ABSTRACT
Throughout history people have travelled for many different reasons and so tourism is as old as human activity, although its development from antiquity highlights its critical link – that one had to have the means by which to consume tourism. Tourism is by no means a new phenomenon, with its historical origins in the ancient cultures of the Greek and Roman social elite. The historian’s analysis of tourism is dominated by two complementary and yet divergent themes: the development of tourism and its continuity as a phenomenon through time; this often runs parallel to and sometimes in opposition with the process of change, where tourism is constantly evolving and changing often due to innovation in transport or products. Pilgrimages in medieval Britain (brought to life for a modern audience by Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales) show that both the supply and demand for what might be loosely termed ‘tourism products and services’ were operating as far back as the fifteenth century.
