‘Sea, Sail, Steam and Emigration’: The imagining of a heritage tourist town in the Republic of Ireland

ABSTRACT

This article reports on an ongoing project in the harbour town of Cobh, Co Cork, Ireland. In recent years, this town has been re-imagined as a site for the consumption of selected heritage stories and much emphasis has been placed on its marketing as a heritage tourist end-destination. A ‘heritage signature’ based on the localisation of Ireland's wider emigrant experience runs central to the organisation of Cobh as a tourist space. The construction of this heritage tourism identity is considered here, as is the way in which ‘tourist product’ is marketed in the town. It is found that tourist product is built on a very specific imagining of place and that the town's history as it relates to its location on a transatlantic axis is elevated above all other histories.