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1. Tourism Management 23 (2002) 117–125
Antiques and tourism in Australia
Ewen Michael*
School of Tourism & Hospitality, La Trobe University, Bundoora, Victoria, 3083, Australia
Received 2 August 2000; accepted 4 January 2001
Abstract
This paper reviews those commercial activities described under the labels of antiques, collectables, memorabilia, and oldwares that
are undertaken in regional Australia. While it may not be strictly correct to call them an industry in their own right, they are
substantial, at least in the Australian context, and appear to be particularly significant for regional economic development in some
localities. This paper treats them as a single industry to evaluate their significance as generators of tourism demand and visitation,
for they appear to create a range of economic and social benefits that adds value to existing destinations, and links sympathetically
to other forms of cultural and heritage tourism. The paper is focussed on the antiques industry in non-metropolitan Victoria
(Australia); nonetheless, it raises issues that may well be familiar to other regional environments where niche markets are component
parts of the domestic tourism product capable of supporting sustainable and non-intrusive forms of economic growth. r 2002
Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
Keywords: Antiques; Tourism; Victoria (Australia); Travel demand: Niche markets; Regional development
1. Introduction
The retailing of antiques, collectables, memorabilia,
oldwares and the like is a clearly visible and well-
recognised trade. Coincidentally, it often manifests itself
in Australia as part of a vast range of services at
identifiable tourist destinations, especially where the
location has a sense of heritage. Few analysts, however,
view this trade as an integral part of the services
provided under the umbrella of tourism, which is not
particularly surprising given the considerable difficulties
of separating retailing from other tourism derived
activities. It becomes more curious under closer scrutiny,
for even the most cursory review produces examples in
regional Australia where clusters of antiques and old-
wares traders deliver the entire commercial function of
small towns (as, for illustration, is the case in the
townships of Chiltern or Malden in the rural north of
Victoria). Simple observation, in Australia, suggests that
some of the locations of antiques firms serve as tourism
destinations in their own right, or as significant
supporting activities co-located with other principal
attractions. Indeed, the empirical curiosity that remains
to be explained in the Australian context is that it is rare
to find such firms in isolation from other elements of the
tourism or hospitality industries.
The scale of activities generated by the antiques
industry is substantial. It is a global trade, which has
been enhanced, but not threatened, by the cyberspace
revolution. Australia’s contribution is small; nonethe-
less, it is a billion-dollar industry that operates with its
own local and regional dynamics. The antique trades, as
a broad descriptor for this industry, can be found
throughout the developed parts of Australia. In
Victoria, particularly, retail sites are often located in
clusters in rural areas and in country towns, as well as in
suburban shopping strips. This paper estimates that
there were more than 3000 retailers operating through-
out Australia in 1999, ranging from small, single-
operator stakeholders in public markets to major
commercial enterprises employing 100 people or more.
Trade fairs and larger commercial exhibitions, of which
more than 30 were held in Victoria alone in 1999
(Garmony-Burton & Russell, 1999), are a persistent
feature of this business and regularly draw tens of
thousands of visitors to metropolitan and rural centres,
with the annual international exhibitions in Melbourne
and Sydney drawing up to 200,000 visitors each over five
or six days. In this industry, the distinctions between
*Tel.: +61-3-9479-1323; fax: +61-3-9479-1010.
E-mail address: e.michael@latrobe.edu.au (E. Michael).
0261-5177/02/$ - see front matter r 2002 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.
PII: S 0 2 6 1 - 5 1 7 7 ( 0 1 ) 0 0 0 5 3 - X

2. retailing, culture, leisure and tourism are often difficult
to sustain, blurring instead into an amalgam of common
behaviours that perhaps challenge the findings of some
contemporary researchers (McHone & Rungeling, 1999)
about differences between cultural and leisure tourists
and the special events they attend.
While it is axiomatic that an antiques business, like
any other, can be regarded as part of the overall tourism
industry according to its functions at a given location,
there is little appreciation of the role it can play in
generating a demand for travel to particular locations.
The hypothesis explored here is that a significant part of
the antiques industry in Victoria exhibits a set of
characteristics that often seem appropriately matched
to a tourism analysis. From this perspective, observa-
tions can be drawn about the industry’s operation that
sheds a new light on its role in support of tourism, and
on its potential to stimulate regional economic growth.
While this further illustrates the significance of some
retailing markets to the evolution of tourism demand; it,
more importantly, is an example of a niche market that
appears to enhance visitation to some regional localities
in a way that is compatible with the social and economic
needs of small communities. Harnessing the synergies
between this industry and the broader tourism market,
of course, remains a problem that confronts those with
an interest in regional economic development, but the
issue here, of course, is to determine how it contributes
to tourism?
