ABSTRACT
Tour guides serve as important intermediaries in conveying messages that help shape visitors’ experiences in tourism destinations. This role takes on more significance at borders and in border areas, which once were, or still are, centres of controversy and conflict, where tourists are exposed to subjective interpretations of facts. There is a great potential appeal of border and post-conflict heritage sites among tourists wishing to experience a currently troubled environment, or explore the authentic places where political events occurred, and the mediating role of tour guides at such sites. The authors present and analyse approaches and methods used by tour guides in areas of ongoing conflict and at tourist attractions near former and present hostile borders. They review the roles of tour guides as mediators and narrators, and of contested heritage borders as tourism attractions. They focus on several tour guiding approaches at borderland attractions based on concepts of tour guides as mediators and narrators.
