ABSTRACT
The significance of the diaspora can vary among different European countries. Countries such as Ireland, Italy, Greece and Poland, with significant historical emigration, strongly promote tourism initiatives targeting their diasporas. The Historic Graves Project, based in Ireland, uses geolocated community genealogy surveys of historic graveyards to generate a grassroots tourism product. Starting in 2011, the web platform has published over 900 hyperlocal gravestone surveys, containing historic biographies for over 220,000 individuals across 15 counties. Recognised as a nationally significant genealogical tourism resource since 2014, the project has seen its main market shift from a local base (Ireland and the UK) to a global audience, based predominantly on the Irish diaspora populations in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the USA. Audience analysis under the INCULTUM project indicates that just over 50% of our users are aged 65 years and over. A quarter of all users visit the site more than ten times as part of their genealogical searches and 30% have used the site to plan trips to a specific location in Ireland. The lessons learned from this Irish case study are relevant to other European countries interested in developing their genealogical tourism resources. Even where a national legislation does not suit the publication of grave memorials online, other genealogical resources could be substituted for gravestones. Diaspora tourism is not seasonal in nature and therefore has the potential to extend the length of the tourism season, particularly for remote rural areas.
