In the Footsteps of Grandtourists: Envisioning Itineraries in Inner Areas for Literary and Responsible Tourism

In recent years, various scholars have called for the development of new forms of cultural tourism aimed at enhancing inland areas. Following this, this paper presents a method for semi-automatically constructing itineraries for cultural tourism, utilizing a geo-dataset of literary quotations, including quotes and itineraries that can offer ideas for new storytelling, envisioning landscapes and cultural references for territorial valorization. This pilot case study focuses on the Dolomite area of the Fiemme and Fassa valleys, a well-known tourist destination also famous for its historic wood production. This study is based on a dataset of geolocated travel reports from 11 different 19th-century authors. These descriptions are classified into Points of Interest (POIs), and the point layer is integrated with a linear layer of the road and path network. Variables such as bus stops and travel time are also considered. The entire process is automated through a script that generates maps of optimal routes for each author, along with corresponding tables of travel times. This method enables the use of this dataset to design and develop specific cultural routes considering different variables. As a result, a cartography of multiple itineraries is proposed, which can serve as a tool for promoting cultural, sustainable and slow tourism development in an alpine inland area.