2. The key elements of tourism
Analysing any industry from an economic or financial
perspective requires a careful delineation of borders and
a degree of certainty about the entity under examina-
tion. Flow-on and spillover effects are part of what the
business analyst wants to identify; but when an industry
comes under the tourism label there is often confusion
and ambiguity. Part of a business activity may be
tourism and part of it may not, or worse, the same
product or activity may be tourism for one consumer
but not for another (as the travel industry can attest). In
truth, these circumstances are not unusual when
assessing travel demand, as the issues of definition are
always ambiguous. Tourism research has contributed to
their refinement as each new problem is addressed, but
precision often remains a matter of perception. Never-
theless, there is value in rehearsing the arguments about
what constitutes a tourism-based activity to clarify when
and where the analyst might find better answers in this
field rather than in some other. The intention here is not
to redefine tourism, but simply to determine the merits
of analysing the antiques trade from this perspective, if
indeed that is appropriate.
The traditional approaches to tourism analysis were
derived from concepts of travel, recognising originally
that some aspects were not related to commerce or
migration. Transport economists and statisticians
clearly needed to separate classes of travellers and travel
markets for broad industry studies, but defining tourism
solely by travel over arbitrary distances or for con-
venient time-periods is not always sufficient for any
particular industry study. In Australia’s circumstances,
the concepts of time and distance take on a different
meaning in any case.
It has proved useful to bring the purpose for travel
into the assessment, suggesting that tourism is a leisure
or non-working activity, and to incorporate the idea
that ‘‘ya person chooses to performy’’ a particular
behaviour, thus emphasising the individual’s own
motivation as a determining factor (Aronsson, 1994,
p. 79). While not complete (it does not distinguish some
social activities like sport from tourism, for example)
this approach provides at least one basis for categorising
what is or is not tourism. This assumes, of course, that
the economic consequences of the activity are not
forgotten: the tourist, when all is said and done, is still
a consumer, albeit in some sort of specific market.
It seems difficult to be more precise than this without
resorting to particular examples or case-studies of more
general tourism activities. Heritage tourism, as one
illustration, might refer to tourism generated by
motivations associated with images of past cultural
and social practices, real or otherwise (Stewart, 1990;
Palmer, 1996). What distinguishes heritage or cultural
tourism is not the nature of the activity so much as it is
the delivery of specific socio-psychological needs for the
visitor, focussed perhaps on interests that explore
kinship, family, artistic expression and other visible
aspects of human endeavour (Zeppel & Hall, 1991).
The semantics of definition, however, are not always
appreciated in practice. In the State of Victoria, where
this case study is based, there are 78 municipal councils
with responsibilities for local economic development.
With two exceptions, each has identified tourism as a
potential growth industry, but in a context where
tourism growth means increasing the numbers of visitors
to that region. Hence, for these municipalities, any
activities that enhance the visitation process are seen to
have a tourism dimension, and are encouraged by the
State government to pursue them as elements of the
local region’s own competitive advantage. This accords
with the state’s Tourism Plan (Tourism Victoria, 1997)
which segments the tourism market into a myriad of
small activities, such as art and culture, skiing, camping,
shopping etc., allegedly identifying those with the
potential to increase visitation or extend the length of
stay in some part of Victoria or another.
The problems of definition, of course, become more
complex the more they are examined, and the arguments
E. Michael / Tourism Management 23 (2002) 117–125
118

3. are exposed wherever the borders between travel, visitors
and tourism are challenged. With no easy resolution
available, it makes sense to work with the more common
elements or characteristics of tourism, which might be
summarised as:
* the existence of travel or visitation for reasons not
associated with work or employment;
* motivation based on an individual’s own perceptions
of leisure or recreational requirements; and
* consumption or expenditure determined by those same
travel and motivational requirements.
3. Defining the antiques trades
The popular misconception is that trading in antiques,
collectables, oldwares, etc. is simply a retail activity
comparable to any other, with a separate identity only in
the characteristics of the goods that sold. In some
situations, particularly in inner city areas, this may even
be true. However, this industry is unusual in the way it
operatesFthe unique nature of its trading goods, their
manufacture (restoration) and distribution, the market’s
segmentation and stratification, the locational choices of
retailers, the motivation of customers, the approaches to
marketing, etc.Fall point to an industrial activity that
is difficult to define but is far more than retailing.
