Research projects
Tourism in South Tyrol from 1961 to 1983
The 1960s and 1970s marked an epochal turning point for South Tyrol in many respects: the elaboration and adoption of the South Tyrol Package laid the foundation for the Second Statute of Autonomy in 1972; at the same time, tourism advanced to become a pacemaker industry in those years, it created new jobs, brought investment into the region and brought about a new consumer culture. It created integration and separation, led to ruptures, offered unimagined opportunities, and shaped mentality and identity. In 1960 South Tyrol counted 3.7 million overnight stays, in 1980 it was already 17 million.
The research project of the Touriseum aims to critically illuminate these years of social awakening and the metamorphosis of South Tyrol's economic and cultural life, and to explore how the contact between the German-Austrian economic miracle and Italy's "miracolo economico" in the "hinge region" of South Tyrol led to a retarded boom and an increase in prosperity for broad sections of the population..
Behind the scenes
Life and work in the hotels of Southern Tyrol/South Tyrol between 1880 and 1939
In the context of a research project that ran from 2017 to 2020, the Touriseum investigated the living conditions and everyday work of management and employees of hotels in Southern Tyrol/South Tyrol, taken as a microcosm in order to provide a comprehensive look behind the scenes of the industry between 1880 and around 1939 – a time when tourism was still in its infancy.
As part of the research project, an international conference was held at the Touriseum in 2018. The proceedings of the conference have been published in the Touriseum's publication series "Tourism & Museum".
Archive of contemporary witnesses
In 2013 the Touriseum began to develop an archive of contemporary witnesses to continuously collect and keep tourism-related memories of people’s life stories. For the 2016 season, in its “HOTEL.GENERATIONS.STORIES” audio lounge, the Touriseum played excerpts from the memories of the everyday lives of individual generations in family-run tourist establishments in South Tyrol. A comprehensive analysis of the interviews appears under the title “The Bigger Picture – intergenerationality in family-run tourist businesses in South Tyrol” (German with English abstract) in the sixth volume of the Touriseum’s study series “Tourism & Museum”.