Cultural And Heritage Tourism In Asia And The Pacific

The Asia Pacific region’s enormous diversity of living cultures and preserved heritage sites has significant appeal to many tourists. However tourism has grown so rapidly that many issues associated with the incorporation of cultural and heritage experiences in tourist itineraries (such as authenticity verses commodification, exploitation of national cultures, impacts on local communities, and the management of heritage resources) have not been adequately addressed and must be debated. This revealing book reviews recent developments in cultural and heritage tourism in the Asia Pacific region and provides a discussion on how communities have faced and overcome significant challenges to develop and market their culture and heritage resources. A range of models and case studies are used to deepen the reader’s understanding of heritage and cultural issues, to illustrate many of the more controversial issues, and to examine new evaluative, and planning tools. This book is a special issue of the Asia Pacific Journal of Tourism Research.

Cultural tourism forms an important component of international tourism in today's world. It has a high potential for contributing to the reduction of poverty in poor and remote destinations, which are rich in intangible cultural resources, such as customs and folklore. This publication is the result of the WTO seminar on Cultural Tourism and Poverty Alleviation, Siem Reap, Cambodia, 8 June 2004 , and the Ministerial Conference on the same subject, held in Hue, Vietnam, 11-12 June 2004. They were organized with the aim of capitalizing on Asia's rich cultural resources to support the UN Millennium Development Goal: the eradication of extreme poverty.

Cultural Heritage and Tourism in the Developing World is the first book of its kind to synthesize global and regional issues, challenges, and practices related to cultural heritage and tourism, specifically in less-developed nations. The importance of preservation and management of cultural heritage has been realized as an increasing number of tourists are visiting heritage attractions. Although many of the issues and challenges developing countries face in terms of heritage management are quite different from those in the developed world, there is a lack of consolidated research on this important subject. This seminal book tackles the issues through theoretical discourse, ideas and problems that underlay heritage tourism in terms of conservation, management, economics and underdevelopment, politics and power, resource utilization, colonialism, and various other antecedent notions that have shaped the development of heritage tourism in the less-developed regions of the world. The book is comprised of two sections. The first section highlights the broader conceptual underpinnings, debates, and paradigms in the realm of heritage tourism in developing regions. The chapters of this section examine heritage resources and the tourism product; protecting heritage relics, places and traditions; politics of heritage; and the impacts of heritage tourism. The second section examines heritage tourism issues in specific regions, including the Pacific Islands, South Asia, the Caribbean, China and Northeast Asia, South-East Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, and Latin America. Each region has unique histories, cultures, political traditions, heritages, issues and problems, and the way these issues are tackled vary from place to place. This volume develops frameworks that are useful tools for heritage managers, planners and policy-makers, researchers, and students in understanding the complexity of cultural heritage and tourism in the developing world. Unlike many other books written about developing regions, this book provides insiders’ perspectives, as most of the empirical chapters are authored by the individuals who live or have lived in the various regions and have a greater understanding of the region’s culture, history, and operational frameworks in the realm of cultural heritage. The richness of this ‘indigenous’ or expert knowledge comes through as each regional overview elucidates the primary challenges and opportunities facing heritage and tourism managers in the less affluent areas of the world.

"Hoi An was an important trading port from the 15th to the 19th century - the height of the Asian Mercantile Era. Its architecture reflects the many cultures the town was exposed to and it is famous for its Chinese, Japanese and European-influenced shop-houses. Hoi An was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 1999. This publication examines the impacts of tourism in the World heritage site of the Hoi An Ancient Town, an exceptionally well preserved example of a traditional Asian trading port and an outstanding material manifestation of the fusion of cultures over time. Since its inclusion in the World Heritage List in 1999 Hoi An as experienced an exponential growth in tourist arrival. While tourism has brought benefits to the people of Hoi An in terms of increased employment and higher cash incomes, tourism has also had negative impacts on the cultural and natural resources of the town. This publication stresses that managing the future of the tourism industry in Hoi An requires specific strategies and activities by the local and provincial authorities and requires public consultation and stakeholder cooperation." -- Publisher's website.

Cultural Tourism remains the only book to bridge the gap between cultural tourism and cultural and heritage management. The first edition illustrated how heritage and tourism goals can be integrated in a management and marketing framework to produce sustainable cultural tourism. The current edition takes this further to base the discussion of cultural tourism in the theory and practice of cultural and heritage management (CM and CHM), under the understanding that for tourism to thrive, a balanced approach to the resource base it uses must be maintained. An ‘umbrella approach’ to cultural tourism represents a unique feature of the book, proposing solutions to achieve an optimal outcome for all sectors. Reflecting the many important developments in the field this new edition has been completely revised and updated in the following ways: • New sections on tangible and intangible cultural heritage and world heritage sites. • Expanded material on cultural tourism product development, the cultural tourism market and consumer behaviour, planning and delivery of exceptional experiences • New case studies throughout drawn from cultural attractions in developing countries such as Southeast Asia, China, South Africa and the Pacific as well as from the developed world, particularly the United States, Britain, Japan, Singapore, Australia and Canada. Written by experts in both tourism and cultural heritage management, this book will enable professionals and students to gain a better understanding of their own and each other’s roles in achieving sustainable cultural tourism. It provides a blueprint for producing top-quality, long-term cultural tourism products.

Essays from papers presented at seminars and conferences on tourism and cultural heritage.

The expansion of international tourism is changing the relationship between ethnic groups and states around the globe. Yet tourism’s importance for the understanding of ethnicity in the modern world has been generally neglected within the field of ethnic studies. This pioneering volume investigates how international tourism development, state policies of ethnic management, and the active responses of local ethnic groups intersect to reshape ethnic identities and ethnic relations in Asian and Pacific societies. It analyzes the ways in which the very meaning of ethnicity and culture are being contested and reworked in the wake of tourism’s impact. Following an introduction that explores the close but often ambivalent relationship between tourism promotion and state ethnic policies, individual contributors examine tourism’s varied effects in China, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, and the island Pacific in rich ethnographic detail.