HERITAGE TOURISM MODULES

MODULE 2
CONCEPTS OF CULTURAL TOURISM

(Photo grabbed from whc.unesco.org)

INTRODUCTION

Cultural tourism has been a significant part of the tourism industry. Heritage has always been a part of the
culture of a community. Together, they represent the authenticity of a community and how it could be used in
terms of tourism. This chapter will enable students to understand the concepts of Cultural Tourism and
Heritage as a form of cultural product. The chapter will also introduce the Heritage Cycle and identify examples
of Cultural Heritage.
LEARN IT!

Learning Objectives:
● Explore the different concepts of cultural tourism
● Describe the heritage as a mode of Cultural Production
● Explain the Heritage Cycle
● Describe the examples of Cultural Heritage

CONCEPTS OF CULTURAL TOURISM

CULTURAL TOURISM

Definitions:

1. According to the United Nations World Tourism Organization, cultural tourism is the “movement of
people for essentially cultural motivations such as study tours, performing arts and cultural tours, travel
to festivals and other cultural events, visits to sites and monuments, travel to study nature, folklore or
art, and pilgrimages”.
2. A type of tourism activity in which the visitor’s essential motivation is to learn, discover, experience and
consume the tangible and intangible cultural attractions/products in a tourism destination. These
attractions/products relate to a set of distinctive material, intellectual, spiritual and emotional features of
a society that encompasses arts and architecture, historical and cultural heritage, literature, music,
creative industries and the living creatures with their lifestyles, value systems, beliefs and traditions.
3. Travelers look for an “authentic experience” and a community has special features which include
history, traditions, and arts and culture that set it apart from the rest.

Your community has a story to tell, and finding an engaging way to tell that tale is one way to attract visitors.

Other definitions:
1. The journey of people to specific destinations that offer cultural attractions, including historic sites and
artistic and cultural events and shows, with the aim of acquiring new knowledge and experiences that
meet the intellectual needs and individual growth of the traveler.
- Creative Tourism and Cultural Heritage

2. It is a type of tourism in which tourists travel to a destination to experience cultural attractions like fairs,
festivals, food, arts, etc.
- Regional Food as the Catalyst for Cultural Tourism in India

3. Type of tourism associated with the “cultural encounter”.

- Tourists’ Awareness of World Heritage: The Case of Tourists Visiting the Algarve (Portugal)

4. Tourism concerned with a country or region’s culture.

- Digital Technologies for “Minor” Cultural Landscapes Knowledge: Sharing Values in Heritage and
Tourism Perspective

5. A form of specialized cognitive tourism that focuses on tangible or intangible cultural heritage.
- Sustainable Development of Cultural Tourism on Example of Botevgrad Municipality: A Model for
Local Tourist Development

6. A form of tourism that allows tourists to be immersed in local culture related activities such as rituals
and festivals. It leads the destination in providing opportunities for authentic cultural exchange between
locals and visitors. For destinations, it encourages local communities to embrace their culture and boost
economic growth, developing culturally geared tourism programs; encourages destinations to celebrate
and promote what distinguishes their communities for an authentic cultural exchange between locals
and visitors.
- Balancing Value Co-Creation: Culture, Ecology, and Human Resources in Tourism Industry
 7. An economic activity that is related to events and organized trips and directed to knowledge and leisure
with cultural elements such as: monuments, architectural complexes or symbols of historical nature, as
well as artistic/cultural/religious, educational, informative events or of an academic nature.
- Architecture Tourism, and Technological Innovation in the Jesuit Mission of Sao Miguel, Brazil

8. All movements of people to specific cultural attractions, such as heritage sites, artistic and cultural
manifestations, arts and drama outside their normal place of residence.
- Perceptions and Opinions of the Host Community Regarding Over tourism in the Tourist-Historic City:
A Case Study in Toledo (Spain)

9. Tourism that values? Tangible and intangible aspects of the culture of a certain tourist destination,
closely linked to the local community, heritage, history, architecture, traditions, arts and crafts,
gastronomy, painting, dance, music, social practices, rituals, festive events, which are factors of identity
and preserve authenticity.
- Sea Tourism Heritage in Portuguese Coastal Territory

