I've heard about Machu Pichu since I was in middle school, so it was exciting to have the opportunity to visit the site. It is especially interesting as I look back at the experience in a business and marketing context.
It's a tricky balance to try to maintain traditional culture and history of a site while appealing to a modern base of customers, especially for places like Machu Pichu that attract such a large and diverse base of people. While we were walking through the site, we met a group of ladies from England, Spain and Italy. We also saw large groups of Asians touring the site! Machu Pichu is attractive site for people from all over the world.
Although there are many shops around the site, including an entire market, the main product from Machu Pichu is the experience. To promote the site, there is a ton of tourist merchandise with pictures of the mountain and the ruins including t-shirts, key chains, and postcards. On your way out of the site, you can also get your passport stamped with a special "Machu Pichu" stamp. When people leave with these things, they go home and show off all their merchandise, memorabilia, passport, and pictures, and thus spread awareness of the site.
Machu Pichu is a site marketed to tourists--people who are educated to know about the ruins and have money to travel. Not only do you pay for entrance into the site, but you pay for a train ride up to the area, and the bus to get you to the train. Then, the way the place is structured, you walk right through a market, where you can buy souvenirs. There are restaurants all along the train tracks.
We sat down outside at one of the restaurants for lunch. The food was great--they offered traditional Peruvian dishes and drinks as well as more American food such as hamburgers. The food definitely was attempting to attract tourists. When we were sitting at lunch, a seven man Peruvian band came around and began to play in front of our table. They played traditional Peruvian music and then started to play American favorites such as Simon and Garfunkel. They took requests! :) After playing for awhile they began to come up to our table and ask for money to keep playing. They also had some CD's to sell. They sold an album with traditional Peruvian music, and one American favorites. This was an obvious attempt to maintain culture while adapting when necessary to appeal to the customer--some customers would like the Peruvian music because it would seem more cultural, others would enjoy listening to familiar tunes.
Wynu Pichu is a mountain in the area that people can climb to get a higher view of the ruins and trail up to Machu Pichu. It is a very steep mountainside. In trying to preserve Wynu Pichu, they only let 400 people up the mountain each day. This preserves the site, the culture, but also makes the site more attractive to tourists. For example, when we visited Machu Pichu, we arrived around 10:00 a.m. A group of students wanted to climb Wynu Pichu, but they had already made the cut off for the day. Some of the people had been in line since 6:30 a.m. One of our advisors offered a man $200 for his spot, but the offer was declined! Because it is a challenge to climb to the top, and because there is only a small opportunity to do so, it has become a huge privilege to get up to Wyna Pichu! There is a lot of value in the opportunity. In this case, preserving the culture and natural formation of this spot actually increased the value and interest in the site.
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