From the page to the place : a look at literary tourism and the advantages it can bring to tourism development

Abstract

Tourism is a central part of the world's economy, with one in every 11 jobs relating to the travel and tourism industry. There is a wide variety of categories within the tourism industry, relating to different sectors in what attracts visitors. One category of tourism is literary tourism, which focuses on people traveling to a destination because of a work of literature relating to a specific place. Two locations that attract a large amount of literary-focused tourists are The Lake District in England and Prince Edward Island in Canada. Some of the authors associated with these two regions include Beatrix Potter, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, William Wordsworth, and Lucy Maud Montgomery. After looking at elements of these two locations, and seeing how the literary tourism industry is at work and growing, I will take these findings and connect them to Indianapolis, establishing the idea that literary tourism can be beneficial to the greater Indianapolis community, through the ties of Kurt Vonnegut and John Green.