10. Type of tourism that relies on cultural resources (i.e. heritage) of a region and provides opportunities to
learn more about the region’s way of life.
- Entertainment and Food Tourism in the Backdrop of Late Modernity and a Reflection on Turkey

11. A type of tourism activity in which the visitor’s essential motivation is to learn, discover experience, and
consume the tangible and intangible cultural attractions/products in a tourism destination (UNWTO).
- The impact of an International Literary Festival in a Tourist Destination

12. Is the movement of people to cultural attractions away from their normal place of residence, with the
intention to gather new information and experiences to satisfy their cultural needs.
- The Culture on the Palm of Your Hand: How to Design a User Oriented Mobile App for Museums

13. Cultural Tourism (CT) is effectively a synonym for heritage or ethnic tourism – a way for travelers to
access the charm of local communities’ traditions, folklore, spaces and values.
- Assessing the Use of Archaeological Sites as Cultural Tourism Resources: The Case of Segobriga,
Spain

Cultural Heritage Tourism had become an important part if the tourism industry because of its:
● Great value in cultural, historic, and environmental dimensions
● An approach to inheriting and disseminating traditions, customs, and knowledge
● An opportunity for community to revitalize the local economy and increase employment rate

Cultural tourism - defined by the UNWTO as tourism centered on cultural attractions and products - is one of
the fastest-growing segments of the tourism industry, accounting for an estimated 40% of all tourism
worldwide. It intersects with heritage and religious sites, crafts, performing arts, gastronomy, festivals and
special events, among others.

Countries around the world are harnessing their unique mix of tangible and intangible heritage and
contemporary culture to boost economic growth and sustainable development through cultural tourism, which
can lead to job creation, regeneration of rural and urban areas, and the protection of natural and cultural
heritage. The tourism sector as a whole is estimated by the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC) to
contribute 330 million jobs – one in ten jobs around the world

https://www.unesco.org/en/articles/cutting-edge-bringing-cultural-tourism-back-game
HERITAGE AS A NEW MODE OF CULTURAL PRODUCTION

Cultural Heritage is an expression of the ways of living developed by a community and passed on from
generation to generation, including customs, practices, places, objects, artistic expressions and values.
Cultural Heritage is often expressed as either Tangible and Intangible Cultural Heritage (ICOMOS, 2002).

CULTURAL HERITAGE TYPES

As an essential part of culture as a whole, Cultural heritage contains these visible traces from antiquity to the
recent past.
● Built environment – buildings, townscapes, archaeological remains
● Natural Environment – rural landscapes, coasts and shorelines, agricultural heritage)
● Artifacts – books and documents, objects, pictures
TANGIBLE AND INTANGIBLE HERITAGE

Having at one time referred exclusively to the monumental remains of cultures, cultural heritage as a concept
has gradually come to include new categories. Today, we find that heritage is not only manifested through
tangible forms such as artifacts, buildings or landscapes but also through intangible forms.

‘Tangible Cultural Heritage’ refers to physical artifacts produced, maintained and transmitted
intergenerationally in a society. It includes artistic creations, built heritage such as buildings and monuments,
and other physical or tangible products of human creativity that are invested with cultural significance in a
society.

‘Intangible Cultural Heritage’ indicates ‘the practices, representations, expressions, knowledge, skills – as
well as the instruments, objects, artifacts and cultural spaces associated therewith – that communities, groups
and, in some cases, individuals recognize as part of their Cultural Heritage’ (UNESCO, 2003). Examples of
intangible heritage are oral traditions, performing arts, local knowledge, and traditional skills, cuisine, clothing,
forms of shelter, technologies, religious ceremonies, performing arts, and storytelling.

Today, we consider the tangible heritage inextricably bound up with the intangible heritage. In conservation
projects we aim to preserve both the tangible as well as the intangible heritage.