In Australia, at least, a single industry classification is
used for statistical and policy purposes to identify the
retailing and auctioning of antiques and second-hand
goods by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ANZSIC
class 5252: antiques and used goods retailing). This
classification includes furniture, clothing, books, stamps
and coins, jewellery and other valuables, but excludes
motor vehicles, real estate and livestock. Unfortunately,
it also includes pawnbroking that is an anathema to
most traders but is, in any event, different in its
economic function and can be separated out.
In the business disciplines, there is a surprising lack of
material on the structure of second-hand markets
generally, and even less on the antiques industry. This
may be because the industry’s small scale has attracted
little attention, or perhaps because it is a genuinely
complex construction of micro markets. For this
exploratory study, the methodology necessarily had to
rely on a series of discussions with traders and the
representatives of peak industry associations to establish
a qualitative understanding of the industry’s dynamics.
One problem they exposed from the outset is that they
hold a different view about the nature of their industry
to the analysts and statisticians; making it very obvious
that they do not see themselves as part of any single
coherent industry, but rather as members of much
smaller and highly specialised market segments. A
synthesis of their comments, provided in Table 1
suggests some guide for recognising the broad segmen-
tation within the overall description of the antiques
industry.
From the operator’s point of view, the industry
comprises discrete sets of distinguishable retailing and
production functions, although each can be sub-divided
into more highly specialised segments. Most antiques
dealers in the sample considered themselves to be
specialists in a particular field, say period furniture
from the Victorian era as an example, but focus their
commercial attentions on narrower sub-sets of their
field, such as early Victorian (1837–60) dining-room
furniture. An individual collectables dealer, as another
example, might concentrate on ceramic and porcelain
products, but specialise in particular time-periods by
specific manufacturers. There are, of course, many
situations where dealers bridge across market segments
or trade across similar or related activities, such as with
arts, crafts and hobbies, and may well include newly
manufactured goods, like Moorcroft ceramics for
example, amongst their stocks.
The degree of overlap between one or other of the
various specialist segments makes simple distinctions a
hazardous exercise. The pattern of micro-segmentation
and specialisation, at one level or another, is visible
across all categories of the industry’s operation. To
illustrate, the Australian Antique Dealers Association
(1999) currently lists 125 fields in which their members
claim to specialise; while some segments are serviced by
Table 1
Broad market segmentsa
Antiques: Trade in physical goods and artworks of intrinsic worth that
are at least one hundred years old: dealers often specialise in goods
belonging to particular localities, time periods, types of
manufacture, etc.
Collectables: Trade in physical goods of a similar nature that are
presumed to belong together, what makes something a collectable is
not its intrinsic worth but the desire of consumers to collect
examples of the product: dealers are usually highly specialised in
product type (Stamp and Coin dealers form a distinct sub-category).
Memorabilia: Trade in goods that are related to or commemorate a
particular past event or activity: dealers are usually highly
specialised (note: sporting memorabilia is the industry’s fastest
growing segment).
Bric-a-brac (Curios): Trade in goods of curiosity value, oddments or
decorative items which are not regularly sought by collectors: dealers
are diversified and usually sell items of lesser commercial value
(oldwares, comprising second-hand goods of the same nature, are
often treated this way to avoid confusion with antiques).
Junk (Second-hand): Trade in goods of questionable commercial value
but for which some market exists: dealers are highly varied in stocks
and activities, includes voluntary shops for some welfare agencies.
a
Note: These classifications and descriptions are provided to help
differentiate market segments but are not exclusive in their own right.
E. Michael / Tourism Management 23 (2002) 117–125 119

4. many dealers, others are so specialised that only two or
three dealers service them nationwide.
There is nothing novel, however, about viewing an
industry as a compilation of market segments, where
each has separate characteristics and unique sets of
attributes (Lancaster, 1966a, b). Indeed, it contributes to
an understanding of consumer behaviour for antiques
purchases because there is not so much demand for the
goods per se but for the characteristics possessed by
those goods: ‘‘Goods, as such, are not the immediate
objects of preference or utility or welfare, but have
associated with them characteristics which are directly
relevant to the consumer.’’ (Lancaster, 1966b, p. 14). In
short, the utility, the consumer derives from the
purchase comes from a bundle of attributes, and it is
that unique bundling which provides the basis for
segmentation of markets within the broader industry.
