Visitor Activities in an Imaginary Country

Rachel, Ashman and Brown, Stephen and Patterson, Anthony (2026) Visitor Activities in an Imaginary Country. Annals of Tourism Research. ISSN 0160-7383 (In Press)

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Abstract

There are more imaginary countries than real ones. And many of them, from Middle Earth to Moomin World, have been turned into tourist attractions. This paper explores one such country, Barbie Land, a fantasy world that young girls visit when playing with their dolls and which, more than sixty-five years after its ‘discovery’, is being ‘realized’ in physical form. Drawing on 187 autobiographical accounts of remembered childhood play, and with the aid of a mythopoeic map drawn up by a legendary literary theorist, Northrop Frye, the paper explores, encapsulates and evaluates visitor activities in Barbie's imaginary country, noting that travellers’ telling tales come in four foundational forms: comedy, romance, tragedy and irony.