Using archival material in tourism, hospitality and leisure studies: Beauty and the beast

Abstract

The aim of this chapter is to emphasize the importance of archival material and how, despite its secondary nature, it is capable of providing first-hand information for researchers. By providing a variety of examples from tourism, hospitality and leisure, this chapter demonstrates how this underused data can be a valuable resource for these areas of study. In order to illustrate how to use archival material as data, a step-by-step process to analyzing archival photographs is provided. The chapter discusses the challenges and ethical considerations associated with using archival material while also providing suggestions for the use of this data source in future studies.