It is perhaps easier to view any efforts at categorising
market segments in the antiques industry as a spectrum,
ranging from rare and exotic antiquities to outright
junk, with specialist markets and specialised dealers
along the continuum. The industry, itself, is distin-
guished from others by the type of products that are
traded, and their non-essential and decorative nature. It
is predominantly, but not exclusively, a trade in goods
of a second-hand nature. In Victoria, this pattern of
segmentation, of specialisation within segments and of
overlap between them, is visible through all aspects
of the industry.
4. The economic impact of the antiques industry
There are obvious advantages in clumping these
micro-segments together for analysis under a single
industry label (the Antiques Industry) despite it being a
misnomer for many of the industry’s participants. One
advantage is that estimates can be made of the industry’s
aggregate economic value, to help in assessing its
potential for further development. The scale of the
industry, alone, is sufficient to have warranted more
detailed study than has yet been undertaken. The
Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS, 1994a, b) has
conducted a detailed industry survey in 1992, as part of
its last comprehensive review of all retail services, but
that survey was limited to only 1046 antiques firms, or
about half the registered businesses at that time. The
survey, conducted in the midst of the 1991–1992
recession, identified only firms that employed full-time
staff, and estimated industry turnover at a value of $297
million (1991–1992 prices). However, the 1996 Census
for Australia raises questions about the usefulness of
these results, as it identified twice as many comparable
businesses only four years later. While some of the
discrepancies can be explained, and some growth can be
factored in for the emergence of new trading entities in
the post-recessionary period, there are issues of con-
fidence with the earlier data.
In the absence of authoritative information, it is still
possible to estimate the industry’s scale. Extrapolating
from the 1996 census data, and excluding activities like
pawnbroking that are not a recognisable part of the
antiques industry, there were around 3000 operating
firms in Australia by 1998 that derived their core income
from the industry’s activities. (There are also a
substantial number of fringe-dwelling firmsFyet to be
assessedFthat participate in some aspects of this
industry’s activities but do not rely on it for their core
business.) Using the contentious retail survey results
(ABS, 1994a, b) to set proportionate scales, and
recognising that many of the additional businesses are
smaller commercial entities, output estimates can then
be made and adjusted for inflation and business growth.
This suggests that industry turnover in Australia by
1998 was around A$840 million with a net industry
product of around A$230 million (1998 prices). The
value-added contribution by the industry, in excess of
27%, seems remarkably high but is in line with past
experience. In Victoria, the estimates suggest there were
around 800 trading firms performing at a level more or
less equivalent to the national average. Table 2, below,
elaborates.
Estimates of this type must be treated with skepticism,
but they probably remain understated. First, trade in
second-hand goods is notorious for non-reporting and
underestimation, which is not to imply some public
fraud but rather to recognise that the source stock of
tradable goods is held by individuals who sell and barter
through various private markets before it is accumulated
by dealers or wholesalers. The problem is compounded,
because once the stock is obtained it requires restoration
and processing, hence its attributed value changes still
further. If recognition were also made for the sales of
Table 2
Estimates of the economic value of the antiques industry Australia,
States and Territories: 1998 ($ Million, 1998 prices)a
State Industry
turnover
Net industry
product
New South Wales 222 59
Victoria 227 59
Queensland 163 37
South Australia 86 20
Western Australia 101 37
Tasmania 20 6
Northern Territory 6 2
Australian Capital Territory 15 6
Australia 840 226
a
Note: These estimates are derived from initial data from ABS
(1994a, b) that have been adjusted for industry size, industry growth
and inflation for the period 1992–1998.
E. Michael / Tourism Management 23 (2002) 117–125
120

5. new goods and related materials by the firms within this
industry, these accounts would obviously be higher still.
The existing estimates serve to identify the industry’s
minimum economic contribution, but it is not unreason-
able to assume that Australia’s industry turnover
actually exceeded A$1 billion, with Victoria’s contribu-
tion around A$300 million in 1998. (This estimate
includes only sales for firms in the formal industry
classification; it does not include an assessment for
fringe-dwelling firms or for trade fairs and other events.)
The antiques and oldwares industry, however, is not a
retailing industry simply recycling used goods. Despite
the small scale involved, the industry is a complex
mixture of retailing, wholesaling and physical produc-
tion. Much of the industry’s cost structure is incurred in
the retrieval, restoration, renovation and preparation of
oldwares to fit them for the commercial market. It,
therefore, adds productive value as a manufacture and
just not as a distribution item. It generates employment
across a diverse range of skilled occupations; and,
perhaps more importantly, preserves skills that are often
not required for contemporary manufactures.
As a generalisation in Victoria, this production process
is labour intensive and highly skilled, but remains a high
yield activity based on single items or small batch lots.
