Digital heritage tourism: innovations in museums

Abstract

Heritage tourism is one of the oldest forms of travel for leisure, and more recently an important resource for the tourism industry. Museums benefit from ticket sales but also from recognition. Digital technology has served as an important tool to innovate in all areas of the museum institution, repositioning firms within the heritage tourism market, leading to emerging forms of consumption. Museums may not be fully ready to accept the visit of a digital heritage tourist, yet acknowledging the value of the new consumer can free museums from the limits of their physical walls to explore new horizons in the digital information market space. We define the digital heritage tourist and argue that the large banks of objects and knowledge about our past held in museums are an extraordinary source of discovery, leisure and life-long learning for the emerging digital heritage tourist.