Having seen (in the previous posting) how popular in the market history is – or at least, let’s say, heritage tourism – it’s obvious that anyone in tourism marketing and development needs to know something about history. However, you could say that people like visiting historic places because those places have a different ‘flavour’ and they find that interesting, but communicating the history can be left to the guides at the particular place. There is a lot of truth in that – if you are an amateur manager.
A professional in this job would have several reasons for wanting to know the history themselves and not leave it to someone else. They would want to know just what it was about the history that was attracting people. Was it the sense of place and time to be found in the surroundings? – the kind of buildings and environment, such as would be found in a medieval town or an industrial community, for example. They would demand to know how well the guides and other forms of interpretation were performing in communicating the historic story. They would want to be a step ahead of the visitors in knowing what period of history was gaining in popularity, possibly because of the influence of the latest novels, film or TV series. Alongside that, what kind of history was catching the public imagination? Once upon a time it was about kings and queens and national heroes. Today it is often the story of ordinary people, their ways of life and events in those lives. Any marketing director or development officer who does not keep up with this kind of knowledge is risking being taken for a ride – and I don’t mean a quality coach tour but a brief hurtle through a theme park concoction of the past.
There is another important reason for having an interest in what has gone and that is because the marketing manager needs to think about the future. Confusing? The reason for looking back in order to plan for the future is to see what the trends have been. In a broader sense it is a matter of finding out how we got to where we are in the tourism industry today. What were the reasons, the causes of change and the influences on the choices that people have been making? We talk of Push and Pull Factors, of innovations and failures. How we make sense of the airline industry and the changes it is going through depends on looking back over aviation activity since the late 1940s – at least. What will be the outcome of the present situation for the major airlines including the ‘flag carriers’ like BA, Lufthansa, Qantas or Aeroflot? Many factors come in to play, not the least of these the growth of low-cost or ‘no frills’ airlines. To understand why these have been successful at the expense of the big companies it’s necessary to read up on the likes of Southwest Airlines, Freddie Laker’s Skytrain, easyJet and Ryanair. In doing so you’re studying history.
That exercise would be looking at relatively short-span history. Important, broad, lessons come from longer spans such as the three centuries in the graphic above. It’s a great simplification of course, to relate the Grand Tour to the eighteenth century, countryside touring to the nineteenth and overseas beach resort tourism to the twentieth. But the point being made is that the changing face of tourism can only be properly seen by examining causes and effects. So the Grand Tour largely educated the sons of wealthy landowners who travelled by horse-drawn carriages around to destinations such as Rome. In the nineteenth century railways became available with cheap transport to take people out of the new industrial cities with their dirt and disease to places like the Lake District. In the twentieth century aircraft became dominant for the longer journeys that the up-market customer was demanding, again with elements of escapism from a mainly urban lifestyle that was often stressful. Yes, it was much more complex than that, but this pattern, crude though it might be, is a starting point for comprehending not only where tourism seems to be going, and why, but what exactly it is all about.
And discovering the detail is what makes the study of history such fun.
A professional in this job would have several reasons for wanting to know the history themselves and not leave it to someone else. They would want to know just what it was about the history that was attracting people. Was it the sense of place and time to be found in the surroundings? – the kind of buildings and environment, such as would be found in a medieval town or an industrial community, for example. They would demand to know how well the guides and other forms of interpretation were performing in communicating the historic story. They would want to be a step ahead of the visitors in knowing what period of history was gaining in popularity, possibly because of the influence of the latest novels, film or TV series. Alongside that, what kind of history was catching the public imagination? Once upon a time it was about kings and queens and national heroes. Today it is often the story of ordinary people, their ways of life and events in those lives. Any marketing director or development officer who does not keep up with this kind of knowledge is risking being taken for a ride – and I don’t mean a quality coach tour but a brief hurtle through a theme park concoction of the past.
There is another important reason for having an interest in what has gone and that is because the marketing manager needs to think about the future. Confusing? The reason for looking back in order to plan for the future is to see what the trends have been. In a broader sense it is a matter of finding out how we got to where we are in the tourism industry today. What were the reasons, the causes of change and the influences on the choices that people have been making? We talk of Push and Pull Factors, of innovations and failures. How we make sense of the airline industry and the changes it is going through depends on looking back over aviation activity since the late 1940s – at least. What will be the outcome of the present situation for the major airlines including the ‘flag carriers’ like BA, Lufthansa, Qantas or Aeroflot? Many factors come in to play, not the least of these the growth of low-cost or ‘no frills’ airlines. To understand why these have been successful at the expense of the big companies it’s necessary to read up on the likes of Southwest Airlines, Freddie Laker’s Skytrain, easyJet and Ryanair. In doing so you’re studying history.
That exercise would be looking at relatively short-span history. Important, broad, lessons come from longer spans such as the three centuries in the graphic above. It’s a great simplification of course, to relate the Grand Tour to the eighteenth century, countryside touring to the nineteenth and overseas beach resort tourism to the twentieth. But the point being made is that the changing face of tourism can only be properly seen by examining causes and effects. So the Grand Tour largely educated the sons of wealthy landowners who travelled by horse-drawn carriages around to destinations such as Rome. In the nineteenth century railways became available with cheap transport to take people out of the new industrial cities with their dirt and disease to places like the Lake District. In the twentieth century aircraft became dominant for the longer journeys that the up-market customer was demanding, again with elements of escapism from a mainly urban lifestyle that was often stressful. Yes, it was much more complex than that, but this pattern, crude though it might be, is a starting point for comprehending not only where tourism seems to be going, and why, but what exactly it is all about.
And discovering the detail is what makes the study of history such fun.
[Photo: Statue on the Grand Palais, Paris]