The case-study suggests it is capable of sustaining small
businesses, and requires only small work-sites for
restoration or repairs that can often be located in
environmentally or socially sensitive areas without
causing intrusion. Given the high value attributed to
many products, and the small volumes, they can usually
absorb high transport and storage costs, implying that
the location of production facilities need not be
dependent on the location of retailing outlets. In short,
there is no significant economic reason to inhibit the
geographic spread of industry participants.
The mere existence of an identifiable antiques industry,
however, does not establish any connection with the
dynamics of tourism. For business and policy analyses,
there must be characteristics about this industry, or
elements of it, that are better suited to a tourism
analysis, rather than as some variant of retailing or
manufacture, to warrant a change in the analytical
approach. This requires a more detailed understanding
of the industry’s operations than currently exists.
5. Profiling the antiques industry
There are a number of unusual features that
characterise the operation of the antiques industry in
AustraliaFunusual in the sense that they are not those
common to retailing, but rather bear the hallmarks more
typically associated with service industries. This appears
to be the case even though it is a physical product that is
ostensibly the basis for trade. These can be reviewed by
looking more closely at the market structure and at the
nature of consumer demand.
5.1. The distinctive structure of retailing
As already observed, the Victorian dealers operate in
a small business environment where each provides for a
distinct and highly specialised market segment. The
local business firms, whilst growing in number, still only
average around three paid full-time equivalent employ-
ees each (confirming ABS, 1994b), with only a handful
of firms employing 20 people or more. Many, of course,
are owner–operator or family firms that make scant use
of the formal labour market. It must be assumed that
the commercial viability of such small-scale businesses is
achieved by the depth of specialisation required for each
microcosm of the market.
One implication worth emphasising is that the dealers
themselves are repositories of very detailed knowledge
about their own product lines, frequently gained by
education and training outside the industry. Many are
involved in extra-curricular activities in education,
information and promotion, that has more to do with
their fields of interest than with enhancing their
business’s turnover. In this sense, it is as much a lifestyle
(or vocation) as it is a business: they are selling not just a
physical item but the knowledge and heritage that goes
with it.
Another of the peculiarities of the antiques industry in
Victoria is apparent in the patterns of location and
clustering by firms and businesses. The available data
matches with trade listings (Garmony-Burton & Russell,
1999) to suggest that most firms, 60–65%, are located
outside the Melbourne metropolitan area. While there
certainly are many individual and isolated retailers, the
common pattern is to find clusters of traders in close
geographic proximity with each other, often forming
distinct precincts in either urban shopping areas or rural
towns. Another variant of this pattern occurs where
several traders operate jointly from the same premises,
sometimes by renting stall space or occasionally in
co-operative ventures.
The synergies behind the clustering of specialist retail
services are well understood, as these clusters or
precincts provide the means to pool the customer base,
thus expanding the potential level of sales (Porter, 1998,
p. 78). A similar pattern has been found in the
development of Book Towns in north-western Europe
to create a ‘‘ya critical mass of single commodity
retailingy’’ (Seaton, 1999, p. 390). However, in
Victoria, the antiques industry seems to take this to
another level where dealers gain more by co-operative
action than by competition. For them, there are not only
gains in marketing from close proximity to each other,
but also gains to be had from information sharing, stock
sharing and supplier access.
E. Michael / Tourism Management 23 (2002) 117–125 121

6. The co-location pattern is not confined within the
antiques and oldwares industry alone (horizontal
clustering), but seems to align with other types of
tourism and hospitality businesses. A random selection
of 30 sites for this project, around the rural fringe of
metropolitan Melbourne, found that without exception
wherever an operating antiques industry retailer was
identified, there existed a hospitality venue or service
located within close proximity (c.100 m). In some
examples, a caf!
e
e or tea-room had been established as
an integral part of the business itself. Visitor informa-
tion, specific purpose parking and other such services
were also common. In other words, an infrastruc-
ture location pattern commensurate with any tourist
destination.
The industry also relies heavily on trade fairs and
special events of all kinds. Major exhibitions, involving
as many as 100 independent dealers, are regular features
of the antique calendar in most Australian states, but
smaller fairs and a plethora of events for particular
specializations are held as a routine part of the
industry’s functions. In Victoria, for example, some
such exhibition-style activity is held somewhere in the
state on almost every weekend, whether in the form of a
trade fair or a single dealer project: although, their
quality is highly variable, perhaps reflecting the wide
spectrum of the market’s segmentation. The industry’s
associations also offer a range of workshops and
information courses to the public. Simple economics
would suggest that for such extra-curricula activities to
be an endemic feature of the industry, it must be an
effective form of selling, but anecdotally the dealers
reported that they were involved more to promote their
specialisations, or to meet client needs, than for financial
reward. The observation remains, however, that to stage
them in such a quantum there must necessarily be a
culture of co-operation and participation amongst the
dealers.
