Antiques Tourism and the Selling of Heritage in Eastern North Carolina

Abstract

Antiques tourism is a form of heritage tourism, wherein people travel in pursuit of antiques, or stop to shop for antiques during a trip for another purpose. It is an increasingly popular development strategy for cities and towns across North Carolina and throughout the United States. There have been few attempts to inventory or understand antiques tourism from an academic perspective, thus creating a need for site-specific empirical studies. This study describes the place of the antiques tourism trade in three eastern North Carolina communities —Selma, New Bern, and Wilson. Surveys, personal interviews, and general observation reveal significant differences in the ways in which entrepreneurs define what is “authentic” antiques-based development. There is variation in the scale and spatial form of antiques districts, the level of town involvement in promoting the antiques trade, the marketing strategies of owners and operators, the use of the Internet in promoting and selling antiques, and the types of antiques and customers.