heritage tourism statistics

Take advantage of the search to browse through the World Heritage Centre information.

Share on social media

Unesco social media, world heritage list statistics.

• Number of properties by region
• Number of properties inscribed each year by region
• Properties inscribed each Year: Cultural Natural, Mixed
• Properties inscribed each Year by Themes
• Properties inscribed each Year by Areas
• Properties inscribed each year
• Properties inscribed per Year (cumulative)
• Properties inscribed by State Party
• States Parties with no properties inscribed
• List of World Heritage in danger by year

List of World Heritage in danger by region

• RSOUV adopted or not by region
• RSOUV adopted by year by region
• Boundary clarifications by year and by region

Number of World Heritage Properties by region

* The properties " Uvs Nuur Basin " and " Landscapes of Dauria " (Mongolia, Russian Federation) are trans-regional properties located in Europe and Asia and the Pacific region. They are counted here in the Asia and the Pacific region. * The property " The Architectural Work of Le Corbusier, an Outstanding Contribution to the Modern Movement " (Argentina, Belgium, France, Germany, India, Japan, Switzerland) is a trans-regional property located in Europe, Asia and the Pacific and Latin America and the Caribbean region. It is counted here in the Europe and North America. * The property " Hyrcanian Forests " " (Azerbaijan, Iran (Islamic Republic of)) are trans-regional properties located in Europe and Asia and the Pacific region. It is counted here in the Asia and the Pacific region.

Number of World Heritage properties inscribed each year by region

Number of world heritage properties inscribed each year: cultural natural, mixed, number of world heritage properties inscribed each year by themes, number of world heritage properties inscribed each year areas of properties inscribed each year, number of world heritage properties inscribed by each state party (168), states parties with no properties inscribed on the world heritage list (27), number of world heritage properties inscribed each year, total number of properties inscribed per year (cumulative), list of world heritage in danger by year, rsouv adopted by region.

In 2007, the World Heritage Committee, in its Decision 31 COM 11D.1, requested that Statements of Outstanding Universal Value be drafted and adopted retrospectively for all World Heritage properties inscribed between 1978 and 2006.

RSOUV adopted by the Committee between 2009 and 2018

RSOUV adopted by year and by region

The property "Uvs Nuur Basin" (Mongolia, Russian Federation) is trans-regional property located in Europe and Asia and the Pacific region. It is counted here in the Asia and the Pacific region.

Boundary clarifications adopted by year and by region

The « clarifications of boundaries », as they refer to the delimitation of properties at the time of their inscription on the World Heritage List, differ from « minor boundary modifications », which refer to any modification (increase or reduction of the size of a property, establishment of a buffer zone, etc…) intervened after the inscription. Before a proposal for a minor boundary modification can be submitted, it is necessary that the boundaries at the time of the inscription are clear or have been clarified.

Advisory Council on Historic Preservation

Each year, millions of travelers visit America’s historic places. The National Trust for Historic Preservation defines heritage tourism as “traveling to experience the places, artifacts, and activities that authentically represent the stories and people of the past and present.”  A high percentage of domestic and international travelers participate in cultural and/or heritage activities while traveling, and those that do stay longer, spend more, and travel more often. Heritage tourism creates jobs and business opportunities, helps protect resources, and often improves the quality of life for local residents.

The ACHP has encouraged national travel and tourism policies that promote the international marketing of America’s historic sites as tourism destinations. The ACHP also engages in ongoing efforts to build a more inclusive preservation program, reaching out to diverse communities and groups and engaging them in dialogue about what parts of our national legacy should be more fully recognized, preserved, and shared. 

The ACHP developed Preserve America , a national initiative to encourage and support community efforts for the preservation and enjoyment of America’s cultural and natural heritage. In partnership with other federal agencies, the initiative has encouraged the use of historic assets for economic development and community revitalization, as well as enabling people to experience and appreciate local historic resources through heritage tourism and education programs. These goals have been advanced by an Executive Order directing federal agencies to support such efforts, a community designation program, and a recognition program for outstanding stewardship of historic resources by volunteers.

From 2004-2016, over 900 Preserve America Communities   were designated in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and two territories, as well as nearly 60 Preserve America Stewards . Many Preserve America Communities are featured in “Discover Our Shared Heritage” National Register on-line travel itineraries . From 2006 through 2010, the National Park Service (in partnership with the ACHP) awarded more than $21 million in Preserve America Grants   to support sustainable historic resource management strategies, with a focus on heritage tourism. 

These links are being provided as a convenience and for informational purposes only; if they are not ACHP links, they do not constitute an endorsement or an approval by the ACHP of any of the products, services or opinions of the corporation or organization or individual. The ACHP bears no responsibility for the accuracy, legality, or content of the external site or for that of subsequent links. Please contact the external site for answers to questions regarding its content, including its privacy policies.

Related resources.

• Toggle navigation
• Explore Themes
• Document Library
• Visualisation Gallery
• Methodology
• Data for Sustainable Development - UIS Blog
• Training and Workshops
• UNESCO website

UNESCO Institute of Statistics releases data and key findings on cultural and natural heritage expenditure

The UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) has released the second set of data for Indicator 11.4.1 related to culture for the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Agenda 2030. The updated country-level data is now available in the culture section of the UIS Bulk Data Download Service and contains information on around 50 countries. Data published on UIS Data Portal, however, are still from the June 2021 Data Release but this will be updated with the most recent data for SDG 11.4.1 in the coming weeks.

A new analysis report - Shaping investments to safeguard cultural and natural heritage across the world - has also been published to support the release.

Preserving cultural heritage crucial for thriving societies

Protecting cultural heritage, which includes not only the preservation and restoration of historic monuments, but also modern buildings, natural parks and reserves, marine ecosystems, zoos, botanical gardens and even activities at museums, benefits society through education as well as employment and tourism. It is crucial, therefore, to track investment in cultural heritage over time looking at both public and private expenditure. This latest report, the second annual study by the UIS, highlights the wide gaps in investment, both globally and regionally, and how private expenditure on preservation is lagging behind, often greatly, public expenditure. 

Wide-ranging investments

45 countries (22% response rate) participated in the survey in 2021, of which 41 countries provided robust enough data for analysis. This was an increase from only 31 countries in the 2020 survey. 

The data reveals that the medium per capita national public and private combined expenditure on cultural heritage in 2020-2021 was 89.1 $PPP but that the range of investment was large with, for example, values across European countries ranging from 11.1 $PPP per capita in Greece up to 219 $PPP for Denmark. 

The impact of COVID-19 on public investment

Globally, public expenditure per capita ranges from 0.02 $PPP to 208.5 P$PP with investment from developing countries being significantly lower than that of developed nations. 

The COVID-19 pandemic had a major impact on the culture sector and for heritage preservation more specifically. At the height of the pandemic in 2020, 95% of the world’s museums and 90% of world heritage sites were closed resulting in a 60% drop in visitors to the world heritage sites, and a 52% drop in income from admission fees. The pandemic also negatively affected 78% of communities living in and around world heritage sites too (UNESCO, 2021). 

Data, provided by 25 countries, reveals contrasting patterns on public investment in heritage as a result of the impact of COVID-19. Between 2018 and 2019, for the majority of countries, public investments in heritage preservation remained stable or increased slightly, but in 2020 large discrepancies formed. Some countries, such as Czechia, Japan, and Nicaragua, invested in cultural preservation to protect the sector whilst others, such as Turkey, Colombia, and the Republic of Korea, decreased their investment.

Reinforcing Member States capacities

In order to future increase participation in the survey, for SDG Indicator 11.4.1, the UIS will continue to provide regional webinar training on data collection. Alongside this, the UIS is in the process of setting up an online platform for Member States and stakeholders to be able to share experiences and report data more easily. In addition, the UIS is also planning to produce a compilation guide for SDG 11.4.1 reporting. 

Indicator 11.4.1 is defined as “total per capita expenditure on the preservation, protection and conservation of all cultural and natural heritage, by source of funding (public, private), type of heritage (cultural, natural) and level of government (national, regional and local/municipal).” 

Resources: 

• Shaping investments to safeguard cultural and natural heritage across the world: Results of the 2021 UIS Survey on Expenditure on Cultural and Natural Heritage ( English )
• UNESCO Institute for Statistics database
• Bulk Data Download Service ( BDDS )* 
• UNESCO Institute for Statistics culture homepage
• UNESCO, May 2021, World Heritage in the face of COVID-19

*In Bulk Data Download Service (BDDS), former UIS culture data sets (Feature Film statistics, Cultural employment and culture trade) were moved to the Archive section as they are not currently carried out.

MyTravelResearch.com

Easy to use market research and marketing tools for the travel and tourism industry.

• How Culture and Heritage Tourism Boosts More Than A Visitor Economy

by Carolyn Childs 37 Comments

Culture and heritage tourism plays a critical role in building the visitor economy and goes even beyond that. A recent survey showed that over 50% of respondents polled agreed that history and culture are strong influences on their choice of holiday destination. 

