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Nascent Trends in Heritage Tourism
Cultural heritage is one of the most salient resources for tourism throughout the world. Many places rely on it entirely for their tourism economies, while for other destinations it is a secondary or ancillary attraction to nature, beaches or other mainstream resources. After three decades of research on heritage tourism, as tourism researchers we know a great deal about the supply of, and demand for, cultural heritage( Herbert, Prentice and Thomas, 1989; Prentice, 1993; Timothy and Boyd, 2003). Most research on heritage tourists and the places they visit has been case study-oriented and descriptive in nature( e. g. Chen and Chen, 2010; Draper, Oh and Harrill, 2012), but it has taught us a great deal about what tourists have traditionally sought as consumers of the past and what destinations have attempted to sell to them.
By: Dallen J. Timothy, Professor of Tourism Arizona State University, USA
Today, however, it is time to begin thinking beyond the normative ways that we as researchers have always thought about heritage tourism. This supports the notion that tourism is not static and neither are its consumers or its products. As the editor of the Journal of Heritage Tourism and given the opportunities I have had in recent years to visit many areas of the world, I have been able to observe and assess several new trends, a few of which are worth mentioning here.
The first trend is the reorientation of what the public now sees as heritage worth visiting. Heritage has been variously defined by different scholars, but what all definitions essentially boil down to is the idea that whatever we inherit from the past and use in the present day is heritage( Graham, Ashworth and Tunbridge, 2000; Timothy, 2011). Thus, heritage encompasses much more than the tangible, majestic, and ancient icons that have so frequently been the focus of heritage tourism development and the cultural gaze. There is now an emerging recognition that intangible, ordinary, and newer heritages are equally important for conservation and tourist consumption( Timothy, 2014a, 2014b; Wang, 1997). The stories of peasants, the poor, slaves, and ethnic minorities are as important as the heritage of the kings and landlords, and there is a growing appreciation of this, particularly in the Western world.
A second trend is the notion of branding. For many places, heritage has become the brand with which they are most closely associated. UNESCO’ s World Heritage List and many other‘ markers’ or‘ brands’ are gaining increasing visibility in the global marketplace. In the United States, the National Historic Landmarks Program and the Register of Historic Places are two programs that help attractions emphasize their historic importance and often serve as a brand for tourism marketing purposes. World Heritage Sites are of particular global importance, and even though many countries feel that branding their heritage with the UNESCO label will automatically increase arrivals, research shows that this is not necessarily the case.
Trails and routes are another important heritage trend. These might be either organically-developed routes, such as religious pilgrimage trails, historic railroads or ancient trade routes, or they can manifest as intentionally-developed and assembled routes that link similar attractions and locations together into a linear corridor. Food trails, routes linking a specific architectural form, or circuits that connect scenes from a famous person’ s life are all examples of this form of‘ purposive’ route. Many places are beginning to see routes and trails as an important‘ new’ tourism product that can help spread the economic benefits to other areas, as well as dilute the negative social and ecological outcomes of tourism.
ACCESS:
Voice Of Tourism Education 2nd Edition
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