d.). Visitors paid a single admission price to enter and enjoy the rides, which reflected Texas’s unique heritage. Today, Six Flags operates 30 parks in North America as well as amusement parks around the world.

Theme parks continuously evolve based on pop culture. For instance, Universal Studios opened The Wizarding World of Harry Potter in the 2000s, capitalizing on the popularity of the books and films among millennials who grew up with the series. Theme parks based on brands, such as Star Wars and Nintendo, similarly leverage popular culture to draw fans. In order to remain relevant to patrons, park elements constantly evolve with consumer tastes, technology, and trends.

Significance of Visitor Attractions

Visitor attractions are a critical component of a tourist destination. Chapters 4 reviewed the concept of tourism products, which consist of the elements of travel that tourists purchase or experience. Visitor attractions are essential tourism products because they draw tourists to a location and can contribute significantly to visitors’ overall experience. In addition, when a DMO, tour operator, or travel blogger puts together a marketing campaign, tour itinerary, or article, they typically frame their approach around the visitor attractions within the destination. These attractions are the central element of a destination and make up the appeal, ambience, and experience of a location. Visitor attractions are vital to a healthy tourism economy.

McKercher and Prideaux (2020) argue that tourism is driven by the interrelated presence of attractions and by access to those attractions. Without attractions, little incentive exists for someone to travel to a location, for officials at the destination to ensure easy access to the location, or for the development of tourism services and goods. However, access to a destination and tourism services will expand with the presence of attractions.

Visitor attractions are significant in other ways as well. Heritage attractions, such as museums and art galleries, preserve and exhibit objects of significance. These attractions provide public access to objects that might otherwise be held in private collections. Historic sites are preserved from destruction and educate the public on the historical and cultural significance of a place. Zoos and botanical gardens preserve and display life for public appreciation, conservation, and inspiration. And nature parks and conservation areas preserve the land for wildlife habitat and public use. Industrial attractions, like manufacturing facilities, can educate and enlighten visitors while also entertaining them. Even theme parks, such as Disney’s EPCOT Center, can teach visitors about human achievements through their celebration of technological innovation and international culture. Even individuals who do not seek out an attraction for the sake of educating themselves can find that they are learning while also being entertained.

Attributions

1. Figure 7.1: burning-man-2019-25 by Curtis Simmons is released under CC BY-NC 2.0
2. Figure 7.2: Common Grounds Sign for Tourists by dingler1109 is released under CC BY-NC 2.0
3. Figure 7.3: 124 Ayers Rock, July 76 by wilford peloquin is released under CC BY 2.0
4. Figure 7.4: twede’s cafe in north bend by momo go is released under CC BY-NC 2.0
5. Figure 7.5: Partial Taxonomy of Tourism Products by Ezra Leigh, for WA Open ProfTech, © SBCTC, CC BY 4.0
6. Figure 7.6: Animal cages at Woodland Park Zoo, 1916 by Seattle Municipal Archives in the Public Domain; This work is in the public domain in the United States because it was published (or registered with the U.S. Copyright Office) before January 1, 1929.
7. Figure 7.7: Coney Island early 1900s Fairy Whip 9 of 21 by Richard is released under CC BY 2.0
8. Figure 7.8: Ghost Town, Knott’s Berry Farm, 1940s by Orange County Archives is released under CC BY 2.0