19. Dinosaur Geotourism in Europe, a Booming Tourism Niche

Dinosaurs are not only a very popular science topic, throughout the world, paleontological tourism highlighting dinosaur paleontological sites is booming. Dinosaur outcrops, “hot spots” of paleontological discoveries, are valorized into geotourism destinations contributing to local economic development based on a specific territorial resource: the paleontological resource. Even though the first discoveries of dinosaurs and the beginning of academic paleontological studies already had their origin in Europe in the nineteenth century, dinosaur geotourism is more recent and has developed significantly in the past decades. The following chapter will present an overview of the diversity of dinosaurian geotouristic sites in Europe. To highlight the geotouristic trajectories of chosen paleontological sites, several case studies will be presented. A few of them have joined the UNESCO Global Geopark network in order to gain a greater notoriety, others are outside of geopark’s territory or have chosen out of different reasons to manage their development by private companies or a public–private partnership. However, whatever the scientific interest of the sites, the success of these tourism projects must be based on a structured network of actors, gathering scientists, tourism stakeholders supported by local policy-makers, and of course local population.