5.2. The characteristics of consumers
From the consumers’ point of view, the operation of
the antiques industry in Victoria also seems to exhibit
the characteristics of a service industry. The most
obvious is visible from the basic segmentation of the
market: it is not just that the dealers are specialists in
microcosms of the market, for their trade is based on
differentiating the physical products, rather, it is that the
products themselves engender a range of socio-psycho-
logical responses from consumers associated with
images of past cultural and social practice. The
consumption decision, then, is about access to heritage.
The motivations to purchase stemming from the
consumer’s own predilections, based on family, kinship,
artistic expression or human creativity. Even where
antiques are purchased nominally as investment items,
the attribution of a value to the asset stems from the
rarity of this access. Antiques and other oldwares, as
commodities, evoke a sense of association with both the
consumer’s history and sense of place, a merging of the
real and the imagined (Herbert, 1996, p. 77). This
bundle of motivations that drives antiques sales are
similar to those that analysts have identified in other
forms of heritage-based activity, including tourism
(Stewart, 1990; Zeppel & Hall, 1991; Palmer, 1996;
Chen, 1997).
In economic parlance, however, the purchase of
antiques or oldwares remains a highly discretionary
activity based on the consumers’ individual perceptions
of intrinsic worth, curiosity or the assumed contributory
value to a collection. In short, it is a decision which
reflects the consumer’s own sense of heritage and
culture, but one which can only be pursued after more
basic needs have been met. Again, in the context of a
consumption decision, it is similar to other tourism
purchase decisions (Bull, 1995).
The core consumer of antiques is a collector of items
from similar time-periods or of similar production types.
Other consumers may be less serious or buy only
occasionally, but they generally comprehend the var-
iance and segmentation of the market. This, by its very
nature, requires them to operate in a seek-and-find
mode. Given that dealers are small-scale specialists with
stocks that are disaggregated and vary over time, the
consumer has little choice but to search for the sources
of the items they want. Whilst there are agency and
Internet services that can consolidate the search task for
specific items, most consumers find it necessary to visit
the dealers to physically locate what they want. Indeed,
given that the commodities are second-hand and that
their values vary according to their condition, a physical
inspection is imperative. If this were a normal retailing
product such a process would have collapsed to market
forces long ago.
Customer profiles, whilst of limited value, can provide
useful indicators to distinguish markets or help to
identify genuine synergies between markets. Although
still the subject of current research, there is some prima
facie evidence that collectively these consumers form a
premium market (Michael, 1999). Possibly, the indus-
try’s customers can be categorised into three distinct
groups, the first being the serious collectors in search of
specific items to add to collections or to meet specific
interests. Secondly, there are consumers who are
occasional collectors, maintaining enthusiasm in the field
over many years but who purchase only when they have
time and resources availableFsuch activities, for this
group, are discretionary and so are incorporated into
their leisure functions as recreational pursuits on week-
ends and holidays. Both these groups of consumers are
likely to repeat visits to dealers over protracted time
periods as the dealer’s stockholdings change. The final
E. Michael / Tourism Management 23 (2002) 117–125
122

7. consumer category might be labelled as browsers, who
visit dealers to view the stock out of interest rather than
with a specific purchase decision in mind. For most
firms, nonetheless, they are an important part of the
customer base as they make up the impulse buyers.
Depending on the location, this group can form the
largest proportion of visitors, but they rarely match the
value of sales to the previous consumer categories.
This consumer profile is distinctive. Consumers who
purchase antiques and other oldwares by implication
have an intrinsic appreciation of heritage and culture
and (as an implied prerequisite) the economic resources
to obtain the products. Consumers are likely to be more
mature, better educated and higher income earners than
average. Many will be retired or semi-retired or have
substantial amounts of leisure time and, of course, own
homes or buildings suited to the storage (use) of their
collections. This profile identifies a high socio-economic
group with high levels of disposable income and
available leisure time. Concentrations of consumers
with these characteristics are not common and, quite
obviously, are highly prized in rural locations where
economic development is an issue. Similar circumstances
have been observed by Seaton (1996, 1999), where the
visitors to specialist Book Towns appear to exhibit a like
socio-economic background, and who demonstrate
travel patterns and consumption decisions that seem to
be based on similar requirements and motivations.
