Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
8
Cultural Heritage, Tourism
and Socio-economic
Development
Dallen J. Timothy
Introduction
Heritage tourism is one of the most universal forms of tourism today and
has been for centuries. Even the Grand Tour and Christian pilgrimages of
ancient times were based primarily on visits to important artistic, cultural
and religious centers. Since the Middle Ages, however, cultural heritage has
become one of the main resources upon which mass tourism has been based,
the others being chiefly beaches and other coastal developments. Nearly all
mass-produced package tours utilize cultural attractions as their most salient
resources. The tours available through travel agencies, tour operators and
online sellers abound with stops at multiple heritage locales every day.
Europe's package tours notoriously include lists of cathedrals, castles,
fortresses and other such grandiose cultural sites. Latin American package
tours include Maya, Aztec and Inca ruins, while Asian circuits nearly always
include temples, shrines, historic city centers and rural villages.
Unmitigated mass tourism and boosterist promotional campaigns have
long been fingered as the primary culprits of social, cultural, ecological and
economic wrongs associated with tourism. Since the 1990s, scholars and
other observers have suggested that special-interest or niche tourism might
have fewer negative implications owing to their concentration on specialized
experiences wherein visitors tend to have more respect for the places they
visit (Weiler & Hall, 1992; Novelli, 2005). Thus, the tourists themselves become
resource stewards rather than simply resource consumers.
With mass tourism's overwhelming focus on the built environment and
living cultures, heritage resources have had to bear the burden of much of
tourism's negative impacts. On the other hand, they provide much of the
development potential for tourism destinations. This chapter describes two
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