Culture and heritage tourism is a fast-growing and high-yielding sector

Statistics also indicate that culture and heritage tourism continues to grow rapidly, especially in OECD and APEC regions. We estimate the direct global value of culture and heritage tourism to be well over $1billion dollars, with that of the Asia Pacific region being approximately $327 million.

It is already directly responsible for more than 50 million jobs in APEC countries. And what’s more, the indirect benefits of culture and heritage tourism are thought to be of the order of $1 billion and account for further 75 million jobs across the region. 

There is no denying the fact that culture and heritage tourism tends to attract high-yield tourists. While global figures can be hard to obtain, all available statistics on tourism in various individual markets like the UK, New Zealand, Australia, India , etc. reveal a consistent pattern.

Culture and heritage tourists often stay longer and spend a lot more money in general than other tourists do. In fact, one study showed that a culture and heritage tourist spent as much as 38% higher per day and they stayed 22% longer overall compared to other kinds of travellers.

Taj Mahal, Indian Symbol

Although the statistical evidence doesn’t show consistency regarding repeat visitors, tourism data on United States’ Culture and Heritage visitors indicates that the level of repeat visitation amongst this group of travellers is higher than that of traditional tourists. 

It builds engagement

Culture and heritage tourists usually visit cultural heritage attractions such as historic buildings and other historic attractions; archaeological sites; state, local, or national parks; art galleries or museums; concerts, plays, or musicals; ethnic or ecological heritage sites; and such attractions. These travellers say that these trips are more memorable than conventional holiday trips since they allow them to learn something new.  This focus on learning skills and gain enrichment has been identified by Trendwatching as a core global trend in travel (and links to broader macro trends in consumer needs).

The benefits of culture and heritage tourism are amplified through the economy, so their impact is much wider than just the direct spending levels. As Simon Thurley of English Heritage has shown in his Heritage Cycle, heritage tourism has benefits that extend beyond the solely economic. 

What are the benefits of heritage tourism?

Generally, the benefits of heritage tourism can be categorized into three groups: economic, social, and environmental. As they tend to be the highest focus for destinations and policymakers we have focused on the economic benefits first

Economic Benefits of Cultural and Heritage Tourism

• Injects new money into the economy, boosting businesses and tax revenues 
• Creates new jobs, businesses, events, and attractions, thus helping diversify the local economy 
• Supports small businesses and enables them to expand 
• Promotes the active preservation and protection of important local resources 
• Builds vital relationships among and within local communities
• Helps encourage the development and maintenance of new/existing community amenities 

Social Benefits of Cultural and Heritage Tourism 

• Helps build social capital

• Promotes positive behaviour 
• Helps improve the community’s image and pride
• Promotes community beautification
• Builds opportunities for healthy and useful community relationships and partnerships
• Provides research, education, and work-placement opportunities for students
• Creates enjoyable opportunities for both local residents and visitors attracted to the cultural arts, history, and preservation
• Boosts local investment in heritage resources and amenities that support tourism services 

There is evidence that helping maintain buildings of character culture and heritage tourism can contribute to precincts’ innovation and business diversification.  Small businesses based in amazing buildings are typically innovators and provide a core for other larger businesses.

Environmental Benefits of Cultural and Heritage Tourism 

• Heritage tourism helps encourage a culture of preservation
• Boost awareness of the tourist site, attraction, or area’s significance
• Helps encourage local residents and visitors to be mindful of their impact on the natural and built environment 

 Although there is a risk that this type of tourism can lead to a place being ‘loved to death (think the Taj Mahal or the Sistine Chapel ), properly handled it can provide a reason to invest in things like sewage and water resources in areas. 

So that is why we think Cultural and Heritage Tourism is vital to the visitor economy – and destinations should seek to maximise the opportunities it brings. In future articles, we will be delving more deeply into practical opportunities on how to do that. (If you are an MTR member then you can also access more detailed content via the Members Only HomePage .)

Looking for more Culture and Heritage tourism information? You can check out our blog about defining cultural and heritage tourism and cultural tourism opportunities .

Do you want to hear more from us? 

Want to be kept up to date with the latest travel and tourism insights? Join Our Mailing List. Every 2 weeks, we send the latest practical insight for you to apply to your business and destination marketing. 

• Recent Posts

• Reflections for the end of 2023 – and 2024
• Callingtourism businesses, schools and students in Regional NSW – we’d like your views

Related posts:

About Carolyn Childs

Carolyn has spent more than 25 years’ helping businesses achieve their goals by using research and other evidence to guide strategy and planning – mainly in the aviation, travel and tourism fields. She has worked in more than 35 countries on every inhabited continent and brings a detailed understanding of customers and how to connect with them. As well as running her own businesses, she has worked for organisations such as the International Air Transport Association, TNS (the world’s largest custom research company) and the Travel Research Centre.

November 28, 2023 at 7:58 am

Your blog, ‘How Culture and Heritage Tourism Boosts More Than A Visitor Economy,’ brilliantly unveils the multifaceted impact of cultural and heritage tourism. The depth of your analysis and compelling narrative style make this a must-read. It’s a commendable exploration of the broader positive influence that goes beyond economic aspects, showcasing the richness and importance of cultural exploration. Excellent work!

December 22, 2023 at 11:14 am

Thanks Kenny!

June 12, 2023 at 12:00 pm

What are the pros of heritage tourism?

June 12, 2023 at 12:40 pm

We try to outline these in the article but this type of tourism helps us preserve our vital cultural assets, gives communities pride and helps build economic opportunity. You can also find out more at the website of the World Tourism Association for Culture and Heritage and at that of ICOMOS .

Of course you have to do it right! This starts by the community understanding what they have, then deciding what they want to share finally finding visitors who want that.

One challenge is the concept of heritage has some negative connotations in that it can seem ‘fusty’ but by showcasing culture and immersion it becomes incredibly engaging. In our work with SHP we are working to overcome this.

Travellers say that they want to get under the skin of a destination – culture and heritage tourism does just that.

November 23, 2022 at 8:58 am

Hello. Thank you for the great blog today. Have a nice day 강남호빠

June 12, 2023 at 12:45 pm

Glad you liked it…

December 30, 2021 at 1:52 am

Thank you for this interesting piece. Can you clarify time frame for stats like this: “We estimate the direct global value of culture and heritage tourism to be well over $1billion dollars, with that of the Asia Pacific region being approximately $327 million.” Is this an annual figure? I am citing your work and want to be sure I am doing so accurately.

October 4, 2022 at 1:57 pm

Dolly it is an annual number. I think this number is now well exceeded though as this has been a huge growth area

October 12, 2021 at 7:49 pm

I would like to know on how can we able to preserve our cultural heritage so as we can ensure imcrease of coming tourists especially to the developing countries, since it has mostly be an obstacle to those nations.

November 29, 2021 at 2:38 pm

I think there is a need to engage your local community and to demonstrate the benefits to them, including opportunities for employment. Community is important as we also need to make sure that the way we promote it benefits the community.

One simple framewok I have seen in Canada is

1) work out what you have. What do you have to share. This doesn’t have to be buildings, intangible culture like cuisine and arts are important to. Audit what you have, collect your stories 2) Agree what you want to share. Agree what you want to share with visitors 3) work out what visitors want. Identify what demand there is for what you have to offer, what customers are interested? then find out about how they book and plan travel (lots of resources in our blog on this) then create a destination management plan (guidance on what to use can be found at https://www.austrade.gov.au/ArticleDocuments/5499/DM_Guide.pdf.aspx ) This will help you work out how and what to do

March 2, 2023 at 12:10 am

we are having different activities that we can do as our culture-heritage but due to financial constrain we get it difficult tp practices such kind of activities to promote our culture and also to act as tourism attraction for other continent .

June 12, 2023 at 12:34 pm

Not all culture and heritage activities have to cost a lot. Community-based tourism generally starts small scale and is built by the community asking what it can do rather. This could be simply opportunities for visitors to meet members of the local community or come for a meal at their homes. Talking to visitors already coming (if any) is a good place to start.

May 6, 2021 at 12:16 pm

Hi that is a question how heritage attractions make global marketing in order to attract more foreign tourists and enhance their popularities all over the world. Is it possible for the heritage attraction make efforts oversea? like participating in exhibition.

June 15, 2021 at 2:00 pm

Hi Cindy we definitely think attractions can promote overseas, but it depends on the attraction and whether it is likely to appeal to individual visitors. Our advice on promotion for an attraction is normally to do so in partnership with their host destination

October 27, 2021 at 6:15 pm

Hie We appreciate what you are doing. We are also trying to come up with a plan to establish a Cultural Heritage and Adventure tourism resort in our rural area in Hwedza. If you are ininterested in helping us please be intouch and will post to pictures of the magnificent sites we wish to show the world. Thank you in advance.

Best Regards Tsungai Maphosa

November 29, 2021 at 2:39 pm

Tsungai … will be in touch soon

April 9, 2021 at 7:55 pm

In which year you published it? I need it for my research paper

August 19, 2021 at 3:59 pm

April 2015… we review it each year and it still holds true and is our most read post!

January 25, 2021 at 5:39 pm

I have a question in what way how leisure helps the tourism industry?

I’m not sure I understand your question. Can you explain a bit more

December 4, 2020 at 5:15 am

I have a question, How to use tourism culture element to attract tourists ?

April 22, 2021 at 11:01 am

It was updated in 2020 but initially published on Apri 18, 2015. We revisit it reqgularly and it still holds true

September 14, 2020 at 8:57 pm

Culture or heritage consumption requires understanding how tourist’ emotions and reasons interacting in experiencing these products to ensure long-term sustainability?

October 12, 2020 at 10:33 am

It does indeed. It also means encouraging the right tourists.

September 13, 2020 at 12:52 am

I have a question explain the economic benefits, social benefits and environmental benefits of heritage tourism. Specify specific examples /situation

October 12, 2020 at 10:31 am

This could honestly be a whole text book Natalia! The three are highly linked as in what brings money in gets valued and what is valued is protected. It is called the heritage cycle. The UK Lottery fund has a report on the value of conserving and adapting heritage buildings that shows they bring in GDP.

August 17, 2020 at 11:50 pm

What are the possible objects of cultural interest that may entice or impact tourist arrivals?

October 12, 2020 at 10:29 am

Krister… the process is a three step one. Identify what you have, Agree with the community what can be shared, identify if there are enough visitors who might be interested and who they are? There isn’t a one size fits all on this.

February 4, 2020 at 11:34 pm

In your own words what are the advantages of heritage tourism and what are the disadvantages or challenges of heritage tourism?

March 3, 2020 at 5:57 pm

Mark Great question. I don’t see any disadvantages if it is managed well. The challenges come when it isn’t developed with local buy on, people fail to plan for tourism and culture together and where you don’t let the story lead. The advantages are almost too numerous to mention: social capital, civic pride, economic benefit, a clear case for protecting assets.

January 19, 2020 at 11:22 am

I have a question how does cultural heritage promotes tourism?

January 24, 2020 at 11:12 am

Cultural heritage provides a compelling reason to visit. As more people have the ability to travel we see that the desire to understand other cultures grows. Cultural heritage often includes compelling human stories and provokes a sense of wonder. Who hasn’t stood in front of the pyramids and ‘gone wow!’?

There is strong supporting evidence. Research on the impact of gaining World Heritage status indicates that it boosts visitation. It’s a way of curating the ‘best of’ that anyone can understand.

July 4, 2019 at 12:37 am

Now, that’s a great question. All places are heritage destinations since all of them have their histories. However, some places are more historically significant than others. In that sense, all travel can be classified as heritage travel.

Attractions can be either heritage attractions or otherwise. In other words, non-heritage attractions like scenery, national parks, nightclubs, safaris, adventure are also reasons why people travel. In this case, heritage has no place.

I would like to ask one question of my own: How important do you think it is for travelers going to heritage destinations, to be acquainted with the history of the place?

September 11, 2019 at 2:18 pm

I am not sure we could police that. Maybe more like encourage it but great interpretation on site can do the same job

December 6, 2018 at 4:47 am

I have a great question if you can answer the question by my email address Does tourism exist without heritage or attraction? if you say yes how? if you say no how?

September 11, 2019 at 2:21 pm

It depends what you mean by an attraction … many holidays are about relaxation. They may include sightseeing, but the classic ‘fly and flop’ holiday is still tourism. We now know that even this type of holiday can help with mental and physical health

September 21, 2019 at 5:40 pm

YES you are absolutely right that tourism has a lot of advantage for health. Tourism is one which bring happiness in our life and enjoy Full moments. even through it we feel something fresh and new observation.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed .

All products and listings featured on Condé Nast Traveler are independently selected by our editors. If you purchase something through our links, we may earn an affiliate commission.

Why Heritage Tourism Is More Popular Than Ever

By Jordi Lippe-McGraw

In the years before every waking moment of our lives was documented online, knowledge of our ancestors was far more limited, with stories of one's heritage more often reserved to the confines of family lore. But now, today's access to technology is actually increasing our curiosity about the past—and making it easier than ever to physically retrace our heritage in destinations around the world.

For some travelers, turning to their family tree for inspiration has become the latest—and most interesting—way to plan a trip. And while the idea of traveling to investigate your legacy and culture isn’t exactly something new, there are more tools now to make it a reality. “Once pegged as the stereotypical Irish Americans pursing their lips to kiss the Blarney Stone, Americans are spreading far and wide to experience their cultural and spiritual roots and catalyzing the rise of operators, agencies, and guides dedicated to this segment,” Christina Tunnah, Regional Manager for the Americas at World Nomads , told Condé Nast Traveler .

She added, “Not just for the bucket list boomer crowd, this theme serves as a significant thread of self-discovery amongst millennials who choose to study abroad and become digital nomads in places where they have a tendril of familial connection in search of generational sense of self.”

The rise in popularity of family genealogy as a TV genre (TLC’s Who Do You Think You Are , PBS’ Finding Your Roots and Genealogy Roadshow , and CNN’s Roots ) has helped spark this interest in family history, with people taking advantage of genealogy research via sites like Ancestry.com and even DNA testing companies like 23andme and National Geographic’s Genographic project. In fact, according to a multi-country study done by Ancestry.com in November 2014, online family history research in the U.S. has grown fourteen-fold in the past decade.

Kesha Robertson, 30, an Amsterdam-based blogger, told Traveler her reasons for visiting Slovakia. “I was always enchanted by my grandfather. There was no one else I knew quite like him. I grew up in New Zealand, a world away from Europe,” she said. “I was the only person I knew with Slovakian heritage. It seemed like such an exotic faraway place, I couldn't even fathom what it would be like. The lure to go there was always strong, it was like the piece of a puzzle I needed to put in place.”

In particular, destinations with large diaspora populations in the U.S., such as Ireland, Italy, and China, have seen an uptick in visitors looking to connect with their ancestral homes directly, according to World Nomad. Whole countries like Scotland have fully embraced this concept calling 2017 the Year of History, Heritage, and Archaeology, encouraging visitors to uncover their Scottish roots all the way back to the Neolithic era.

Touring companies are seeing a boom as well. Audley Travel revealed to Traveler that they've been getting increased requests for custom itineraries exploring family ties to different destinations. In particular, they've worked with a lot of second generation Japanese Americans heading back to Japan, especially to Okinawa . And World Nomads just partnered with Ancestry.com to offer one winner (and a guest) the opportunity to trace their family history and take a trip to walk in the footsteps of their ancestors with their Relative Distance campaign .

Uniworld Boutique River Cruise Collection is launching a Jewish Heritage cruise down the Danube later this year with stops in Wertheim, Germany (pictured).

So, how can you take advantage of this growing trend and embark on a journey of your own? Here are some tips.

1. Do some research beforehand

Don’t get overwhelmed at the daunting prospect of having to tackle a tidal wave of family information, archives, photos, or talks with your immediate and extended family members (though it helps to have that all as a starting point). At a most basic level, a little bit of search engine snooping can identify the basics: country, province/state and towns where you know for a fact you have a connection.

Assemble maiden names of parents and grandparents and search on maps for any street names that may have the family name, you’d be surprised at what you find. For more robust family tracing, you can pay for more access to records on sites like Ancestry.com, or join the National Geographic’s Genographic project where you have the option to be connected with people who share your DNA and family name.

2. Rent a car and make your own itinerary

It’s best for adventures like this to build out spots where you want to stop and rent a car to visit on your own time. It allows you to detour and take as much time as you need in any particular destination. Historical societies of that town are a great source as well, so set up an appointment or set aside a few hours to rummage through the artifacts. Also, try to book through Airbnb or local lodges as much as possible. This gives another opportunity to meet locals who may offer some insight into your family background.

3. Or use a tour company for a more general background

If you’re not so focused on the details of your family history, but would rather have a deeper understanding of your heritage, then consider a themed tour. Uniworld Boutique River Cruise Collection is launching its  Jewish Heritage themed cruises in May, where guests will travel from Munich to Cologne, passing through Dachau, Nuremberg, Frankfurt, and Wertheim, towns and cities renowned for their centuries-old Jewish legacy. Andy Fraser, the Tartan Butler at The Balmoral , helps guests with ancestral ties to Scotland trace their heritage during their stay by chatting with the city’s foremost experts before your arrival. And those who have traced their roots to South Africa can explore them in-depth on South African Airways Vacations’ 12-Day Cultural Roots of South Africa tour , which visits Johannesburg and KwaZulu-Natal Province, where Durban (home to the largest Indian population outside of India) is situated.

By Madison Flager

By Abigail Malbon

By Melissa Liebling-Goldberg

By Lauren Dana Ellman

By signing up you agree to our User Agreement (including the class action waiver and arbitration provisions ), our Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement and to receive marketing and account-related emails from Traveller. You can unsubscribe at any time. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

UN Tourism | Bringing the world closer

Statistics of tourism, tourism statistics database, share this content.

