Tourism naturally includes cultural interests to a greater or lesser extent; the desire to discover different things and come into contact with realities and environments other than the ones that surround us every day. The type of tourism that is promoted under the label of "cultural tourism" is intended to cater for the needs of tourists who have the greatest cultural interests, for whom the cultural component is a central motivating factor in their recreational travel. Furthermore, when this cultural interest is more specifically about a particular topic, you then have to offer specialised tourism products that address these niche markets. Industrial tourism is one of those niches. It has only recently started to be promoted, has enormous potential and reach and is currently growing very rapidly.
Industrial tourism allows people to discover technological development and production systems from the pre-industrial period right up to modern day research and development centres. Its historical and heritage side shows us impressive industrialisation facilities and enables us to learn about and understand the contemporary history in which the industrial revolution took place and the economic, social, urban development and cultural changes that it wrought.
However, industrial tourism also includes the chance to visit companies that are still operating. Thus for instance the wine industry has given rise to wine tourism. But just as people can visit a winery they can also visit companies in other sectors that may be of interest to the public in general or to specific audiences such as students, professionals, MICE tourism, etc.
Industrial tourism is thus an excellent resource for enhancing archaeological or historical industrial heritage and for creating synergies between businesses in an area and tourism, as it is a superb and highly effective marketing tool for companies that open their doors to visitors while it also increases tourism in the places where they are located.
Industrial tourism is a great opportunity to generate tourism in towns and areas that are not traditionally tourist-oriented plus it also provides established tourist destinations with an additional range of quality tourism options or can help them to generate off-season business.
At El Generador we are specialists in industrial tourism, and if you look at the “about us” and “what we do” sections you’ll see that we can deliver the following services backed by our experience:
