Definition Of Cultural Tourism

2. LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1. DEFINITION OF SUSTAINABLE CULTURAL TOURISM

The terms “cultural tourism” is widely used, but also misunderstood. In addition, the definition of cultural tourism remains vague (Aluza, O’Leary, and Morrison, 1998). Academics, practitioners, and policy-makers have been quick to identify cultural tourism as a significant and growing market, but have been hesitant or unable to describe and define the market.

Most attempts at defining cultural tourism agree that it consists of the consumption of culture by tourists (Richards, 1996). However, this approach also produces new problems because it includes a wide range of cultural elements. For example, what kinds of cultural experiences should be included within the scope of

For many tourists, travelling to experience different cultures equates to cultural tourism. For these travellers, encountering different cultures is synonymous with a cultural tourism experience. They consume the different sights, sounds, tastes, and smells of an unfamiliar culture. On the other hand, academics and tourism marketers define cultural tourism as a discrete product category that is differentiated from other tourism activities or attractions by consumption of a destination’s tangible and intangible cultural heritage (Hall and MacArthur, 1998; Leask and Yeoman, 1999; Richards, 1996; Shackley,

The general cultural tourist makes a hobby of visiting different geographic sites. Over time, as general cultural tourists increase their knowledge of different cultures, they may become specialized cultural tourists who focus on one or a small number of geographic sites or cultural entities. This specialized tourist repeatedly visits a particular city, region, or country in search of a broad cultural understanding of the place, or goes to different cities, regions, or countries in search of exemplars of, for instance, a kind of art, history, festival, or museum. Both types of cultural tourist are inclined to avoid the commercial ventures that are in their area of interest.

Timothy (1998) argued that visitors have different experiences based on their differing levels of connectivity to a site. The study identified four levels of cultural tourism attractions: world, national, local, and personal. World heritage attractions that invoke feelings of awe may draw large masses of tourists, but they probably do not invoke feelings of personal attachment. By contrast national, local and personal sites engender progressively stronger feelings of personal connectivity and may facilitate different depths of experiences by the