6. The antiques industry as a trip generator
One factor that clearly distinguishes the antiques and
oldwares industry from normal distribution processes is
that it functions as a trip generator. In Victoria, the
industry comprises small-scale businesses that are highly
specialised and working predominantly in dispersed
clusters. Certainly, there are clusters in the metropolitan
area, including the larger operators, but the case-study
indicates that two-thirds of the firms are located in rural
communities. Given that metropolitan Melbourne and
the nearby city of Geelong account for 85% of the
state’s population, it is difficult to argue that the
majority of firms could exist in this regional environ-
ment by servicing only the needs of their local markets.
Fairly obviously, they must draw a substantial volume
of their customers from more distant locations. Most of
the regional firms are located in a belt of 80–250 km
radius (1–3 h drive) from the CBD of Melbourne, and
appear to be reliant on weekend and holiday trade for
their survival. The reality, here, is that the need to travel,
to visit and to inspect the merchandise, makes up part of
the activities associated with antiques and oldwares
consumptionFfrom the customer’s perspective, half the
fun is finding it!
A Lancastrian interpretation might posit that part of
the utility the consumer enjoys is the search activity
itselfFthe requirement to visit the various locations to
look for what is desired forms part of the bundle of
attributes that makes up the collector’s activity. In
Victoria’s context, at least, a significant proportion of
the antiques trade is serving as a trip generator,
attracting people to locations where dealers operate. It
can be seen as a generator at two levels:
* as a primary generator that draws people to a location
because the predominant purpose of their visit is the
search for appropriate merchandise, thus serving as a
destination like any other tourism product (Stewart,
1990);
* as a secondary generator that provides an ancillary
activity at a location that induces the visitor to extend
their length of stay.
Even for travelers with a peripheral interest in
antiques and oldwares, the very existence of dealers at
a location that they have chosen to visit can add value to
that destination, by contributing another activity to
enhance the total basket of features that makes a visit
worthwhile.
As a trip generator there will be flow-on effects for the
location that is visited, particularly for those visitor
services that reflect the industry’s customer base,
including travel, accommodation and hospitality. For
comparison, the history of the development of Book
Towns manifests its success not so much in the
emergence of clusters of booksellers but in the symbiotic
growth of accommodation, catering and other visitor
services (Seaton, 1999). If there is any accuracy in the
Victorian customer profile, the need is for a concomitant
provision of services targeted at independent trave-
lersFmotor vehicle services, quality accommodation
and middle to upper range hospitality services, and
appropriate visitor information facilities. Perhaps, there
is some opportunity here for specific regional economies
to increase the level of visitation through the growth of
these micro-market clusters.
The multiplier impacts or flow-on effects of the
antiques trade on local economic communities also
appear to be highly significant. While the multiplier
effects of increased visitation for the macro-economy are
well-understood (Bull, 1995, p. 148), the same cannot be
said about the impacts from very small or niche markets
operating in local environments. Local multipliers are
difficult to measure and are usually variable or incon-
sistent between regions, depending on how self-con-
tained the local economy is. Guidance on this issue is
made more difficult in the absence of appropriate micro-
economic research into the antiques trade, either in the
Australian or international context, to establish a
framework for any such analysis. Logic, however,
suggests that the antiques trade will generate substantial
E. Michael / Tourism Management 23 (2002) 117–125 123

8. local impacts both because it draws new spending to a
region and because its mode of production is highly
specialised. Because it is a labour-intensive and value-
adding industry that can generate visitor travel in
some locations, it ought to have multiplier effects that
are larger than the industry’s scale would normally
anticipate.
One indicative industry study undertaken in Pennsyl-
vania, USA, reports a regional multiplier impact greater
than three (Grado, Strauss, & Lord, 1997), meaning that
for every dollar of expenditure created by the local
antiques trade more than three dollars were generated in
flow-on income effects for that regional economy. While
this outcome seems remarkably high, if applied to the
somewhat similar environments in rural Victoria, typical
clusters of three or four antique dealers in smaller
country towns, who might currently be creating around
A$800,000 in spending on average (adjusted from ABS,
1994b), would be generating a regional output of
A$2.4 million. Production earnings of this magnitude
are trivial at the macro level, but they translate to the
equivalent of 20–25 full-time continuing employment
positions that would be crucial to a small community’s
economy. Although the evidence is fragmentary, and the
Pennsylvania results are outside the Australian context,
the probability is that the industry is of greater
economic significance in some localities than has
previously been assumed.
