“Ordinary” vs. “Attractive”: How Stories on the Way of Life Become a Part of Tourist Offer

Kelemen, Petra and Lončar, Sanja. (2011). “Ordinary” vs. “Attractive”: How Stories on the Way of Life Become a Part of Tourist Offer. Studia ethnologica Croatica, 23(1). pp. 183-214. ISSN 1330-3627

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Abstract

The article discusses the possibility of including stories on the way of life, documented through ethnographic research, in tourist offer. Starting from a concrete example based on the stories of masons and stone-cutters from the region of Vinodol, and, on the other hand, from tourist promotion materials, the authors list the ambiguities surrounding the term “tourist attraction”, which is commonly used in the projects of cultural tourism. The authors use the corpus of the documented stories of Vinodol region, which they have recognized as powerful elements of cohesion of the local community, simultaneously aware of the process of extraction of heritage, to suggest a pathway for creating tourist offer: from ethnographic research as a starting point, through recognition, extraction and nomination of cultural elements as heritage, to its usage under the frameworks of cultural politics. In doing this, they suggest the acceptance of the value of “the ordinary”.

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