Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
opening-up of frontier destinations for tourism in many countries, including
India and across North America.
There are examples of railways seeking to develop tourist markets in a
more direct way. In Japan, for example, railway companies helped to develop
purpose-built bathing resorts and amusement parks (Ogara, 1998). In Australia,
the famous Zig Zag railway in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales
attracted thousands of passengers annually who travelled to enjoy the scenery
(Lee, 2009). The railway company established a public reserve in the 1880s to
preserve the surrounding wilderness in order to seduce a growing tourist trade
seeking access to nature; this included a platform for passengers to alight upon,
to observe the wildlife. Large tracts of wildlife areas were retained near to
Canadian railways for similar reasons. The growth of tourism, for many desti-
nations, was therefore inextricably linked with the arrival of the railway, and
they were, in many cases, major partners in early stages of development.
The railway sector was also important in the promotion of events. In the
1840s trains were being hired by emergent tourism businesses, such as
American Express and Thomas Cook, to operate excursions to major events,
ranging from public executions to the Great Exhibition in London in 1851
(Simmons, 1984). Cook and some of his contemporaries recognized the inte-
gral nature of the journey to the customer, and prepared travel guides (known
in Cook's case as The Tourist's Guide ). Thus, in many countries, railways
have been closely associated with tourism development, and 170 years later
this is still occurring but to a lesser extent. Examples of the new wave are the
Beijing to Lhasa railway (Su and Wall, 2009) or the railway links developed
between Denmark and Sweden in recent years. However, in many parts of the
world, including Europe, the railway network is still shrinking.
Motivation for train travel
Whether tourists choose the train mainly for pro-environmental reasons, or
simply to maximize personal enjoyment, these motivational factors are likely
to be intertwined with more commonly acknowledged reasons. One of the
most important factors is that train travel offers great views across landscapes
(Löfgren, 2000). The feeling of vastness is aptly described by the travel writer
Theroux (1979, p70) in The Old Patagonian Express , By Train through the
Americas :
I could see for fifty miles or more across the blue-green plain.
Because the train kept switching back and forth on the hillside,
the view continually altered, from this plain to a range of hills
and to fertile valleys with tall feathery trees in columns along the
banks of frothing rivers, and occasionally a deep gorge of verti-
cal granite slabs. The trees were eucalyptus, as African as the
view, which was an enormity of stone and space.
Other studies refer to the view from the train as a significant motivational fac-
tor. Mintel (2009b), for example, refers to the importance of the view in
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