© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015 Jafar Jafari and Honggen Xiao Encyclopedia of Tourism 10.1007/978-3-319-01669-6_269-1 Industrial tourism Alfonso Vargas-Sánchez 1 , Nuria Porras-Bueno 1 and Ma Ángeles Plaza-Mejía 1 (1)Management and Marketing Department, Faculty of Business Studies, University of Huelva, Plaza de la Merced, 11, Huelva, 21002, Spain Alfonso Vargas-Sánchez (Corresponding author) Email: vargas@uhu.es Nuria Porras-Bueno Email: porras@uhu.es Ma Ángeles Plaza-Mejía Email: plaza@uhu.es Without Abstract Industrial tourism, as a form of cultural tourism, can be defined widely or narrowly, and, depending on the definition used, its statistics are difficult to compare and aggregate. Two branches are commonly considered. One covers visits to companies, to sites where productive activity is actually happening, to witness processes that are actually alive, in motion, and in real time. The Other branch covers what it is usually known as industrial heritage tourism (or industrial archaeology), which is founded on a long dead and later recreated heritage. Although industrial tourism is not a new activity, it is acquiring increasing importance as a part of the cultural landscape in a growing number of destinations. A number of successful cases around the world (Otgaar et al. 2010) demonstrate the adequacy and benefits of exploiting the industrial tourism market. Retrospective development Industrial tourism is not a homogenous subject. It has been fragmented by approaches from diverse scientific and methodological standpoints. Thus, the main research areas under which studies can be categorized reflect its multidisciplinary character, with few and scattered research efforts in a somewhat disciplinary guerrilla warfare. This reflects the general situation of tourism, but is even more acute in industrial tourism studies. The conceptualization of tourism in its business and nonbusiness aspects is also applicable in this case. It is true that the economic and business management axis is present, but this is surpassed by geography. The panorama becomes even more complex when a mix of other disciplinary approaches are used, such as environmental and urban studies, humanities, sociology, and others. Generally, research on industrial tourism is supported by case studies conducted mainly in the United Kingdom and Spain, followed by Canada and the United States. These studies are predominantly descriptive and exploratory utilizing qualitative techniques. Concerning their topics of study, a