ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is to consider specific entertainment retail formats, large and small, and their roles as tourist attractions and experiences. It will focus particularly on the role of large department stores and entertainment product megastores in enhancing city-centre attractiveness – both being major tourist retail attractions in the last half of the twentieth century. However, whereas the earlier developed form – the department store – continues to the present day, a case study on the rise and fall of music-based ‘megastores’ is included as an example of a dying tourist retail format that featured widely across Europe, America, Asia and Australasia during this period. In contrast to these ‘big store’ tourist magnet formats, there is a consideration of the potential tourist retail attractiveness of small trader operations, with views upon their alternate effectiveness in competing for visitors (and co-existence) with the bigger players in the modern tourist retail cityscape.