• Share this article on facebook
• Share this article on twitter
• Share this article on linkedin

UN Tourism systematically collects tourism statistics from countries and territories around the world in an extensive database that provides the most comprehensive repository of statistical information available on the tourism sector. This database consists mainly of more than 145 tourism indicators that are updated regularly. You can explore the data available through the UN Tourism database below:

145 Key Tourism Statistics

Data on inbound, outbound and domestic tourism, international tourism flows, tourism industries, employment and other indicators.

Economic Contribution and the SDGs

Data on the economic contribution of tourism and the implementation of relevant standards, such as the Tourism Satellite Account (TSA) and the System of Environmental-Economic Accounting (SEEA).

The Fantasy of Heritage Tourism

“Returning” to a place you’ve never been

Listen to this article

Produced by ElevenLabs and News Over Audio (NOA) using AI narration.

The first generation of immigrants wants to survive, the second wants to assimilate, and the third wants to remember, the sociologist Marcus Lee Hansen wrote in 1938. The fourth, fifth, and sixth? Apparently they now want to go on a luxury vacation to visit the Welsh coal mines their ancestors crossed an ocean to escape.

So-called heritage tourism has grown into its own travel category, like skiing and whale watching. In 2019, an Airbnb survey found that the share of people traveling to “trace their roots” worldwide had increased by 500 percent since 2014; the company announced that it was teaming up with 23andMe, the DNA-testing service, to meet this demand, offering trips to clients’ ancestral homelands. Ancestry, the company behind the family-search website, has partnered with a travel agency. The governments of Germany and Scotland have websites devoted to heritage tourism. Conde Nast Traveller is all over this trend . In Dublin, the Shelbourne Hotel’s “genealogy butler” can research your Irish side, if you so please. The Conte Club, a boutique travel service known for its focus on privacy and members-only jet rentals, will take you and your partner on a week-long “ DNA-mapped journey ” starting at $35,000 (flights not included). Should you wish to go very far back in time, the agency can make that happen. Rebecca Fielding, the CEO, told me about one client who was obsessed with the idea that he had descended from Genghis Khan. DNA tests can’t possibly prove a connection that old, Fielding said, but the Conte Club was happy to arrange his trip to Mongolia.

Kyle Betit, the genealogist who runs Ancestry’s travel business, told me that his clients experience something much more “personal” and “deep” than what’s available to “the typical tourist.” Ancestry genealogists can create bespoke itineraries tailored to a family’s history, down to the villages or even the streets where they once lived. The company’s most popular destinations were Italy and Ireland. In 2023, it took 44 individual clients or groups on such voyages. This year, it’s offering two genealogy cruises .

Read: What can you do with the world’s largest family tree?

Who takes such a trip? According to the Airbnb survey, Americans top the list, followed by Canadians and Australians. Those most likely to go are between the ages of 60 and 90—mainly retirees with cash to spare. Dave Richard Meyrick, whom Ancestry put me in touch with, is a representative example.

Meyrick is 73 and lives in Las Vegas, where he worked at the MGM Grand hotel and casino until his retirement. He recently came into a small fortune—not at the poker table, but after winning a lawsuit against the U.S. military. The Agent Orange that the Army sprayed over Vietnam when he was fighting there caused Meyrick to lose most of his eyesight years after he returned. The newly enriched man has no wife and no kids—“that I know of,” he told me, with a chuckle—so indulging in a decadent vacation was the logical course of action. The question was where to go.

He had recently been on an unremarkable cruise through the Gulf of Mexico when a free trial for Ancestry.com appeared on his screen in spring 2020. He learned that he was ninth in a line of Richard Meyricks. He found his paternal grandfather—who was born in Wales and fought for Canada in World War I—in mustard-gas records that might explain his grandpa’s weird cough. Meyrick had always assumed that his paternal grandmother’s ancestors were also from Wales; actually, they were German, from the medieval city of Heidelberg and the Alpine region of Bavaria.

Soon he got a promotional email from Ancestry: If he wanted to see where his father’s parents came from, the company was there to help. He replied, intrigued. Betit scheduled a video call. The team helped him book a trip to Germany, where his father’s ancestors were innkeepers on the grounds of a princely castle. The inn has been renovated, and is now the chic office of a finance firm. During a stop in Munich, Meyrick drank beer at Oktoberfest. He then went to Wales, where another branch of his father’s ancestors worked the mines and steel mills in a village that dates back to the 1600s.

He told me that the deterioration of his eyesight had changed his perception of traveling. He couldn’t see the sites or landscapes very well, but his genealogy helped him feel connected to the places he visited. At the Welsh church where his ancestors had been baptized, married, and buried, Meyrick met a local history buff, who told him a story. In the early 1700s, a villager with a habit of hiding behind stagecoaches to rob the wealthy messed with the wrong rich man, a big landowner, and was hanged. The historian was convinced that the unfortunate thief was among Meyrick’s ancestors. Could this fabulous connection be true? Ancestry’s genealogists weren’t able to confirm it, and Meyrick said that his source had seemed a little senile. Still, he assured me, the $50,000 trip was “money well spent.”

This year, he plans to do his mother’s side.

Heritage tourism may only be catching on among Americans now, but governments have been pushing it for decades.

After World War II, tourism was considered a major component of diplomacy. Marshall Plan funds were earmarked to build not just roads and city centers but also ski slopes and airports. The Eisenhower administration created the People-to-People Program, promoting international pen-pal networks and sporting events in hopes of uniting countries against the Soviet Union.

Europe welcomed America’s tourists, and tried to encourage more to come. Some hosted “homecomings”—festivals meant to lure the children and grandchildren of emigrants back to visit. Greece held one in 1951; Lebanon, in 1955; Sweden, in 1965–66. Ireland hosted annual homecomings starting in 1953. These campaigns were, in the words of the Swedish historian Adam Hjorthén, “the earliest coordinated attempts at adopting ancestry in the promotion of mass tourism.”

They were also a failure, as people didn’t go. The Irish homecoming— called An Tóstal , or “a gathering,” and sponsored by the founder of Pan Am Airways—went on for six years before a tourist-board report admitted that the word fiasco didn’t sufficiently convey how badly the effort had flopped.

For heritage tourism to take off, a few changes had to occur. First, plane tickets needed to get a lot cheaper. As the Pan Am founder, of all people, should have known, transatlantic flights then cost a lot of money—airfare from New York to London in 1950 was about $8,700 in today’s dollars . That year, only about one in 250 Americans went overseas at all. In 2019, at the pre-pandemic peak of traveling, this number was one in three .

Even if they had the money, travelers might not have chosen to spend it on connecting with their homelands. For a long time, genealogy struck many people in the United States as elitist. Most European settlers, the historian Russell Bidlack wrote , “had escaped from a society where the traditions of inheritance and caste had denied them opportunity for a better life.” Genealogy was for people obsessed with nobility, or for WASPs living off borrowed glory.

This began to change in the 1970s and ’80s, when genealogy became cool. The publication of Roots , Alex Haley’s 1976 novel about a seven-generation lineage, starting with a man sold into slavery in Gambia and ending with an American descendant not unlike the author, was a turning point. The book topped the New York Times best-seller list for more than five months and inspired two TV adaptations and eventually a whole genre of trace-your-ancestry reality shows. Genealogy was no longer just a hobby for pedigree-loving Europeans but became a tool for everyone, including marginalized groups, to understand their past.

Still, genealogy was hard work, at least until the advent of the internet in the 1990s made public records accessible and searchable. Infobases, a seller of floppy disks with genealogy databases catering to Mormons, who have a particular interest in the subject for theological reasons, purchased Ancestry, then a local publisher and magazine specializing in genealogy. Ancestry.com went online in 1996. By the mid-2010s, DNA testing was mainstream—packaged, commoditized. The tests convinced people that the connection they felt to the place of their ancestors was “really real,” as Naomi Leite, an anthropologist at SOAS University of London, put it to me. An American could now possess hard evidence that he was 12.5 percent Greek.

But when that American goes on a vacation to Santorini, what exactly is he hoping to find?

From the June 2016 issue: The false promise of DNA testing

Heritage is the name Americans give to the past when they realize they’ve already lost it. They want to claim it back. And when they finally go to these places where they had never been, travelers say they are “returning.”

This mode of traveling across space and time is ultimately a journey into the self—the reconstruction of a grand story that started long ago and ends with you. It provides order and meaning to travel that might otherwise seem arbitrary, while still providing plenty of choices: After all, the further you go into your family tree, the more branches you may have to pick from. Solène Prince, who studies heritage travel in Sweden, told me that people tend to focus on the lineage that they view as most “socially desirable”: “Americans and Canadians like to be Swedish,” she said. “It’s progressive.”

A segment of this industry targets Black Americans. Ghana, from which many enslaved Africans were sent to the New World, had its own homecoming— a “Year of Return”— for Africans in the diaspora in 2019. One and a half million people visited the continent that year, Ghana’s tourism department reported. But most heritage tourism tacitly serves white Americans. (Ancestry mentions Ghana in a list of possible Personal Heritage Journeys, but when I asked if anyone had taken advantage of that trip, a company spokesperson said not yet.)