HERITAGE CYCLE
The Heritage Cycle diagram gives us an idea how we can make the past part of our future (Simon Thurley,
2005). The HC strategy wants “to help people develop their understanding of heritage to get onto other
people's agenda in order to enable and promote sustainable change and to help the local communities to care”
(Thurley, 2005)

In a clockwise direction the wedges and arrows read:

● By understanding (cultural heritage people value it
● By valuing it people want to care for it
● By caring for it, it will help people enjoy it
● From enjoying it comes a thirst to understand
18 EXAMPLES OF CULTURAL HERITAGE
John Spacey (2019). Retrieved from: https://simplicable.com/new/cultural-heritage

Cultural Heritage is what remains of historical culture that still has value to living culture. This includes tangible
things such as artifacts and intangible things such as traditions.

The following are common types of cultural heritage:

1. ARCHITECTURE
● Major component of cultural heritage because buildings and other structures can survive for
hundreds, and in some cases, thousands of years.
● Architectural styles vary widely by region and change a little with each passing decade. As such,
architecture is often representative of a time and place.

Examples:
a. Chapelle Notre-Dame du Haut, Le Corbusier
Ronchamp, France New to the World Heritage list this month, Le Corbusier’s Chapelle Notre-Dame du Haut
reigns among the architect’s most famous works. The concrete-and-stone structure, completed in 1954, is also
known as the Ronchamp Chapel after the eastern French city it inhabits.

b. Mosque of Córdoba
Córdoba, Spain Considered one of the finest examples of Moorish style in the Iberian Peninsula, the Great
Mosque of Córdoba is a symbol of Spain’s tempestuous religious history, having been both a mosque and a
cathedral over its years. The mosque sits on the World Heritage list along with the historic center of Córdoba.

c. Aachen Cathedral
Aachen, Germany Built around 780 as Charlemagne’s Palatine Chapel, Aachen Cathedral sits in its namesake
city in Western Germany. The largest cathedral in Western Europe, Aachen melds classical and Byzantine
traditions with opulent mosaics and vaulted ceilings. The result is a dramatic religious building that would
influence centuries of European design to come.

2. GENIUS LOCI
● Is the spirit of the place, this can include any element of the built environment or nature surrounding
a location. For example: the urban design of a neighborhood can be viewed as cultural heritage if it
has some unusual characteristics that people value.

Example:
Throughout the history of Easter Island, the Rapanui people have manifested their idiosyncrasy through a
series of original and own symbols, unpublished in other cultures. This unique image gallery is primarily
inspired by the nature, lifestyle and beliefs of the ancient inhabitants.

- Moai the main icon of Easter Island – Moai Aringa Ora which means “living face of the ancestors”.
Made by ancient islanders to represent their ancestors, rulers, or important ancestors, who after death
had the ability to spread their “mana” or spiritual power over the tribe to protect it.

- Manutara (lucky bird), the sacred bird of Rapa Nui

- Tangata Manu, the birdman of Easter Island

- Hook or mangai, is an artifact spread throughout Polynesia and they used it to obtain food for their
subsistence. It is used as an amulet of prosperity, abundance, protection and good luck.

3. STORIES
● including traditional myths, legends and remarkable works of fiction
Example:
a. Mausoleum of First Qin Emperor (China)
The mausoleum of Emperor Qin Shi Huang, who unified China from 221 to 207 BC, is best known for the
8,000 terracotta soldiers discovered within.Its construction, which took place over 38 years, was documented
by the contemporary historian Sima Qian, whose outlandish claims that 700,000 workers were mobilized to
complete it actually seemed justified when the 20-square-mile necropolis was eventually discovered.

Incredibly, only 10% of it has been excavated.Qian also claimed that mercury was used to simulate the
hundred rivers of China, which may explain why high levels of the liquid metal were found in the soil above
and, more shockingly, that its craftsmen were walled up inside to protect the secret of its location.

Today the location is no secret and is open to tourists. Located at the northern foot of Lishan Mountain, the
mausoleum is 35 kilometers northeast of Xi’an, in Shaanxi Province.

4. KNOWLEDGE - traditional knowledge and intellectual history of the people

5. BELIEF - traditional beliefs may be firmly held as true or may be valued as elements of culture without being
viewed as literal truths.

