Reflections and Futures - Tourism and Trails: Cultural, Ecological and Management Issues - page 247

8 Refl ections and Futures

Refl ections

At the start of this topic, we stated the obvious, that trails and routes are
everywhere, either as part of an organically evolving cultural landscape or
deliberately planned and imposed on natural landscapes. This statement is
not in doubt. What is surprising, however, is the level of academic attention
routes, trails and other linear corridors have or have not garnered. In the
inaugural paper that launched the Journal of Heritage Tourism , Timothy and
Boyd (2006) identified heritage trails as an emerging trend for research by
cultural tourism specialists. They noted then that even though thousands of
trails exist throughout the world and at different scales and sizes, scholars
had theretofore given scant attention to them as socio-economic, political
and environmental phenomena, and that '. . . there remains a dearth of
research on heritage trails and routes, which needs to be addressed with
some urgency' (Timothy & Boyd, 2006: 9). Half a decade later, the authors
maintain this view, for a considerable amount of public sector debate about
trails and academic writings about them in the field of outdoor recreation
have flourished, while research from a tourism perspective has been sluggish.
The abundance of recreation-based literature and the growing, albeit slowly,
output from tourism perspectives has provided a foundation for this topic
that focuses on both tourism and recreation perspectives of routes and paths.
Besides, recreation and tourism cannot possibly be disconnected in the con-
text of routes and trails; they are natural and inseparable partners in this
area of inquiry. Heritage and nature trails are equally important resources
for local residents (recreationists) as they are for mass and niche tourists
(travelers from outside the area). Our concern is not the separation of the
two but rather how they blend and work together to create linear corridor-
oriented supply, demand and management challenges.
Trails and routes clearly predate contemporary notions of leisure and
the advent of modern tourism since the end of World War II, and they have
been an integral means of facilitating the earliest forms of travel and mobility
(Olsen & Timothy, 2006). They are undoubtedly an element, varying in

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