Genealogy may be the product of painstaking research, but it’s also a fantasy, about who we are and who we’d like to be. Many Americans want to be something else: “Time and again, I have heard genealogists be very disappointed to learn that, in fact, they’re all white,” Jackie Hogan, the author of Roots Quest: Inside America’s Genealogy Boom , noted once in an interview . “If America is a melting pot, this is people wanting to unmelt it and find what makes them special,” Leite, the anthropologist, told me.

From the July/August 2018 issue: The weird, ever-evolving story of DNA

But even if white Americans think they want to be something other than white, when it comes time to travel, they mostly want to go to Europe. Fielding, of the Conte Club, told me that the top destinations for its DNA trips were all in Europe. Even when a DNA test uncovers ancestry outside this part of the world, clients tend to ignore it and “put their money where their comfort zone is”—meaning travel to the places they might have gone to anyway.

Reading testimonials from Ancestry travelers online, I got the impression that a big appeal of a heritage trip is marveling at how bad struggles were in remote places compared with the safety and comfort of present-day America. “I am grateful for them leaving and everything they went through, so we could have the life we have,” one traveler said after visiting the Italian sulfur mines where their grandparents once worked. “I think it made me appreciate not only them, but the sacrifices they had to go through so I could live comfortably here in the United States,” said another one who went to Ireland. There’s a hint of smug pride behind this gratitude exercise.

But at least one traveler came away with a more disquieting narrative, according to Joe Buggy, one of Ancestry’s genealogists. He had an American client who learned, while visiting his ancestors’ quaint little village, that everyone in town believed his grandfather had committed a murder there. They all thought he’d fled to Australia. Maybe that’s why Grandpa never talked about Ireland.

• Search Menu
• Sign in through your institution
• Browse content in Arts and Humanities
• Browse content in Archaeology
• Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Archaeology
• Archaeological Methodology and Techniques
• Archaeology by Region
• Archaeology of Religion
• Archaeology of Trade and Exchange
• Biblical Archaeology
• Contemporary and Public Archaeology
• Environmental Archaeology
• Historical Archaeology
• History and Theory of Archaeology
• Industrial Archaeology
• Landscape Archaeology
• Mortuary Archaeology
• Prehistoric Archaeology
• Underwater Archaeology
• Urban Archaeology
• Zooarchaeology
• Browse content in Architecture
• Architectural Structure and Design
• History of Architecture
• Residential and Domestic Buildings
• Theory of Architecture
• Browse content in Art
• Art Subjects and Themes
• History of Art
• Industrial and Commercial Art
• Theory of Art
• Biographical Studies
• Byzantine Studies
• Browse content in Classical Studies
• Classical History
• Classical Philosophy
• Classical Mythology
• Classical Literature
• Classical Reception
• Classical Art and Architecture
• Classical Oratory and Rhetoric
• Greek and Roman Epigraphy
• Greek and Roman Law
• Greek and Roman Papyrology
• Greek and Roman Archaeology
• Late Antiquity
• Religion in the Ancient World
• Social History
• Digital Humanities
• Browse content in History
• Colonialism and Imperialism
• Diplomatic History
• Environmental History
• Genealogy, Heraldry, Names, and Honours
• Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing
• Historical Geography
• History by Period
• History of Emotions
• History of Agriculture
• History of Education
• History of Gender and Sexuality
• Industrial History
• Intellectual History
• International History
• Labour History
• Legal and Constitutional History
• Local and Family History
• Maritime History
• Military History
• National Liberation and Post-Colonialism
• Oral History
• Political History
• Public History
• Regional and National History
• Revolutions and Rebellions
• Slavery and Abolition of Slavery
• Social and Cultural History
• Theory, Methods, and Historiography
• Urban History
• World History
• Browse content in Language Teaching and Learning
• Language Learning (Specific Skills)
• Language Teaching Theory and Methods
• Browse content in Linguistics
• Applied Linguistics
• Cognitive Linguistics
• Computational Linguistics
• Forensic Linguistics
• Grammar, Syntax and Morphology
• Historical and Diachronic Linguistics
• History of English
• Language Acquisition
• Language Evolution
• Language Reference
• Language Variation
• Language Families
• Lexicography
• Linguistic Anthropology
• Linguistic Theories
• Linguistic Typology
• Phonetics and Phonology
• Psycholinguistics
• Sociolinguistics
• Translation and Interpretation
• Writing Systems
• Browse content in Literature
• Bibliography
• Children's Literature Studies
• Literary Studies (Asian)
• Literary Studies (European)
• Literary Studies (Eco-criticism)
• Literary Studies (Romanticism)
• Literary Studies (American)
• Literary Studies (Modernism)
• Literary Studies - World
• Literary Studies (1500 to 1800)
• Literary Studies (19th Century)
• Literary Studies (20th Century onwards)
• Literary Studies (African American Literature)
• Literary Studies (British and Irish)
• Literary Studies (Early and Medieval)
• Literary Studies (Fiction, Novelists, and Prose Writers)
• Literary Studies (Gender Studies)
• Literary Studies (Graphic Novels)
• Literary Studies (History of the Book)
• Literary Studies (Plays and Playwrights)
• Literary Studies (Poetry and Poets)
• Literary Studies (Postcolonial Literature)
• Literary Studies (Queer Studies)
• Literary Studies (Science Fiction)
• Literary Studies (Travel Literature)
• Literary Studies (War Literature)
• Literary Studies (Women's Writing)
• Literary Theory and Cultural Studies
• Mythology and Folklore
• Shakespeare Studies and Criticism
• Browse content in Media Studies
• Browse content in Music
• Applied Music
• Dance and Music
• Ethics in Music
• Ethnomusicology
• Gender and Sexuality in Music
• Medicine and Music
• Music Cultures
• Music and Religion
• Music and Media
• Music and Culture
• Music Education and Pedagogy
• Music Theory and Analysis
• Musical Scores, Lyrics, and Libretti
• Musical Structures, Styles, and Techniques
• Musicology and Music History
• Performance Practice and Studies
• Race and Ethnicity in Music
• Sound Studies
• Browse content in Performing Arts
• Browse content in Philosophy
• Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art
• Epistemology
• Feminist Philosophy
• History of Western Philosophy
• Metaphysics
• Moral Philosophy
• Non-Western Philosophy
• Philosophy of Science
• Philosophy of Language
• Philosophy of Mind
• Philosophy of Perception
• Philosophy of Action
• Philosophy of Law
• Philosophy of Religion
• Philosophy of Mathematics and Logic
• Practical Ethics
• Social and Political Philosophy
• Browse content in Religion
• Biblical Studies
• Christianity
• East Asian Religions
• History of Religion
• Judaism and Jewish Studies
• Qumran Studies
• Religion and Education
• Religion and Health
• Religion and Politics
• Religion and Science
• Religion and Law
• Religion and Art, Literature, and Music
• Religious Studies
• Browse content in Society and Culture
• Cookery, Food, and Drink
• Cultural Studies
• Customs and Traditions
• Ethical Issues and Debates
• Hobbies, Games, Arts and Crafts
• Natural world, Country Life, and Pets
• Popular Beliefs and Controversial Knowledge
• Sports and Outdoor Recreation
• Technology and Society
• Travel and Holiday
• Visual Culture
• Browse content in Law
• Arbitration
• Browse content in Company and Commercial Law
• Commercial Law
• Company Law
• Browse content in Comparative Law
• Systems of Law
• Competition Law
• Browse content in Constitutional and Administrative Law
• Government Powers
• Judicial Review
• Local Government Law
• Military and Defence Law
• Parliamentary and Legislative Practice
• Construction Law
• Contract Law
• Browse content in Criminal Law
• Criminal Procedure
• Criminal Evidence Law
• Sentencing and Punishment
• Employment and Labour Law
• Environment and Energy Law
• Browse content in Financial Law
• Banking Law
• Insolvency Law
• History of Law
• Human Rights and Immigration
• Intellectual Property Law
• Browse content in International Law
• Private International Law and Conflict of Laws
• Public International Law
• IT and Communications Law
• Jurisprudence and Philosophy of Law
• Law and Politics
• Law and Society
• Browse content in Legal System and Practice
• Courts and Procedure
• Legal Skills and Practice
• Primary Sources of Law
• Regulation of Legal Profession
• Medical and Healthcare Law
• Browse content in Policing
• Criminal Investigation and Detection
• Police and Security Services
• Police Procedure and Law
• Police Regional Planning
• Browse content in Property Law
• Personal Property Law
• Study and Revision
• Terrorism and National Security Law
• Browse content in Trusts Law
• Wills and Probate or Succession
• Browse content in Medicine and Health
• Browse content in Allied Health Professions
• Arts Therapies
• Clinical Science
• Dietetics and Nutrition
• Occupational Therapy
• Operating Department Practice
• Physiotherapy
• Radiography
• Speech and Language Therapy
• Browse content in Anaesthetics
• General Anaesthesia
• Neuroanaesthesia
• Browse content in Clinical Medicine
• Acute Medicine
• Cardiovascular Medicine
• Clinical Genetics
• Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics
• Dermatology
• Endocrinology and Diabetes
• Gastroenterology
• Genito-urinary Medicine
• Geriatric Medicine
• Infectious Diseases
• Medical Toxicology
• Medical Oncology
• Pain Medicine
• Palliative Medicine
• Rehabilitation Medicine
• Respiratory Medicine and Pulmonology
• Rheumatology
• Sleep Medicine
• Sports and Exercise Medicine
• Clinical Neuroscience
• Community Medical Services
• Critical Care
• Emergency Medicine
• Forensic Medicine
• Haematology
• History of Medicine
• Browse content in Medical Dentistry
• Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery
• Paediatric Dentistry
• Restorative Dentistry and Orthodontics
• Surgical Dentistry
• Browse content in Medical Skills
• Clinical Skills
• Communication Skills
• Nursing Skills
• Surgical Skills
• Medical Ethics
• Medical Statistics and Methodology
• Browse content in Neurology
• Clinical Neurophysiology
• Neuropathology
• Nursing Studies
• Browse content in Obstetrics and Gynaecology
• Gynaecology
• Occupational Medicine
• Ophthalmology
• Otolaryngology (ENT)
• Browse content in Paediatrics
• Neonatology
• Browse content in Pathology
• Chemical Pathology
• Clinical Cytogenetics and Molecular Genetics
• Histopathology
• Medical Microbiology and Virology
• Patient Education and Information
• Browse content in Pharmacology
• Psychopharmacology
• Browse content in Popular Health
• Caring for Others
• Complementary and Alternative Medicine
• Self-help and Personal Development
• Browse content in Preclinical Medicine
• Cell Biology
• Molecular Biology and Genetics
• Reproduction, Growth and Development
• Primary Care
• Professional Development in Medicine
• Browse content in Psychiatry
• Addiction Medicine
• Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
• Forensic Psychiatry
• Learning Disabilities
• Old Age Psychiatry
• Psychotherapy
• Browse content in Public Health and Epidemiology
• Epidemiology
• Public Health
• Browse content in Radiology
• Clinical Radiology
• Interventional Radiology
• Nuclear Medicine
• Radiation Oncology
• Reproductive Medicine
• Browse content in Surgery
• Cardiothoracic Surgery
• Gastro-intestinal and Colorectal Surgery
• General Surgery
• Neurosurgery
• Paediatric Surgery
• Peri-operative Care
• Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery
• Surgical Oncology
• Transplant Surgery
• Trauma and Orthopaedic Surgery
• Vascular Surgery
• Browse content in Science and Mathematics
• Browse content in Biological Sciences
• Aquatic Biology
• Biochemistry
• Bioinformatics and Computational Biology
• Developmental Biology
• Ecology and Conservation
• Evolutionary Biology
• Genetics and Genomics
• Microbiology
• Molecular and Cell Biology
• Natural History
• Plant Sciences and Forestry
• Research Methods in Life Sciences
• Structural Biology
• Systems Biology
• Zoology and Animal Sciences
• Browse content in Chemistry
• Analytical Chemistry
• Computational Chemistry
• Crystallography
• Environmental Chemistry
• Industrial Chemistry
• Inorganic Chemistry
• Materials Chemistry
• Medicinal Chemistry
• Mineralogy and Gems
• Organic Chemistry
• Physical Chemistry
• Polymer Chemistry
• Study and Communication Skills in Chemistry
• Theoretical Chemistry
• Browse content in Computer Science
• Artificial Intelligence
• Computer Architecture and Logic Design
• Game Studies
• Human-Computer Interaction
• Mathematical Theory of Computation
• Programming Languages
• Software Engineering
• Systems Analysis and Design
• Virtual Reality
• Browse content in Computing
• Business Applications
• Computer Security
• Computer Games
• Computer Networking and Communications
• Digital Lifestyle
• Graphical and Digital Media Applications
• Operating Systems
• Browse content in Earth Sciences and Geography
• Atmospheric Sciences
• Environmental Geography
• Geology and the Lithosphere
• Maps and Map-making
• Meteorology and Climatology
• Oceanography and Hydrology
• Palaeontology
• Physical Geography and Topography
• Regional Geography
• Soil Science
• Urban Geography
• Browse content in Engineering and Technology
• Agriculture and Farming
• Biological Engineering
• Civil Engineering, Surveying, and Building
• Electronics and Communications Engineering
• Energy Technology
• Engineering (General)
• Environmental Science, Engineering, and Technology
• History of Engineering and Technology
• Mechanical Engineering and Materials
• Technology of Industrial Chemistry
• Transport Technology and Trades
• Browse content in Environmental Science
• Applied Ecology (Environmental Science)
• Conservation of the Environment (Environmental Science)
• Environmental Sustainability
• Environmentalist Thought and Ideology (Environmental Science)
• Management of Land and Natural Resources (Environmental Science)
• Natural Disasters (Environmental Science)
• Nuclear Issues (Environmental Science)
• Pollution and Threats to the Environment (Environmental Science)
• Social Impact of Environmental Issues (Environmental Science)
• History of Science and Technology
• Browse content in Materials Science
• Ceramics and Glasses
• Composite Materials
• Metals, Alloying, and Corrosion
• Nanotechnology
• Browse content in Mathematics
• Applied Mathematics
• Biomathematics and Statistics
• History of Mathematics
• Mathematical Education
• Mathematical Finance
• Mathematical Analysis
• Numerical and Computational Mathematics
• Probability and Statistics
• Pure Mathematics
• Browse content in Neuroscience
• Cognition and Behavioural Neuroscience
• Development of the Nervous System
• Disorders of the Nervous System
• History of Neuroscience
• Invertebrate Neurobiology
• Molecular and Cellular Systems
• Neuroendocrinology and Autonomic Nervous System
• Neuroscientific Techniques
• Sensory and Motor Systems
• Browse content in Physics
• Astronomy and Astrophysics
• Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics
• Biological and Medical Physics
• Classical Mechanics
• Computational Physics
• Condensed Matter Physics
• Electromagnetism, Optics, and Acoustics
• History of Physics
• Mathematical and Statistical Physics
• Measurement Science
• Nuclear Physics
• Particles and Fields
• Plasma Physics
• Quantum Physics
• Relativity and Gravitation
• Semiconductor and Mesoscopic Physics
• Browse content in Psychology
• Affective Sciences
• Clinical Psychology
• Cognitive Psychology
• Cognitive Neuroscience
• Criminal and Forensic Psychology
• Developmental Psychology
• Educational Psychology
• Evolutionary Psychology
• Health Psychology
• History and Systems in Psychology
• Music Psychology
• Neuropsychology
• Organizational Psychology
• Psychological Assessment and Testing
• Psychology of Human-Technology Interaction
• Psychology Professional Development and Training
• Research Methods in Psychology
• Social Psychology
• Browse content in Social Sciences
• Browse content in Anthropology
• Anthropology of Religion
• Human Evolution
• Medical Anthropology
• Physical Anthropology
• Regional Anthropology
• Social and Cultural Anthropology
• Theory and Practice of Anthropology
• Browse content in Business and Management
• Business Strategy
• Business Ethics
• Business History
• Business and Government
• Business and Technology
• Business and the Environment
• Comparative Management
• Corporate Governance
• Corporate Social Responsibility
• Entrepreneurship
• Health Management
• Human Resource Management
• Industrial and Employment Relations
• Industry Studies
• Information and Communication Technologies
• International Business
• Knowledge Management
• Management and Management Techniques
• Operations Management
• Organizational Theory and Behaviour
• Pensions and Pension Management
• Public and Nonprofit Management
• Strategic Management
• Supply Chain Management
• Browse content in Criminology and Criminal Justice
• Criminal Justice
• Criminology
• Forms of Crime
• International and Comparative Criminology
• Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice
• Development Studies
• Browse content in Economics
• Agricultural, Environmental, and Natural Resource Economics
• Asian Economics
• Behavioural Finance
• Behavioural Economics and Neuroeconomics
• Econometrics and Mathematical Economics
• Economic Systems
• Economic History
• Economic Methodology
• Economic Development and Growth
• Financial Markets
• Financial Institutions and Services
• General Economics and Teaching
• Health, Education, and Welfare
• History of Economic Thought
• International Economics
• Labour and Demographic Economics
• Law and Economics
• Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics
• Microeconomics
• Public Economics
• Urban, Rural, and Regional Economics
• Welfare Economics
• Browse content in Education
• Adult Education and Continuous Learning
• Care and Counselling of Students
• Early Childhood and Elementary Education
• Educational Equipment and Technology
• Educational Strategies and Policy
• Higher and Further Education
• Organization and Management of Education
• Philosophy and Theory of Education
• Schools Studies
• Secondary Education
• Teaching of a Specific Subject
• Teaching of Specific Groups and Special Educational Needs
• Teaching Skills and Techniques
• Browse content in Environment
• Applied Ecology (Social Science)
• Climate Change
• Conservation of the Environment (Social Science)
• Environmentalist Thought and Ideology (Social Science)
• Natural Disasters (Environment)
• Social Impact of Environmental Issues (Social Science)
• Browse content in Human Geography
• Cultural Geography
• Economic Geography
• Political Geography
• Browse content in Interdisciplinary Studies
• Communication Studies
• Museums, Libraries, and Information Sciences
• Browse content in Politics
• African Politics
• Asian Politics
• Chinese Politics
• Comparative Politics
• Conflict Politics
• Elections and Electoral Studies
• Environmental Politics
• Ethnic Politics
• European Union
• Foreign Policy
• Gender and Politics
• Human Rights and Politics
• Indian Politics
• International Relations
• International Organization (Politics)
• International Political Economy
• Irish Politics
• Latin American Politics
• Middle Eastern Politics
• Political Methodology
• Political Communication
• Political Philosophy
• Political Sociology
• Political Behaviour
• Political Economy
• Political Institutions
• Political Theory
• Politics and Law
• Politics of Development
• Public Administration
• Public Policy
• Quantitative Political Methodology
• Regional Political Studies
• Russian Politics
• Security Studies
• State and Local Government
• UK Politics
• US Politics
• Browse content in Regional and Area Studies
• African Studies
• Asian Studies
• East Asian Studies
• Japanese Studies
• Latin American Studies
• Middle Eastern Studies
• Native American Studies
• Scottish Studies
• Browse content in Research and Information
• Research Methods
• Browse content in Social Work
• Addictions and Substance Misuse
• Adoption and Fostering
• Care of the Elderly
• Child and Adolescent Social Work
• Couple and Family Social Work
• Direct Practice and Clinical Social Work
• Emergency Services
• Human Behaviour and the Social Environment
• International and Global Issues in Social Work
• Mental and Behavioural Health
• Social Justice and Human Rights
• Social Policy and Advocacy
• Social Work and Crime and Justice
• Social Work Macro Practice
• Social Work Practice Settings
• Social Work Research and Evidence-based Practice
• Welfare and Benefit Systems
• Browse content in Sociology
• Childhood Studies
• Community Development
• Comparative and Historical Sociology
• Economic Sociology
• Gender and Sexuality
• Gerontology and Ageing
• Health, Illness, and Medicine
• Marriage and the Family
• Migration Studies
• Occupations, Professions, and Work
• Organizations
• Population and Demography
• Race and Ethnicity
• Social Theory
• Social Movements and Social Change
• Social Research and Statistics
• Social Stratification, Inequality, and Mobility
• Sociology of Religion
• Sociology of Education
• Sport and Leisure
• Urban and Rural Studies
• Browse content in Warfare and Defence
• Defence Strategy, Planning, and Research
• Land Forces and Warfare
• Military Administration
• Military Life and Institutions
• Naval Forces and Warfare
• Other Warfare and Defence Issues
• Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution
• Weapons and Equipment

