Editorial
Tomi Brezovec
Guest Editor
University of Primorska, Faculty of Tourism Studies – Turistica, Slovenia
tomi.brezovec@fts.upr.si
https://doi.org/10.26493/2335-4194.12.3-4
Today, bathing in the sea, sunbathing and enjoying
various activities at the coast attract millions of people
of all classes and ages and represent the most frequent
form of spending summer holidays. Seaside prome-
nades, hotels with sea views, restaurants and bars of-
fering local or international food, amusement parks,
entertainment centres, casinos and shops can be found
at every seaside town that has recognised tourism as an
opportunity for its growth and development.
The collection of articles on historic perspective on
seaside tourism focuses on specific problems encoun-
tered during its development. Papers tackle issues such
as the rivalry between tourism and traditional indus-
tries, impact of social and/or political factors on its de-
velopment and the impact of its development on the
transformation of the waterfront areas.
Compared to traditional seaside activities such as
fishing, shipping or shipbuilding, seaside tourism has
not a long tradition. Sea bathing was a new form of the
use of the sea introduced about two centuries ago. First
seaside resorts emerged in small English coastal towns
in early 18th century. In his article on leisure and com-
merce in those first seaside resorts, Brodie discusses
seaside tourism development in towns that were al-
ready established fishing or commercial ports. With
increasing popularity of sea-bathing, it became nec-
essary to build adequate infrastructure to satisfy the
needs of growing number of visitors. This caused the
rivalry between tourism and traditional trades for the
use of the waterfront. The outcome of this dispute was
not uniform; sometimes the development of commer-
cial port pushed tourism to the outskirts of the town
while in other instances tourism took over the aban-
doned infrastructure of cessed commercial activities.
By the 19th century, sea-bathing popularity ex-
panded to the southern coasts of Europe. New resorts
were emerging along the coasts of France, Spain, Italy
and other countries. On the Adriatic, the first sea-
baths were built during the first half of the 19th cen-
tury in Trieste and Venice, where they invented float-
ing bathing establishments, anchored in the sea, close
to the centre of the town. The two towns were in con-
stant competition for the prestigious title of having the
finest baths andwere constantly enlarging existing and
adding new baths. The competition ended by the end
of the century with the development of numerous sea-
side resorts on both shores of the Adriatic. The paper
from Uroševič discusses the development of tourism
on Brijuni Islands in the proximity of Pula, the major
naval port of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. Brijuni
have developed from malaria-infested islands into an
elite resort in less than two decades. Further devel-
opment was interrupted by the outbreak of the First
World War has that has put to rest many other invest-
ments along the east coast of the Adriatic as reported
in Kranjčevič’s paper. During the last decades of the
19th and pre-wwi years of the 20th century, tourism
experienced fast development andmany investors saw
their opportunity in emerging seaside resorts. Invest-
ing on the waterfront was very profitable and every
year new hotels, restaurants and entertainment estab-
lishments as well as private villas were available to vis-
itors. To gain a better understanding of the scale of
tourism investments during that period, projects that
were halted and/or abandoned due to the outbreak
of the war should also be taken into account. These
projects also demonstrate how external political fac-
tors impact on tourism development.
Academica Turistica, Year 12, No. 1, June 2019 | 3
Tomi Brezovec Editorial
Tourism in Greece has followed a similar devel-
opment path. After some initial developments during
19th century when visitors in Greece discovered sea-
side bathing, the pre-war period brought significant
changes in terms of scale of investments, structure of
visitors and volume of tourism business. In her paper,
Kostidi presents insights into development of some
early Greek spa and seaside resorts and their transfor-
mation from domestic into international destinations.
The paper also focuses on changes of social struc-
ture of their visitors and discusses some governmental
measures that were crucial for tourism development.
Teodosio’s article discusses the process of regener-
ation of the waterfront within a wider geographical
context and describes practices introduced in Spain
and Italy. The development of urban areas around the
commercial port has often set the limit to further ex-
pansion of commercial activities. Their development
was thus possible only by moving commercial activ-
ity to a new location, abandoning the infrastructure
close to or within the city centre. Reuse of abandoned
and degraded industrial waterfront areas became a key
area of urban planning. Inmany cities, these areas have
been transformed into an attractive environment for
locals and tourists alike.
Centuries ago, bringing tourism to the shores of the
sea was a challenging venture. The sea was unattrac-
tive for visitors and uncompetitive to established in-
land thermal and spa centres. However, when seaside
environment was recognised as being beneficial for
health, the coast soon became a fashionable place. The
aim of this set of articles is to contribute to better un-
derstanding of this early development phase of seaside
tourism destinations. Learning from past experiences
does provide useful knowledge needed for develop-
ment of new destinations and for solving contempo-
rary seaside tourism issues.
This paper is published under the terms of the
Attribution- NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0
International (cc by-nc-nd 4.0) License.
4 | Academica Turistica, Year 12, No. 1, June 2019