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across Europe, which offer guided walks in many parts of the world. The self-
guided market is very important in tourism, and the internet has opened a
wide range of opportunities and an associated form of communal branding.
For example, Wikiloc (originally focused on Catalunya, in Spain, but now
available worldwide) is an open access website where people can submit their
favourite trails from anywhere in the world. These can be downloaded by oth-
ers and followed using global positioning satellites (Wikiloc, 2009). There may
be reservations about the way in which the site could encourage high carbon-
intensity travel, but equally it also offers local trails for walkers and cyclists.
This site also illustrates the importance of maps and the way in which we are
using them in different ways than hitherto:
The world of maps, the world which we map, is changing as
new appreciations of the emotional are represented … and as
new technologies change our interactions with maps through
Global Positioning Satellites and Satellite Navigation. (Esbester,
2008, p42)
Another example of community branding is Car Free Walks (2009), located
in the UK. This encourages people to submit instructions to a website that fea-
tures car-free linear walks using buses or trains. In both cases, the websites
reflect the emergence of on-line, non-commercial viral marketing, where a
shared consciousness about walking and the environment is emerging. Thus
consumers are beginning to determine their own community brands in rela-
tion to walking (see Muniz and O'Guinn, 2001).
The scale and scope of walking as part of the tourism realm at destina-
tions is difficult to assess. In the USA, for example, an estimated 35 billion
walking trips per annum are made, of which 20 per cent are for recreation and
exercise, including those on holiday. There is no recorded subdivision of the
data. An additional 3 per cent are primarily trips to walk the dog (Agrawal
and Schimek, 2007). This is supported by other data, from which it can be
inferred that recreational trips (i.e. local trips made by residents and tourists
for pleasure) are likely to account for at least 20 per cent of all walking trips
in any given country. In relation to walking tourism (rather than all recre-
ational trips), there are no firm figures, only estimates. In the UK, it is
estimated that there are 527 million walking tourism trips, contributing £6 bil-
lion to local tourism economies per annum (Christie and Matthews, 2003).
However, the collection of data on specific walking routes and the needs of
those accessing the countryside are limited (Cope et al, 1999).
There is an apparent paradox. Walking as transport is in decline, as 'society
is structured to encourage the motor car and not walking' (Darker et al, 2007,
p2172), yet walking for recreation and tourism is, at worst, static, and some
studies indicate growth (Lane, 1999). The explanation lies partly in major
changes in land-use patterns, and partly in changing values towards mobility.
At the same time, walking in western cultures is seen as a release from the hec-
tic pace of life, especially in relation to near-to-home recreation and enjoyment
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