Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
INTRODUCTION
For thousands of years, Central Asia has played the critical role of con-
necting the East with the West and vice versa. This region contains the
most direct trade route between China and Europe, termed the Silk Road,
which has been documented since Roman times (e.g., Akayev, 2001; Airey
and Shackley, 1997). Although the list of Silk Road countries stretches
across Asia to the Middle East and from the Middle East on to Europe.
Covering nearly 28 countries, the relevance of the Silk Road as a tourism
project is gaining more importance in the Central Asian countries such as
Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan (Kant-
arci and Develioglu, 2013). For example, the study “the New Silk Road:
Mediators and Tourism Development in Central Asia” by Werner (2005)
focuses on the role of different actors (such as tour operators, hosts, and
guests) as mediators, who actively market and promote tourist destinations
for the development of tourism for Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. The study
by Vogel et al. (2003), on the other hand, explored if the former glory and
success of the historical Silk Road could be rejuvenated as a new e-Silk
Road in order to further develop e-commerce for the attractions, cultural
and heritage resources of the Silk Road cities and countries. The authors
concluded the e-Silk Road as promising but challenging with numerous
opportunities for research. The region's rich heritage invokes opportuni-
ties but also makes salient an ongoing need for cultural preservation and
special sensitivity that may be less necessary in other contexts. It is clear
that the historical prominence of the Silk Road has renewed significance
in global e-commerce and travel and is also receiving attention from re-
searchers representing different fields of academic studies.
One of the most unique e-projects is the attempt to form the Digital
Silk Roads project (http://dsr.nii.ac.jp/about.html.en) that was initiated by
the National Institute of Informatics of Japan (called NII) in conjunction
with UNESCO in April 2001. Since then, the project has held meetings,
conferences and archived the vast amount of cultural resources that exist
in and around the Silk Road cities and countries from the ancient to the
current in a form without deterioration, and inherit those resources for the
future. The specific aim of the project is to investigate various methods,
starting from the digitization of real cultural artifacts, and the construction
of digital archives, to the exhibition of digital cultural resources over the
network and annotation to digital cultural resources based on collabora-
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