Heritage Accommodation and Literary Tourism
Pedro Vaz Serra & Cláudia Seabra (University of Coimbra, CEGOT – Geography and Spatial Planning Research Centre, Coimbra, Portugal)
Heritage accommodation refers to units that carry historical significance and generate a heritage experience through the convergence of tangible and intangible elements (Xie & Shi, 2020), thereby incorporating a sense of depth and originality (Elshaer et al., 2022). This type of accommodation is recognised by tourists and guests as promoting the integration of history and tourism, thereby generating contemporary meanings (Bright et al., 2020). This is a scenario resulting from a gradually growing interest in art, culture and history, with increasing demand for heritage accommodation and a gradual increase in units that fulfil this function and that design, communicate and facilitate value-generating tourist experiences (Elshaer et al., 2022).
One of the growing concerns in the development of these accommodation units is the crucial need to preserve the built cultural environment (Elshaer et al., 2022) whose architectural importance can contribute to the development of future generations, standing out as an existing resource of structures, elements and materials (Bright et al., 2020), where the heritage itself constitutes a tourist experience (Tu, 2020). To understand the uniqueness sought in heritage accommodation encounters, it is essential to examine which experiences can satisfy the needs and expectations of contemporary cultural consumption (Elshaer et al., 2022), identified as a collection of material, intellectual, spiritual, and emotional content that sets a community apart, including architecture and art, tangible and intangible heritage, gastronomic experiences, musical chords, creative industries, and living cultures, framed by the literature and identified with the segment type associated with heritage accommodation units (Richards, 2021).
Literary tourism is motivated by the desire to visit a destination because of its literary significance (Baleiro & Quinteiro, 2018) and can be further enriched by integrating the unique features of heritage accommodation. Through a combination of architecture, decoration, and context, it creates a heritage setting that allows visitors to explore, experience, and immerse themselves in this environment, which becomes a significant cultural and historical marker (Richards, 2021; Tu, 2020). Such integration contributes to the cultural development of destinations and aligns with sustainable tourism practices by creating tourist experiences, such as itineraries or infrastructure linked to literary heritage, thereby boosting attractiveness and competitiveness (Rodrigues et al., 2024). These experiences include visits to literary sites, which gain significance from their associations with writers and the settings of their works, forming an integral part of the heritage tourism landscape (Baleiro & Quinteiro, 2018). Literature is therefore a relevant cultural heritage, serving as an informative and documentary resource of the utmost importance for collective memory, identity, meaning and transmission to future generations (Richards, 2021).
In this context, there are literary hotels, which (i) include a literary theme in their offering; (ii) are associated with an author; (iii) are dedicated to an author; (iv) are identified with a literary work; (v) are library hotels (Çevik, 2022). These lodging units, which may or may not be synonymous with heritage accommodation, do not represent a homogeneous tourist product but rather a broader, more comprehensive concept with a wide range of offerings, including products and experiences aimed at a broader target audience (Çevik, 2022).
As an instance of heritage accommodation, some units hosted celebrated writers, who worked there or drew inspiration from them. The connection with literature is historical, but the hotel was not built specifically for that purpose. This is the case of the Pera Palace Hotel (Istanbul), a charming 19th-century property where Ernest Hemingway stayed several times and where Agatha Christie wrote Murder on the Orient Express in room 411 (Pera Palace Hotel, 2026).
Other units have been repurposed for tourism from residences or workspaces of writers, such as GoldenEye (Jamaica), an imposing property with magnificent gardens, private beaches, and lakes, owned by Ian Fleming, the author who, through his writing, made James Bond famous (Reveal World, 2026). There are also heritage lodging establishments that have literature as their central theme, such as The Literary Man Obidos Hotel (Portugal), housed in a 19th-century building, which, with its approximately 100,000 books, is one of the most significant literary hotels in the world (The Literary Man Obidos Hotel, 2026).
The convergence of heritage-based accommodation with literature implies a cultural tourism scenario which reflects contemporary preferences, with a predominant search for distinctive experiences (Tu, 2020). Heritage encompasses various dimensions of culture, identity, language, and locality (Tu, 2020), which contribute to a sense of belonging, roots, and even the order and continuity of a collective future (Richards, 2021).
In the present time, the heritage is updated based on evaluation criteria, which assign different meanings to places, practices, or objects that originated in the past and are re-evaluated in terms of heritage (Bos et al., 2025), with implications for tourism and for past, present and future generations is particularly relevant due to its aesthetic, historical, scientific, social and spiritual dimensions (Vaz Serra et al., 2023). This implies the creation, maintenance, and transmission of new forms of harmony in the relationship between heritage and community; that is, memories are dynamic and depend on the cultural environment, moral sensibility, and contemporary demands (Choay, 2017).
