Roots tourism

Apparently, my Ancestor Swap Challenge I proposed last month was a bit too daunting, as nobody has taken me up to the challenge yet. So instead, I will talk about an aspect of the worldwide genealogy industry that I find fascinating: roots tourism.

Living in a country from where many people emigrated over the centuries (the Netherlands), we get a lot of tourists looking for their roots. I have several clients for whom I have prepared visits, doing research beforehand to find out exactly where their ancestors lived. In some cases, they went there themselves and in other cases I doubled as their tour guide.

I always learn a lot from these trips, especially about my own preconceptions about what is 'normal' :-) Like the time I said "your ancestor lived in the third house" and the client responded "what do you mean, I only see one house?" She had never seen houses that don't have yards between them and did not realize that those houses shared a wall. She saw one house, where I saw twelve!

Roberta Estes and Cheryl Ferverda looking for their ancestors' graves in Baard, Friesland

I am currently working with the archives in Friesland, one of the northern provinces of the Netherlands, to promote roots tourism. The Frisian archives are creating a 'roots package' for people of Frisian descent. They will research their immigrant ancestor's family tree back several generations and create a custom itinerary to show them where their ancestors lived. I participated in the trial last week, which was wonderful. An American client of mine, Roberta Estes, came over to see all the places I had found for her, together with her cousin Cheryl Ferverda. I wrote an impression about the first day of that trip on my blog.

Promoting roots tourism is pretty new in the Netherlands, but I think it has great potential. I know there are similar projects going on in Scotland and Ireland (the Homecoming, the Gathering). In Ireland, local historical societies were asked to reach out to the descendants of the people who left that area and to invite them to come back for a visit. It was a tremendous success. I think such a 'grassroots' approach would work very well in other countries of origin too.

Do you know of any other projects where people visited their places of origin? Do you know of any successful business models or marketing efforts? I would love to exchange ideas so please leave a comment or contact me via my website.