• < Previous chapter
• Next chapter >

Heritage Tourism

The late Alan Gordon was professor of history at the University of Guelph. He authored three books: Making Public Pasts: The Contested Terrain of Montreal’s Public Memories, 1891–1930, The Hero and the Historians: Historiography and the Uses of Jacques Cartier and Time Travel: Tourism and the Rise of the Living History Museum in Mid-Twentieth Century Canada.

• Published: 18 August 2022
• Cite Icon Cite
• Permissions Icon Permissions

Heritage tourism is a form of cultural tourism in which people travel to experience places, artifacts, or activities that are believed to be authentic representations of people and stories from the past. It couples heritage, a way of imagining the past in terms that suit the values of the present, with travel to locations associated with enshrined heritage values. Heritage tourism sites are normally divided into two often overlapping categories: natural sites and sites related to human culture and history. By exploring the construction of heritage tourism destinations in historical context, we can better understand how and through what attributes places become designated as sites of heritage and what it means to have an authentic heritage experience. These questions are explored through heritage landscapes, national parks, battlefield tourism, architectural tourism, and the concept of world heritage.

Heritage is one of the most difficult, complex, and expansive words in the English language because there is no simple or unanimously accepted understanding of what heritage encompasses. 1 We can pair heritage with a vast range of adjectives, such as cultural, historical, physical, architectural, or natural. What unites these different uses of the term is their reference to the past, in some way or another, while linking it to present-day needs. Heritage, then, is a reimagining of the past in terms that suit the values of the present. It cannot exist independently of human attempts to make the past usable because it is the product of human interpretation of not only the past, but of who belongs to particular historical narratives. At its base, heritage is about identity, and the inclusion and exclusion of peoples, stories, places, and activities in those identities. The use of the word “heritage” in this context is a postwar phenomenon. Heritage and heritage tourism, although not described in these terms, has a history as long as the history of modern tourism. Indeed, a present-minded use of the past is as old as civilization itself, and naturally embedded itself in the development of modern tourism. 2 The exploration of that history, examining the origins and development of heritage tourism, helps unpack some of the controversies and dissonance it produces.

Heritage in Tourism

Heritage tourism sites are normally divided into two categories: natural sites and sites of human, historical, or cultural heritage. the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) separates its list of world heritage sites in this manner. Sites of natural heritage are understood to be places where natural phenomena such as wildlife, flora, geological features, or ecosystems, are generally deemed to be of exceptional beauty or significance. Cultural heritage sites, which represent over three quarters of UNESCO-recognized sites, are places where human activity has left a lasting and substantial physical impact that reveals important features of a culture or cultures. Despite the apparent simplicity of this division, it is not always easy to categorize individual sites. UNESCO thus allows for a category of “mixed” heritage sites. But official recognition is not necessary to mark a place as a heritage destination and, moreover, some authors point to versions of heritage tourism that are not tightly place-specific, such as festivals of traditional performances or foodways. 3

The central questions at the heart of heritage tourism ask what it is that designates something as “heritage” and whether tourists have an “authentic” heritage experience there. At its simplest, heritage tourism is a form of cultural tourism in which people travel to experience places, artifacts, or activities that are authentic representations of people and stories from the past. Yet this definition encompasses two, often competing, motivations. Heritage tourism is both a cultural phenomenon through which people attempt to connect with the past, their ancestors, and their identity, and it is an industry designed to profit from it. Another question surrounds the source of the “heritage” in heritage tourism. Many scholars have argued that heritage does not live in the destinations or attractions people seek. Heritage is not innate to the destination, but is rather based on the tourist’s motivations and expectations. Thus, heritage tourism is a form of tourism in which the main motivation for visiting a site is based on the traveler’s perceptions of its heritage characteristics. Following the logic of this view, the authenticity of the heritage experience depends on the traveler rather than the destination or the activity. Heritage features, as well as the sense of authenticity they impart, are democratized in what might be called a consumer-based model of authenticity. 4 This is a model that allows for virtually anything or any place to be a heritage destination. Although such an approach to understanding heritage tourism may well serve present-day studies, measuring motivations is more complicated for historical subjects. Long-departed travelers are not readily surveyed about their expectations; motivations have to be teased out of historical records. In a contrasting view, John Tunbridge and Gregory Ashworth argue that heritage attractions are created through marketing: they are invented to be heritage attractions and sold to a traveling public as such. Yet, heritage attractions, in this understanding, are still deemed authentic when they satisfy consumer expectations about heritage. 5 This insight also implies that heritage tourism destinations might be deceptions, and certainly there are examples of the fabrication of heritage sites. However, if motivations and expectations are arbiters of heritage, then even invented heritage can become authentic through its acceptance by a public. While not ignoring the motivations and expectations of travelers, for historians, any understanding of heritage tourism must include the process by which sites become designated as a places of heritage. It must encompass the economic aspects of tourism development, tourism’s role in constructing narratives of national or group identity, and the cultural phenomenon of seeking authentic representations of those identities, regardless of their origins. Such a practice might include traveling to sites connected to diasporas, places of historical significance, sites of religious pilgrimages, and landscapes of scenic beauty or cultural importance.

Scholarly interest in heritage, at least in the English-speaking world, dates from the 1980s reaction to the emergence of new right-wing political movements that used the past as a tool to legitimize political positions. Authors such as David Lowenthal, Robert Hewison, and Patrick Wright bemoaned the recourse to “heritage” as evidence of a failing society that was backward-looking, fearful, and resentful of modern diversity. 6 Heritage, they proclaimed, was elitist and innately conservative, imposed on the people from above in ways that distanced them from an authentic historical consciousness. Although Raphael Samuel fired back that the critique of heritage was itself elitist and almost snobbish, this line continued in the 1990s. Works by John Gillis, Tony Bennett, and Eric Hobsbawm, among others, concurred that heritage was little more than simplified history used as a weapon of social and political control.