In this context, the tourist experience resulting from the convergence between heritage accommodation and literary tourism reflects a reality in which the historical and heritage value of accommodation units and literature has an increasing influence on tourists’ decision-making and guest satisfaction, an essential element for tourism competitiveness and sustainability (Vaz Serra et al., 2023).
Literary tourism, in this context, can be an element that induces experiential value through the interaction between guests’ needs and expectations and the inherent attributes of an offering in which literary culture is an omnipresent and distinctive element, thereby challenging its appreciation and enjoyment.
How to cite this entry: Vaz Serra, P., & Seabra, C. (2026). Heritage accommodation and literary tourism. In R. Baleiro, G. Capecchi & J. Arcos-Pumarola (Eds.), E-Dictionary of Literary Tourism. University for Foreigners of Perugia. https://doi.org/10.34623/zdg2-hn59
References
Baleiro, R., & Quinteiro, S. (2018). Key concepts in literature and tourism studies. Centro de Estudos Comparatistas, Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa. https://repositorio.ulisboa.pt/handle/10451/38442?locale=en
Bos, M., Claeys, D., Stiernon, D., & Vandenbroucke, D. (2025). Objectivising heritage assessment with values: a criteria-based grid and a constructivist approach. Heritage, 8(4), 116. https://doi.org/10.3390/heritage8040116
Bright, C., Foster, K., Joyner, T., & Tanny, O. (2020). Heritage tourism, historic roadside markers and “just representation” in Tennessee, USA. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 29(2-3), 428-447. https://doi.org/10.1080/09669582.2020.1768264
Çevik, S. (2022). Literary hotels: A new type of literary tourism or just a product? Dos Algarves: Tourism, Hospitality & Management Journal, 42, 25–48. https://doi.org/10.18089/DAMeJ.2022.42.2
Choay, F. (2017). Alegoria do património. Edições 70.
Elshaer, I. A., Fayyad, S., Ammar, S., Abdulaziz, T. A., & Mahmoud, S. W. (2022). Adaptive reuse of heritage houses and hotel conative loyalty: Digital technology as a moderator and memorable tourism and hospitality experience as a mediator. Sustainability, 14(6), Article 6. https://doi.org/10.3390/su14063580
Pera Palace Hotel. (2026). The literary adventure of Ernest Hemingway and the traces that he left at Pera Palace. https://perapalace.com/en/the-literary-adventure-of-ernest-hemingway-and-the-traces-that-he-left-at-pera-palace/
Reveal World (2026). Reveal World | GoldenEye Hotel & Resort, Oracabessa, Jamaica (Ian Fleming). https://reveal.world/en/story/mir-oteli-v-kotoryh-zhili-velikie-pisateli-i-byli-napisany-velikie-knigi-i-gde-segodnya-mozhete-ostanovit-sya-vy-v2-5137/goldeneye-is-a-mansion-now-a-hotel-of-the-famous-novelist-ian-fleming-in-oracabe
Richards, G. (2021). Rethinking cultural tourism. Edward Elgar Publishing Limited. https://pt.richardstourism.com/_files/ugd/d0456c_9d5d05385a56415f85809669650a429e.pdf
Rodrigues, C., Liberato, D., Esteves, E., Sousa, B., Liberato, P., Costa, A., Pereira, C., Malheiro, M. A., & Carvalho, P. (2024). Literary tourism: Literature developments and research lines from 2015 to 2020. In V. Katsoni & G. Cassar (Eds), Recent Advancements in Tourism Business, Technology and Social Sciences (pp. 845–873). Springer Nature Switzerland. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-54338-8_50
The Literary Man Obidos Hotel. (2026). The Literary Man. https://www.theliteraryman.pt//homepage
Tu, H.-M. (2020). The attractiveness of adaptive heritage reuse: A theoretical framework. Sustainability, 12(6), Article 6. https://doi.org/10.3390/su12062372
Vaz Serra, P., Seabra, C., & Caldeira, A. (2023). From cultural heritage to cultural tourism: A historical-conceptual approach. In J. V. Carvalho, A. Abreu, P. Liberato, & A. Peña (Eds), Advances in Tourism, Technology and Systems: Selected Papers from ICOTTS 2022, Volume 1 (pp. 91–101). Springer Nature. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-0337-5_8
Xie, P. F., & Shi, W. L. (2020). Elucidating the characteristics of heritage hotels. Anatolia, 31(4), 670–673. https://doi.org/10.1080/13032917.2020.1744456