This paper reviews the roles of famous individuals (icons), who have become heroes or heroines in their fields, as the basis for developing and marketing tourism destinations. It argues that this phenomenon has been neglected in the tourism literature. Seven case studies are presented and analyzed using famous individuals from Australia, Canada, England, Scotland, and the USA. Based upon MacCannell's (1989) site sacrilization process, a five-stage process for icon attraction development and marketing is presented. The paper also identifies a number of important issues regarding the use of individuals as tourist icons.
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Pearce et al. (2003) studied this question.
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