7. Observations for regional tourism development
Victoria’s antique trade is just one example of a
successful small-scale private market, where some
element of it contributes to the domestic tourism
product. The State’s strategic tourism plan acknowl-
edges the antiques trade’s existence as a notable
reference amongst its shopping attractions (Tourism
Victoria, 1997), but no action or research has yet been
undertaken to enhance its performance. In the State of
Tasmania, there is a flicker of recognition that the
antiques industry, along with other micro markets,
generates visitors for the island’s accommodation
industry, and this (diagonal) clustering effect should be
recognised and marketed accordingly (Tourism
Tasmania, 1998). Many municipalities in both states,
however, now have a growing interest in the industry’s
potential as a dynamic to enhance local development.
The industry, perhaps, offers opportunities in specific
locations for the expansion of tourism and, might even
help to kick-start a tourism function where none
currently exists by drawing in new streams of visitors.
The very nature of the antiques trade places it at a
premium for tourism development, as the industry
attracts consumers with an appreciation of heritage
and a manifest high expenditure pattern. Moreover, it is
a sedentary activity that imposes little dislocation
on local communities and appears to have commercial
and cultural synergies with local hospitality operators
and other forms of arts, crafts and heritage-based
activities.
In rural environments, problems arise when the
growth of tourism impacts on local life-styles or delivers
benefits only to particular interests, with the conse-
quence that development is sometimes viewed with
skepticism, and the policy-making process itself is
perceived as dissociated from local needs and values
(Hall, Jenkins, & Kearsley, 1997, p. 136; Braithwaite,
Greiner, & Walker, 1998, p. 78). A spread of small-scale
developments is more likely to be received favourably as
they deliver broader economic benefits to a wider range
of interests and with less dislocation to the existing
communities (Hugonnier, 1999). The irony is that for
the same reasons small-scale tourism development
policies engender less political support and action than
larger icon projects even though the economic outcomes
may be substantial and the social impacts less intrusive.
Indeed, working on the economists’ assumption that
there is often more to gain in aggregate from a myriad of
micro developments, it is the enhancement of already
successful activities that is most likely to produce a
sustainable outcome for regional communities.
The particular problem that confronts the antiques
and oldwares industry in the development of regional
tourism, is that it is rarely perceived as one of the (many)
forces that motivates the demand for travel to particular
locations, even by co-located operators of other tour-
ism-type services. Often, antique businesses (like the
operators in other micro-markets) are presumed to be
part of a locality’s general commercial functions and
ignored in the tourism decision-process. This issue was
highlighted by Braithwaite et al. (1998) study of thirteen
Australian tourism product regions as a factor con-
straining tourism development, for they demonstrated
that frequently the tourism stakeholders in local regions
were not interacting across the range of tourism
activities and remained unaware of the of the role they
also play in attracting visitors. Obviously, the niche
market operators are the ones most easily isolated, and
this was shown to be a source of mistrust or antagonism
towards those supposedly responsible for local tourism
development (a view that the antique dealers in regional
Victoria appear to share).
Enhancing local tourism development requires an
understanding of the range of factors that generate
visitation and of the interrelationship and connectivity
with those industries that generate the demand for
travelFa sophistication that seems to be consistently
absent amongst both operators and planners. The
consequence for the operators in micro-industries, and
for antiques and oldwares dealers in particular, is
that there is often more to be gained from strategies
E. Michael / Tourism Management 23 (2002) 117–125
124

9. that devote their very limited resources to the
means that directly interface with their core clientele,
rather than worry about the development of the regional
product.
The results from this project are not conclusive in
their own right, but rather establish a prima facie case
for reassessing the role of micro markets, like the
antiques industry, as component parts of the domestic
tourism product. There is a need to better understand
how the antiques trade (and similar micro markets) acts
to generate travel demand in regional Victoria and to
quantify the impacts and effects of these activities. In
some circumstances, individual dealers and clusters of
dealers are drawing visitors to given locations, with
visible flow-on effects for the regional community, but in
others the choice of location is less effective. The
requirement is to comprehend the synergies and flow-
on effects between this micro-market and the growth
and development of their local tourism industries. The
extension of this project is now seeking to quantify these
impacts in specific locational clusters, and to clarify the
dynamics that create the capacity to draw visitors to a
region. The assumption remains: markets that enhance
the level of visitation to a region form part of an
interconnected package with other tourism activities,
hence, actions that can be taken to encourage the micro
components will contribute to the collective develop-
ment of a regional tourism product.
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