Mining Heritage And Tourism

This excerpt from a book, Mining Heritage and Tourism, discusses how mining sites can be turned into tourist attractions. The book includes contributions from internationally recognized authorities and is the first to focus on the issues, challenges and potentials in redeveloping mines as cultural heritage attractions. The book covers topics such as heritage preservation and tourist development goals for mining heritage sites, as well as the practical challenges of developing these sites.

Many former mining areas have now lost their industrial function and are now turning to tourism for regional revitalization and community economic development. The transformation process of these industrial, and in some cases derelict, mining sites and landscapes into an area of interest for tourists is a major challenge both for planners and for tourism managers. It involves complex consideration to both the preservation of the physical site and community mining heritages as well as the health, safety and environmental factors inherent in opening these vast sites to the public. Mining Heritage and Tourism includes contributions from internationally recognized authorities and is the first book to focus on the issues, challenges and potentials in redeveloping mines as cultural heritage attractions which are explored thematically throughout the book. It draws on multidisciplinary research to consider the dichotomy between heritage preservation and tourist development goals for mining heritage sites as well as to explore the practical challenges of developing these sites. These themes are illustrated by case studies from a vast range of geographical locations around the globe to offer operational insights into the planning and management of these sites for both heritage and tourism purposes, as well as innovative site management techniques. There has never before been a more comprehensive book on mining heritage tourism representing the latest developments in strategy, policy and practices. This book serves as an invaluable guide for students, researchers, academics and practitioners in the areas of Tourism and Heritage Management. Review: Mining heritage sites as tourist attractions, like the mining that preceded them, are fortuitously successful - but that success is not guaranteed. Some pay out; others may not. This perspective of uniqueness and precariousness (particularly mining as a tourist attraction) pervades the viewpoint of the many contributions to Conlin and Jolliffe's volume. Their edited work address two topics that they construe as not yet adequately examined by the tourism academy: what happens to replace an economic mainstay when mining leaves a community and how do you preserve mining heritage in an increasingly competitive tourism environment? - Susan R. Martin, IA: The Journal of the Society for Industrial Archaeology, August 2009