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The other main strand of tourism history has
come from social science tourism researchers
seeking a temporal perspective on the subject.
Thus, conceptual frameworks and models of today
would gain in validity if they can also be
successfully related to tourism in the past. One
aspect of this area of research has been the notion
of the destination life cycle. A particular
difficulty here, however, is the adequacy of the
historical data available and a tendency for post hoc
rationalisation in order to fit the model into
historical contexts. This stricture applies to a
number of other tourism frameworks which can
have a somewhat simplistic view of historical
processes. The weak links with historians contributes
to this particular difficulty.
All research requires the careful consideration of
the range of source material available. With
historical data, questions concerning authenticity,
purpose and representativeness are major
issues. There are fundamental problems of bias in
both archive and physical evidence data which can
be summarised as selective deposit and selective
survival. Did only certain types of people or
institutions leave the kind of data being analysed?
Have other vital sources of data simply disappeared
over time? These questions relate to the data
available for tourism history, which can be
categorised into four main areas.
The first area is statistical records. The systematic
measurement of tourism only began in the
twentieth century, when its increasing volume and
economic significance created a need for its
statistical measurement. Before then, there was
no official government role in tourism. From the
1920s, however, national governments increasingly
recorded flows of tourism and expenditure, and
this output accelerated markedly after 1945. Prior
to this era, historians have to make use of scattered
and fragmented material such as visitor lists and
census data, occasional transport company statistics,
or inquiries into living conditions and working
hours. The second area, personal documents,
has provided a major source of information.
Diaries, letters and journals of travellers provide a
biased but sometimes the only record of certain
forms of tourism. Studies of elite travel in Europe
�such as the Grand Tour), North America and
history 279
elsewhere have often depended heavily on this
form of data.
Mass communication is the third area. Most
literate societies produce material to inform,
entertain or persuade the public. In terms of
tourism history, such material includes guidebooks
and route maps, magazines, journals and
newspapers. Other works which may refer directly
or indirectly to tourism are poems and satire,
cartoons and novels. Historians of literature have
utilised forms of content analysis to gain insights
into contemporary culture and the role of travel in
past societies. Other sources, the fourth area, can
include material used by classical historians and
archaeologists in research on the ancient world. For
instance, the inscriptions and graffiti on the inn
walls at Pompeii or monuments in Egypt have
been studied, as have the papyrus letters that have
survived. Archaeologists have examined the remains
of holiday villas, inns and restaurants in
ancient Italy. For more recent times, material can
include diplomatic records or the archives of travel
firms. Oral history clearly has much to offer for the
reconstruction of leisure and tourism. In addition,
historians can turn to the visual arts, such as
paintings, where the portrayal of leisure practices
in certain ways can illuminate their role in society.
Photography offers similar possibilities.
Tourism history research has, so far, focused on
a number of basic themes. The first is that of the
ancient world, where meticulous study of sources
by classical historians has revealed much about
tourism in ancient Greece, Egypt and Rome. For
the medieval period, the principal theme has been
that of the pilgrimage in Europe and the Holy
Land. Another era of extensive journeys was that
of the Grand Tour. Here, there is a wealth of
material in the form of traveller's diaries, journals
and guidebooks as well as direct connections with
contemporary art and architecture. Spa and seaside
resort development in the United Kingdom,
Europe and North America has attracted detailed
research from historians and geographers where
both individual case studies and broader histories
of resort growth have made this one of the
strongest areas of historical research. In North
America especially, the role of national parks
and wilderness areas has received much attention
and the history of many parks has been