Tourism region
The resulting discourse is "produced and reproduced" in the form of advertisements, travelogues, and regional literature, as well as in the larger media.
This earlier period is characterized by rapid development, construction, investment in greater advertising, and increasing tourism.
The modern tourism region emerged from the Industrial Revolution as cities grew in size, pollution increased, and an expanding middle class possessed greater amounts of disposable income.
From the Enlightenment through the nineteenth century, the fashionable Grand Tour of continental Europe for wealthy young men popularized the idea of leisure travel.
The popularity of the Grand Tour, combined with the stresses and benefits of the Industrial Revolution, encouraged wealthy and middle-class European and American families to explore leisure travel, though on a more local scale.
The development of faster methods of transportation during the nineteenth century allowed tourists to travel greater distances in smaller periods of time.
According to Peter Murphy, "increased competition" encouraged private development of hotels, resorts, and entertainment facilities as well as "municipal investment in parades, parks, piers, and baths."
Eric Storm has argued that in the later decades of the nineteenth century "the stress was put on the region in order to underline the intimate bond between everyone's own community and the nation".
Through this process, "tourism promoters strove to balance the demands of multiple identities: local, regional, state, national ...
They instructed their audiences that the regions' political, social, and economic fates were inextricably bound to their landscapes and geography".
Tourists were portrayed "as important historical actors whose engagement ... played a vital role in shaping the outcome of that bond".
In doing so, they drew upon nationalist sentiment to imbue tourism regions within the state with greater cultural and historical meaning.
A counter-trend to the establishment of government-designated tourism regions is that of local voluntary associations which cooperate to market a specific area.
[17] Despite this, local initiatives continue to promote much smaller areas than the six massive official regions, which are larger than many European countries.
For example, the Euroregions of the European Union allow areas that have been separated by the borders of nation-states to reassert some cultural and political sovereignty.
