Abstract
This article explores Kuzbass potential for industrial and post- industrial tourism, drawing on successful foreign experience and several Russian cases. We identified common international trends in using industrial heritage and outlined the challenges that Russian companies are facing on the way towards a post-industrial paradigm. Western industrial museums present their local industry in the global context, while showing its impact on local community and culture. They make a wide use of modern technology, establish links with science and business, support local arts, and involve authentic members of the industry. Russia, however, can boast very few examples of industrial tourism (e.g. the Krasnaya Gorka Museum in Kemerovo), which is largely seen as having a purely academic appeal. Yet, Kuzbass, with its long history of coal-mining and other industries, has very extensive prospects in this type of tourism. To prove it, we performed a SWOT analysis of a prospective tour into reclaimed lands which showed far more strengths and opportunities for integrating local community, business, and industrial heritage than weaknesses and threats.
Highlights
The western world has long moved on from the industrial to the post-industrial era
The term “industrial tourism” is somewhat ambiguous: whether it stands for operating enterprises or industrial heritage sites depends on the country
It seems sensible to use the approach adopted in Britain and refer to regular commercial tourist visits to operating enterprises as industrial tourism and visits to museums and industrial heritage sites as post-industrial tourism [4]
Summary
The western world has long moved on from the industrial to the post-industrial era. As a result, industrial complexes have acquired a status of post-industrial heritage. We can see how once great factories, hi-tech equipment, breakthrough transport solutions, industrial living quarters, anthropogenic landscapes, and other objects of this now-extinct way of life have turned into large museum complexes, succeeding industrial enterprises as the backbone of local communities. Many of such sites in Europe are on the UNESCO list. The idea that a factory or a mine can be an attractive tourist site is still new to most Russian travel agents and holiday-makers. Many Russian tourists associate industrial museums with the library dust and academic boredom
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