6. ART - has the ability to capture a historical moment with rich textures of emotion, symbolism and
storytelling. As such, it provides a window to the history of a culture.

7. MUSIC - traditional songs related to traditions.

8. PERFORMANCE ART – Performance such as a traditional dance.

9. LANGUAGE - is a foundational element of traditional culture that represents a way of thinking and
communicating.

10. HISTORY - artifacts, places and buildings related to important historical events

11. FASHION – traditional fashion including every day, formal and ceremonial dress.

12. OBSERVANCES & CELEBRATION – Traditional holidays, rites of passage, festivals, rituals, carnivals and
celebrations.

13. SPORTS & GAMES – Traditional sports and games that allow for the pursuit of competition, comradery,
self-improvement, risk taking and strategic thinking. Interestingly, sports and games often exist at the level of
super culture such that they represent a shared cultural heritage at the global level.

14. PASTIMES – such as a city with a rich culture of nightlife, play or community activities.

15. DESIGN - the design of things that become representative of a time or space and traditional designs that
remain much the same from one generation to the next.

Examples:
The Batik Cloth: A Canvas of Artistry
Batik, a traditional Filipino textile art form, is renowned for its intricate fabric, unique patterns, and mesmerizing
designs. The production of batik involves a labor-intensive process that showcases the rich heritage and
craftsmanship of Filipino artisans. Let’s delve into the fascinating world of making batik, exploring its fabric,
patterns, production techniques, and its role in the textile industry.

Batik Patterns and Designs: From Wax Resist to Geometric Motifs

One of the defining features of the batik design is found in its ingenuity. The traditional batik and its designs
utilize raw materials such as manila hemp (abaca) which comes from the abaca plant, and natural dyes that
come in vibrant colors.
Exploring Traditional Weaving Patterns
a. Inabel: An Enduring Legacy
Originating from the Ilocos region, inabel showcases geometric designs and bold motifs.
Symbolizing the weavers’ resilience and creativity, inabel holds a significant place in Filipino textile heritage.

b. T’nalak: Threads of Dreamweavers

Woven by the T’boli tribe in Mindanao, T’nalak features intricate abstractions and vivid patterns.
Each pattern carries spiritual significance, reflecting the dreams and visions of the T’boli dreamweavers.

c. Hablon: The Art of Iloilo Weaving

Hailing from Iloilo, hablon exhibits intricate geometric patterns and delicate craftsmanship.
This weaving tradition embodies the fusion of Spanish and indigenous influences, resulting in breathtaking
designs.

d. Yakan: A Kaleidoscope of Colors

Originating from the Yakan tribe in Basilan, Yakan textiles are characterized by bold colors and intricate
geometric patterns.
Each motif holds cultural significance, telling stories of the Yakan people’s identity, beliefs, and history.

https://www.bria.com.ph/articles/the-art-of-batik-incorporating-traditional-filipino-textiles-into-home-decor/

16. CRAFT - craftsmanship who produces instruments according to longstanding traditions

17. INSTITUTIONS – certain institutions that have endured over time to become a unique element of culture.
For example, a high school or university with a history spanning hundreds of years such that it has a usually
rich school culture.

18. FOOD HERITAGE - food related traditions with distinctive ingredients, techniques, dishes and dining
rituals.

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References:

Historic Preservation Division, Georgia Department of Natural Resources and Tourism Division of Georgia
Department of Economic Development. (March, 2010). Heritage Tourism Handbook: a How-to-Guide
for Georgia. Atlanta, Georgia

Federal Provincial Territorial Ministers of Culture and Heritage. (2012). Cultural & Heritage Tourism: a
Handbook for Community Champions. Canada

Leask, Anna and Fyall, Alan. Managing World Heritage Sites

Partners for Livable Communities. (2014). Cultural Heritage Tourism. Washington, DC

Pedersen, Arthur. (2002). Managing Tourism at World Heritage Sites: a Practical Manual for World Heritage
Site Managers. France: UNESCO World Heritage Center

Randall, Jack. Heritage Tourism

Texas Historical Commission. Heritage Tourism Guidebook

World Heritage Center.(2023). Retrieved from: http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/