tourism research in a changing world

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THE WEDDING IN HEIDELBERG, GERMANY, FROM A HISTORICAL REENACTMENT. TO A CULURAL TOURIST ATTRACTION? Vítor Ferreira and Norberto ...
TOURISM RESEARCH IN A CHANGING WORLD

Editors: Francisco Dias, Joanna Kosmaczewska, Ewa Dziedzic and Antonio Magliulo ISBN: 978-989-98965-0-5

Disclaimer While all reasonable efforts have been made to gather the most current and appropriate information, the editors do not give any warranty as to the correctness, completeness or suitability of the information, and disclaims all responsibility for and shall in no event be liable for any errors or for any loss or damage that might be suffered as a consequence of any person acting or refraining from acting or otherwise relying on this information.

Title: Tourism Research in a Changing World Edited by Francisco Dias Joanna Kosmaczewska Ewa Dziedzic Antonio Magliulo

Copyright © GITUR – Tourism Research Group of Polytechnic Institute of Leiria ISBN: 978-989-98965-0-5

All rights reserved. Apart from fair dealing for the purposes of study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part of this book may be eproduced by any process without written permission from the publisher. Any enquiries should be directed to: [email protected]

First published in Portugal in 2014 by Tourism Research Group of Polytechnic Institute of Leiria

TOURISM RESEARCH IN A CHANGING WORLD | 97

CHAPTER 1.5.

THE WEDDING IN HEIDELBERG, GERMANY, FROM A HISTORICAL REENACTMENT TO A CULURAL TOURIST ATTRACTION?

Vítor Ferreira and Norberto Santos University of Coimbra, Portugal Abstract: The city of Heidelberg, in Germany, had celebrated on the 9th-11th August 2013 the Wedding of the Prince Elector Friedrich V of the Palatinate with the English princess Elisabeth Stuart. This was an event that intended to celebrate the 400th Anniversary of this marriage that toke place on February 14th 1613, and was planned in order to involve the community, highlight the cultural heritage sites of the city, but also to be able to attract cultural tourists. The need for differentiation and the struggle for the affirmation of the territories, led them to bet on major events and temmatization as strategies to achieve visibility, but also to attract cultural tourists. The institutional authorities in Heidelberg have also followed this strategy in what concerns the mentioned event. With this article it is intended to understand what were the results of this event regarding the impact it had in the community, as well as the results concerning its capacity to attract visitors. Through literature review and semi-structured interviews, we expect to trace the design of the event, understand the pretended results, and to hear the opinion of different stakeholder, such as institutional authorities and neighborhood associations, among others, from the city and form the state of Baden-Wuerttemberg. The evaluation of the event‘s scope should be done as a Press review of the impact in local and national newspapers. As a preliminary result, we concluded that the massification and indifferentiation of the tourist products available, as in this case and in this particular territory, announce the bankruptcy of this tourism model and that the opportunity to integrate and create identification through the different communities in Heidelberg was worthless, due to a lack of communication and cooperation between the different structures. Keywords: Heidelberg; Historical Reenactment; Events; Cultural Tourism; Results

INTRODUCTION