ABSTRACT
The quality of heritage attractions can be viewed as something of a ‘push-pull’ phenomenon, subject to the exigencies of both supply and demand. Although, on the ‘supply’ side it might be argued that heritage is a strictly limited resource which cannot be indefinitely renewed, a closer look suggests that this is not so. Heritage as a commodity is constantly being repackaged and reinvented. For example, reconstructed ‘native’ villages in Sumatra portray lifestyles that in some cases no longer have an independent existence. ‘Yesteryear’ museums in the English Midlands identify as heritage, artefacts that many of the visitors had in their childhood homes. Heritage is also ‘Disneyfied’ or caricatured, as at the Epcot Center in Florida, or the Asterix Parc at Paris.
