Urban tourism promotion in Belgium and the Netherlands: an introduction

Abstract Urban tourism has expanded dramatically in recent decades, reshaping European cities economically, socially and culturally. Yet its roots run much deeper, as (early) modern urban centres – especially in the Low Countries – developed distinctive traditions of tourism and place promotion. This special issue highlights how civic boosterism, marketing innovations and inter-urban competition shaped these early practices. Bringing together new research on Belgium and the Netherlands, the special issue uncovers the actors, tools and narratives that fashioned urban tourism long before the late twentieth-century boom. Collectively, the contributions rethink the genealogy of urban tourism by analysing its ‘orgware’, ‘hardware’ and ‘software’ from the late eighteenth to twentieth centuries.