Cultural Tourism Research Methods

Reprinted in paperback. The consumption of culture is one of the most important aspects of tourism activity. Cultural tourism includes experiencing local culture, traditions and lifestyle, participation in arts-related activities, and visits to museums, monuments and heritage sites. This book reviews a wide range of qualitative and quantitative research methods applied to the field of cultural tourism, including surveys, mystery tourist visits, visitor tracking, grand tour narratives, collages, researcher-created video, photo-based interviews, ethnographic and actor-network approaches. It provides a practical guide on how to conduct research as well as a discussion and evaluation of the methods.

is Professor of Leisure Studies at Tilburg University in the Netherlands. He has led the ATLAS Cultural Tourism Project since its inception in 1991 and published widely in this field, including Cultural Tourism in Europe (1996), Cultural Attractions and European Tourism (2001), Tourism, Creativty and Development (2007), Cultural Tourism: Global and Local Perspectives and Eventful Cities: Cultural Management and Urban Regeneration (2010).

Wil Munsters is Emeritus Professor of Tourism and Culture at Zuyd University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands. He has a strong academic background, including a PhD from the University of Nijmegen focusing on French literature and comparative aesthetics. For the last 25 years his major research interest has been in cultural tourism. He is the author of a monograph on cultural tourism and of studies about museums, heritage, hospitality, gastronomy, events and sport tourism, as well as co-editor of books on cultural tourism research methodology and on anthropology as a driver for tourism research. He has also contributed to numerous national and international conferences on tourism. As a member of ATLAS (Association for Tourism and Leisure Education and Research) he has been engaged in the international Cultural Tourism Research Project since 1994.