Cultural Routes and Heritage Trails - Tourism and Trails: Cultural, Ecological and Management Issues - page 58

purposive designing of thematic trails around key features, persons and
attractions that provide them with a competitive advantage over others.
The way people experience trails and routes is often the result of the way
they traverse them, and the extent of the trail they physically cover. With
respect to the former, technological developments, in particular GPSs are
rewriting how the tourist can experience the trail, where the use of mobile
applications on smart phone technology allows them to experience pathways
without the use of conventional trail maps. On saying that, Crang (1994)
noted that maps have always been an important part of any trail system as
they help travelers organize their memories of the route experience. Mobile
apps replacing maps may appeal more to a marketplace where technology
plays a greater role in people's travel experiences, but as for organizing memo-
ries they will have to be coupled with other web 2-type participatory technol-
ogy, such as blogs, where people can report their experiences. As for the
latter, namely the extent of the trail that travelers frequent, this can often be
constrained by a number of factors such as time available, individual interest
and curiosity, where they can enter and leave the route, and the scale of trail
involved. At the heart of the conceptual model in Chapter 1 was the tourist
experience of trails and routes. A number of possible scenarios of experience
can and may exist for cultural heritage trails and routes.
In developing a conceptual model of trail/route experience, Boyd (2013)
suggested the following categorization (Figure 2.14). Scenario A exists where
the traveler chooses to experience the entire route, including the intervening
attraction nodes within (i.e. individual tourist attractions). This is often the
case where small-scale trails are involved, either as walking or touring trails.
Scenario B is where only certain nodes (visitor attractions) are visited along
the route, while not taking the route itself. Here the scale of trail is impor-
tant, often involving longer distance trails where certain nodes are used both
as entry or egress points. A third scenario (C) occurs when a section of the
route is visited, including any intervening nodes along that chosen section.
This type of scenario is possible for long-distance trails that are transnational
in character and where trail experience is often confined to that part of the
trail within a particular jurisdiction. The final scenario (D), meanwhile, is
where visitors use the route as a spine from which to deviate and visit other
places connected to existing nodes along sections of the route. It is important
to recognize that all four scenarios take place within an operating environ-
ment of policy, planning, management, as well as institutional arrangements
and stakeholders as alluded to in the first chapter.
There is a case to be made that individual trails and routes may encapsu-
late the experience of all the above scenarios, and that experience is not
conditioned by factors such as scale. The Camino de Santiago pilgrimage
route is one such example (Graham & Murray, 1997). Scenario A is repre-
sented by those who choose to experience the whole trail. In this case, the
traditions and history become the attraction to travelers, who view traveling