18.1Introduction

The significance of landscape to the variety of tourist experiences at a visited destination is well-established and considered paramount. Statistical information indicates an overwhelming visitor preference, in the post-war era, primarily for coastal, sea–sand–sun (3S) destinations, during the most accommodating time of year (i.e. summer), and secondarily (excluding various forms of urban tourism) for other types of rural and natural environments, such as mountains, forests, lakes or terraced landscapes (UNWTO 2011). All types of landscapes and places may potentially hold interest for some type of visitor, for purposes of consumption of goods, services, activities, experiences, etc. Contextualized, as well as overarching, leisure and tourism experiences increasingly inform and substantiate new types of landscapes of tourism and leisure. Thus, globalizing rates and patterns of mobility and consumption, generally speaking, necessitate renewed and more in-depth investigation as to the sites and attractions sought by visitors and to the role of landscape in visitor experiences (Aitchison et al. 2000; Terkenli 2014). Such issues are further complicated by the enormous current proliferation of a broad range of alternative and special-interest forms of tourism or leisure, variably (and often, intricately) connected to the visited landscape—a field that begs for further and more concerted inquiry (Hall et al. 2014; Hall and Page 2014).

In this study, we focus on such variability and contingency in tourist/visitor experience, in different types of terraced landscape destinations. The objective of our study is to explore, analyse and discuss the variable ways in which terraced landscapes cater to and are impacted by various types of tourism/recreational/leisure activities. Towards this goal, we propose analytical diagrams of the interrelationships that develop through tourism uses of terraced landscapes, in terms of: (a) attractions and expectations of tourists and local communities, (b) tourism impacts on the agricultural system which creates the terraces and (c) landscape-related tourism consequences on the broader local/regional socio-economic system.

We begin with a brief discussion of the interrelationships that develop between tourism/leisure activities and visited landscapes, in general; then, we proceed to explore this set of interrelationships in the case of terraced landscapes, focusing on when and how a terraced landscape becomes a tourist attraction, and, finally, we turn to a discussion on the direct and indirect impacts of the latter activities on the terraced landscapes, in the context of broader local/regional development.

18.2Tourism and Landscape: A Brief Theoretical Staging

The centrality of the sightseeing experience to tourism (Urry 1990, 1995), coupled with the definition of the landscape itself (Council of Europe 2000), attests to the fact that there may not be tourism without landscape, and no landscape is such without its viewer/observer (in a broader sense). We ought to clarify, at the outset,

our use of the terms tourist versus tourism, in conjunction with the concepts of landscape, activity, development, etc.—an area of much confusion in tourism literature. The noun tourism is intended to show the processes through which a landscape, activity, development, etc., are shaped in order to serve purposes of tourism (also, i.e. landscapes of tourism), whereas the noun/adjective tourist is used to indicate the ways/reasons/processes, in which such activities, landscapes, etc., are substantiated or used via the phenomenon of tourism. Simply put, tourism landscapes imply the ways in which these landscapes are produced, whereas tourist landscapes imply the ways in which these landscapes are consumed. We also employ the term visitor, in order to encompass all types of such intended expropriation of points, areas or sites of appeal, inciting such interest, from a broad range of parties: tourists, excursionists, day-trippers, explorers, recreationists, etc.

As a geographical medium conceived and appropriated through the senses and the power of cognition and symbolism, landscape represents the first and most enduring medium of contact between tourist and prospective or consumed place of travel; through acquired photographs, it becomes a traveller’s lasting memoir (Terkenli 2014). The tourism industry markets images and discourses about landscapes, through representations of cultural signs, on the basis of which the tourist, through processes of experiential reinterpretation of the sign, may assess the sight and validate the meanings of the visited landscape, within the predominant discourse (MacCannell 1992; Terkenli 2014). On the basis of the tourist’s involvement in local life, tourist activity and experience in the landscape may range from pure leisure activity (with no involvement in local life), to change from everyday habitual activity (with minimal involvement), to activity bearing new experiences, to experimental activity (with substantial involvement) and finally to experiential activity (with significant involvement in local life) (Cohen 1979; Urry 1990). Thus, the connection between landscape and tourism is not restricted either to the representational/performative or to the essentially geographical/physical nature of the travel experience. It extends to the pleasure sought in the experience, a component of tourism that has become much more central and predominant in the historical evolution of twentieth-century forms of tourism (Löfgren 1999; Rose 1996) and acknowledged through theories of emotion and affect, as well as more-than-representational geographies of human–landscape interaction (Terkenli 2014; Lorimer 2005; Crouch 1999).

On the one hand, then, the impact of the contribution of the landscape to the tourist experience and tourism business is inadvertently positive, albeit variably multifold (Terkenli 2014; Carmichael 1998). On the other hand, tourism impacts on the landscape are also highly variegated and multifold, but run the whole range from most positive to most negative. The tourism scientific literature abounds in examples of deterioration of tourism destinations through certain types of tourism development, both in economic terms (economic monocultures, increasing tourism dependency and local underdevelopment, etc.) and in all sorts of non-economic terms (visual clutter, cultural impoverishment, social degradation, environmental deterioration, etc.) (Pearce 1995; Tsartas 1996). Where tourism development, growth and expansion are unchecked, the landscape often loses its previous

character and becomes infested by an inundation of incongruous and out-of-plan construction, urban, peri-urban or suburban sprawl and all types of visual pollution. In some cases, tourism development in rural communities imparts gentrification processes associated with property market impacts and the risk of exclusion of locals (housing, farming activities, everyday leisure places, etc.), especially farmers and low-income people. In other cases, rural landscape management and overall stewardship are abandoned, in favour of either more amenable and profitable economic activities (i.e. tourism) elsewhere, leading to rural exodus and the abandonment of the countryside (resulting in geographical imbalances in rural development, as in the example of Greece), or through its extensive exploitation for tourism or other economic activities (i.e. intensive viticulture, alteration of alpine landscapes for winter sports development). Curbing at least some of the adverse impacts of tourism on the landscape and the destination societies may be feasible, through protection and conservation measures—many examples of which best practices abound (Bell 2008; Coccossis 2004). Achieving and harnessing the positive economic potential of tourism may be far more difficult. The latter cautionary conclusion stems from the fact that tourism development depends on successfully meeting global competition, in order to attract tourists at the desired destination, in the first place, while at the same time safeguarding local resources (including the landscape) in ways beneficial for the local communities, as well as assuring their economic growth and development in sustainable ways. We will encounter this challenge most strikingly in the case of terraced landscapes and discuss it extensively further down, in this chapter.

Global flows of mass/organized tourism have predominated in the broader western post-war context (UNWTO 2013–2017). Simultaneously, the past few decades have been witnessing the accelerated growth of scope (special interest and alternative) tourism/leisure, targeting specific niches of the tourism/leisure market (Hall et al. 2014; Rojek and Urry 1997). In this context, we now turn to terraced landscapes, promoted by the supply side on the basis of their competing edge in alternative but affordable forms of leisure, compatible with local sustainable development and consumed by the demand side on the basis of their catering to a variety of broadly accessible tourism/leisure pursuits and activities. For this purpose, we propose an analytical scheme for this twofold relationship, based on a tourism axis connecting tourism variables first with the agricultural system and second with the broader socio-economic system, in order to present, organize and interpret our research questions at stake more clearly and efficiently.