Transfrontier Routes and Trails

Abstract

Tourism routes and trails have become increasingly popular tourism products throughout the world. While most have short lengths, routes and trails have also become prime tourism products in international borderlands with the aims of linking different areas and regional tourism products and destinations. Yet, given that borders almost inevitably come into play in developing and managing tourism trails, irrespective of the trail’s length, remarkably limited academic attention has been given to the inter-jurisdictional, collaborative functioning of tourism routes. The author provides an overview of this scholarly attention to cross-border routes and trails and pays particular attention to cooperation issues and scalar considerations pertinent to the socio-economic, cultural and geopolitical bridge-building role often strived for with transboundary tourism trails. The author identifies a mismatch between the potential of tourism routes for cross-border development and region-building on the one hand and, on the other hand, the limited evidence of cases where this potential is realized. While tourism routes and trails have all the intrinsic characteristics to connect separated stakeholders and places into one functional cross-border entity, the barrier effects of local and international borders are very real even in our increasingly globalized, networked world.