Magical Tourism and Enchanting Geographies: Storytelling, Heritage, Fantasy, and Folklore

This book explores the events, attractions, and places that comprise magical tourism. It showcases magical storytelling, ecologies, realities, entities, belief systems, cultural heritage, and rituals leading to spiritual, otherworldly, enchanting, mindful, interconnected, green, and dark experiences. The volume offers the reader insights into the exciting, popular new tourism trend of magical tourism and its over-arching attributes and tropes. Chapters feature a number of case studies and discussions including the history of magical travel, studies of affect, witch festivals, the rights of mythical animals, folkloric beasts, unmappable places that seem to retreat and slide sideways, multi-layered place folklore and mythology, portals, nexuses of meaning, fayres, festivals, identities, and cos-play. This volume addresses the challenges of sustainable futures, green heritages, commercialisation, representation, inclusion, accessibility, community ownership, magical events, beliefs, and practices and asks if there is a magical turn in research. The book is highly relevant to those with expertise and interest in geography, tourism, hospitality and events studies, marketing, religious studies, anthropology, sociology, and heritage and cultural studies.