Introduction

One of the rules of thumb in tourism is that visitor demand depends on and is based on attractions. That is the key element of supply. Despite this statement being true and well accepted both by academics and practitioners, there is no agreement on how attractions should be managed, and more fundamentally, how the interpretation of attractions should be put into practice.

Talking about attractions and interpretation necessitates considering why a visitor at any time would like to visit a place, event, an exhibition or a site. People can have many reasons or motivations that would make them visitors. These include cultural appreciation, education, entertainment and social interaction. The number and variety of motivations making people become visitors are just about innumerable. All of the above-mentioned motivations, or maybe even more, could be mapped at any time at an attraction, i.e. different people with different backgrounds and needs are together at the same time. This chapter will, therefore, pay special attention to the attraction–visitor–interpretation triangle.

The factors behind tourism demand have been analysed in great detail. As motivation has always been at the core of applied and theoretical tourism research, several demand models have been developed (e.g. Holloway & Robinson, 1995; Horner & Swarbrooke, 1996; Kotler, 1992; Maslow, 1943; Middleton, 1994). Types of tourists and their likely preferences have also been the focus of attention for numerous authors, as well as variation, forms and trends of attractions.

Interpretation, especially its psychological background, can, however, be considered to be the least likely part of mainstream tourism research. With the help of the four case studies in this section, the aim is to raise some principal questions of interpretation and applied psychology.