Abstract ID: 3.9046 | Accepted as Talk | Talk | TBA | TBA

The commodification of mountain landscapes is conceptualised through the processes of tourism marketisation in high-elevation protected areas in The Alps. It is a question of market territorialisation and market-making as a space making process. The spatial dimensions of market constitution and the dynamics of the re/configuration processes are not limited to locational choices and travel costs, but they are also founded on key concepts such as scale, network, territory and space. These concepts generate a broader landscape consumption critique where the territorial qualities play a key role in the processes of marketisation. Moreover, the marketisation emphasises the importance of regulatory regimes within various administrative scales and cross-scalar relations. Founded on field landscape documentation surveys in Alto Adige/Südtirol, the geography of tourism marketisation enables networked tourism market framing — through complex network analysis for the inter-connectivity between spatial units, i.e., relations and movement between space(s). Moreover, it analyses the delineation of the capacities of different actors and factors in the territory of the protected area (primary space) and the regional market space (secondary space). The marketisation re/configures the exchange pattern between the image produced and promoted for mountain landscapes (characteristics/commodity) and the visitors (consumers) across various administrative scales and local and regional levels of integration. The exchange takes place in high-elevation mountain areas. It is part of the wider re-thinking of the protected areas form the perspective of the geography of tourism marketisation to regulate the delimitation and connectivity of protected areas, and socio-ecological relations and market territorialisation.