The consequences of transforming landscape elements into tourist attractions

Abstract

The constant dynamic development of tourism is currently causing a growing interest in fi nding new places and objects which can become attractive for tourists. Many possibilities are created by the use of landscape and its elements, the uniqueness of which allows for the creation of tourist attractions of various types. Simultaneously, making landscape available to tourists in the form of a tourist attraction has diverse consequences. Those effects can be positive or neutral, but it is increasingly more common for them to be negative. Landscape elements transformed into tourist attractions can become dominants of that landscape, and, with time, become a (positive or negative) symbol of a given place or area. The creation of tourist attractions based on landscape elements results in the modifi cation of existing landscape and the creation of transformed landscape. Making too many changes to the original shape of the landscape can increase the landscape’s tourist attractiveness as well as (which is more often the case) cause the decrease of its attractiveness to tourists. The aim of the article is to highlight the increasing usage of landscape elements in the process of creating tourist attractions and to identify the consequences of that process. The article is a review and from the methodological point of view the major role in its creation has been played by the methods of fi eld research: observation, participant observation, experiencing attractions and photographic documentations. The result of refl ections on the effects of transformations related to the tourist development of tourist attractions is the attempt to classify them and exemplify them.