Reflections and Futures - Tourism and Trails: Cultural, Ecological and Management Issues - page 248

importance over time and space, of any region's attractions base and most
likely can be linked to people's desire in the present day to engage in sightsee-
ing when they travel away from home. Given these points and the ubiquity
of designated routes, trails and footpaths, the absence of concerted efforts to
research them, beyond the conventional descriptive case study approach is
somewhat surprising, particularly from the perspective of tourism. Why
might this be the case? Does the subject area not illicit widespread scholarly
interest or are there more interesting destinations and issues to study?
Perhaps it is what we alluded to in 2006 when we stated that trails and routes
by their very linear nature are difficult to study from at least two perspec-
tives. First, demand for trails and routes is challenging to measure and ana-
lyze because people can in most cases join the route at any point along its
length, making data collection and gathering user fees a formidable challenge,
even when most people are channeled as much as possible through a primary
gateway or visitor center. Second, research on route administration is often
very complex, involving multiple stakeholders, often across different jurisdic-
tions, with different policies and management paradigms.
Table 8.1 shows that a search on the cabidirect database of 10 million
abstracts for life sciences reveals only 609 matches for 'tourism trails' and
slightly more at 861 matches for 'tourism routes'. The table further illustrates
that the majority of publications on either tourism trails or routes have
appeared since 2000. What is encouraging though is the level of interest from
2010 to the present (2014), implying that, as a topic, there is some traction of
interest developing. The table also reveals that much research on trails and
routes takes place outside the tourism domain, typically in recreation and
natural resource/environmental management fields. Despite this fact, the
tourism focus must still be placed within a context of other themes and topics
that have evoked much more interest in the tourism academy. For example, a
cabidirect search for 'tourism sustainability' recorded 5162 matches, and
'tourism and politics' 4060 matches, to name only two. Combined research
on tourism trails and routes (1460 matches) is on par with other emerging

Table 8.1 Researchers' interest in tourism trails and routes over time

Period of time Trails Tourism trails Routes Tourism routes

1960-1969 0 0 0 0

1970-1979 92 26 220 12

1980-1989 188 89 357 118

1990-1999 225 89 436 148

2000-2009 437 220 1062 203

2010-2014 288 189 939 169

Source: Compiled from the cabidirect abstracts database.