The Mall of America as a Tourist Attraction.(shopping center and recreational facility,...

Shopping malls and leisure time

The study of leisure activities has expanded at a rapid pace in the past decade. Traditional studies of tourist venues concentrated largely on swimming, hiking, skiing, or cultural discovery. Many of these studies noted that tourists like to shop. In fact, tourists have always been shoppers, from the days of the Romans to the present. In his 1993 article "The Magic of the Mall," geographer Jon Goss noted that shopping is the second most important leisure activity, exceeded only by television watching. It makes sense that developers would