At about the same time, historians also began to take tourism seriously as a subject of inquiry, and they quickly connected leisure travel to perceived evils in the heritage industry. Historians such as John K. Walton in the United Kingdom and John Jakle in the United States began investigating patterns of tourism’s history in their respective countries. Although not explicitly concerned with heritage tourism, works such as Jakle’s The Tourist explored the infrastructure and experience of leisure travel in America, including the different types of attractions people sought. 7 In Sacred Places , John Sears argued that tourism helped define America in the nineteenth century through its landscape and natural wonders. Natural tourist attractions, such as Yosemite and Yellowstone parks became sacred places for a young nation without unifying religious and national shrines. 8 Among North America’s first heritage destinations was Niagara Falls, which drew Americans, Europeans, Britons, and Canadians to marvel at its beauty and power. Tourist services quickly developed there to accommodate travelers and, as Patricia Jasen and others note, Niagara became a North American heritage destination at the birth of the continent’s tourism trade. 9

As the European and North American travel business set about establishing scenic landscapes as sites worthy of the expense and difficulty of travel to them, they rarely used a rhetoric of heritage. Sites were depicted as places to embrace “the sublime,” a feeling arising when the emotional experience overwhelms the power of reason to articulate it. Yet as modern tourism developed, promoters required more varied attractions to induce travelers to visit specific destinations. North America’s first tourist circuits, well established by the 1820s, took travelers up the Hudson River valley from New York to the spas of Saratoga Springs, then utilizing the Erie Canal even before its completion, west to Niagara Falls. Tourist guidebooks were replete with vivid depictions of the natural wonders to be witnessed, and very quickly Niagara became heavily commercialized. As America expanded beyond the Midwest in the second half of the nineteenth century, text and image combined to produce a sense that these beautiful landscapes were a common inheritance of the (white and middle-class) American people. Commissioned expeditions, such as the Powell Expedition of 1869–1872, produced best-selling travel narratives revealing the American landscape to enthralled readers in the eastern cities (see Butler , this volume). John Wesley Powell’s description of his voyage along the Colorado River combined over 450 pages of written description with 80 prints, mostly portraying spectacular natural features. American westward exploration, then, construed the continent’s natural wonders as its heritage.

In America, heritage landscapes often obscured human activity and imagined the continent as nature untouched. But natural heritage also played a role in early heritage tourism in Britain and Europe. Many scholars have investigated the connection between national character and the depiction of topographical features, arguing that people often implant their communities with ideas of landscape and associate geographical features with their identities. In this way, landscape helps embed a connection between places and particular local and ethnic identities. 10 Idealized landscapes become markers of national identity (see Noack , this volume). For instance, in the Romantic era, the English Lake District and the mountains of the Scottish Highlands became iconic national representations of English, Scottish, or British nationalities. David Lowenthal has commented on the nostalgia inherent in “landscape-as-heritage.” The archetypical English landscape, a patchwork of fields divided by hedgerows and sprinkled with villages, was a relatively recent construction when the pre-Raphaelite painters reconfigured it as the romantic allure of a medieval England. It spoke to the stability and order inherent in English character. 11

Travel literature combined with landscape art to develop heritage landscapes and promote them as tourist attractions. Following the 1707 Act of Union, English tourists became fascinated with Scotland, and in particular the Scottish Highlands. Tourist guidebooks portrayed the Highlands as a harsh, bleak environment spectacular for its beauty as well as the quaintness of its people and their customs (see Schaff , this volume). Over the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, tourist texts cemented the image of Highland culture and heritage. Scholars have criticized this process as a “Tartanization” or “Balmoralization” of the country by which its landscape and culture was reduced to a few stereotypes appealing to foreign visitors. Nevertheless, guidebook texts described the bens, lochs, and glens with detail, helping create and reinforce a mental picture of a quintessential Highland landscape. 12 The massacre of members of the Clan MacDonald at Glencoe, killed on a winter night in 1692 for insufficient loyalty to the monarchy, added romance. Forgotten for over a century, the event was recalled in the mid-nineteenth century by the historian Thomas Babington Macaulay, and quickly became a tragic tale associated with the scenic valley. At the same time the Highlands were being re-coded from a dangerous to a sublime landscape, its inhabitants became romanticized as an untainted, simple, premodern culture. The natural beauty of the landscape at Glencoe and its relative ease of access, being close to Loch Lomond and Glasgow, made it an attraction with a ready-made tragic tale. Highlands travel guides began to include Glencoe in their itineraries, combining a site of natural beauty with a haunting human past. Both natural and cultural heritage, then, are not inherent, but represent choices made by people about what and how to value the land and the past. On France’s Celtic fringe, a similar process unfolded. When modern tourism developed in Brittany in the mid-nineteenth century, guidebooks such as Joanne’s defined the terms of an authentic Breton experience. Joanne’s 1867 guide coupled the region’s characteristic rugged coastlines with the supposedly backward people, their costumes, habitudes, beliefs, and superstitions, who inhabited it. 13 Travel guides were thus the first contributors in the construction of heritage destinations. They began to highlight the history, real and imagined, of destinations to promote their distinctions. And, with increasing interest in the sites of national heritage, people organized to catalog, preserve, and promote heritage destinations.

Organizing Heritage Tourism

Among the world’s first bodies dedicated to preserving heritage was the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB), organized in England in 1877. Emerging as a result of particular debates about architectural practices, this society opposed a then-popular trend of altering buildings to produce imaginary historical forms. This approach, which was most famously connected to Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc’s French restorations, involved removing or replacing existing architectural features, something renounced by the SPAB. The society’s manifesto declared that old structures should be repaired so that their entire history would be protected as part of cultural heritage. The first heritage preservation legislation, England’s Ancient Monuments Protection Act of 1882, provided for the protection initially of 68 prehistoric sites and appointed an inspector of ancient monuments. 14 By 1895, movements to conserve historic structures and landscapes had combined with the founding of the National Trust, officially known as the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, as a charitable agency. Much of the Trust’s early effort protected landscapes: of twenty-nine properties listed in 1907, seventeen were acreages of land and other open spaces. 15 Over the twentieth century, however, the Trust grew more and more concerned with protecting country houses and gardens, which now constitute the majority of its listed properties.

British efforts were duplicated in Europe. The Dutch Society for the Preservation of Natural Landmarks was established in 1904; France passed legislation to protect natural monuments in 1906. And in Sweden, the Society for the Protection of Nature was established in 1909, to name only a few examples. Nature was often connected to the spirit of “the folk,” an idea that encompassed a notion of an original ethnic core to the nation. Various European nationalisms of the period embraced the idea of an “authentic” national folk, with each folk considered unique due to its connection with a specific geography. Folklore and the celebration of folk culture offered Europeans links to imagined national heritages in a rapidly modernizing world, as modern, middle-class Europeans turned their attention to the romanticized primitive life of so-called simple peasants and linked notions of natural and human heritage. Through the concept of the folk, natural and human heritage combined to buttress emerging expressions of nationalism. 16

Sweden provides an instructive example. As early as the seventeenth century, Swedish antiquarians were intrigued by medieval rune stones, burial mounds, and cairns strewn across the country, but also saw these connected to natural features. Investigations of these relics of past Nordic culture involved a sense of the landscape in which they were found. This interest accelerated as folk studies grew in popularity, in part connected to nationalist political ambitions of Swedes during the growing tensions within the Kingdom of Sweden and Norway, which divided in 1905. Sweden’s preservation law required research into the country’s natural resources to create an inventory of places. Of particular interest were features considered to be “nature in its original state.” The intent was to preserve for future generations at least one example of Sweden’s primordial landscape features: primeval forests, swamps, peat bogs, and boulders. But interest was also drawn to natural landmarks associated with historical or mythical events from Sweden’s past. Stones or trees related to tales from the Nordic sagas, for example, combined natural with cultural heritage. 17

Although early efforts to protect heritage sites were not intended to support tourism, the industry quickly benefited. Alongside expanding tours to the Scottish Highlands and English Lake District, European landscapes became associated with leisure travel. As Tait Kellar argues for one example, the context of the landscape is crucial in understanding the role of tourism in the German Alps. 18 Guidebooks of the nineteenth and early twentieth century did not use the term “heritage,” but they described its tenets to audiences employing a different vocabulary. Baedeker’s travel guides, such as The Eastern Alps , guided bourgeois travelers through the hiking trails and vistas of the mountains and foothills, offering enticing descriptions of the pleasures to be found in the German landscape. Beyond the land, The Eastern Alps directed visitors to excursions that revealed features of natural history, human history, and local German cultures. 19

Across the Atlantic people also cherished escapes to the countryside for leisure and recreation and, as economic and population growth increasingly seemed to threaten the idyllic tranquility of scenic places, many banded together to advocate for their conservation. Yet, ironically, by putting in place systems to mark and preserve America’s natural heritage, conservationists popularized protected sites as tourist destinations. By the second half of the nineteenth century, the conservation movement encouraged the US government to set aside massive areas of American land as parks. For example, Europeans first encountered the scenic beauty of California’s Yosemite Valley at midcentury. With increasing settler populations following the California Gold Rush, tourists began arriving in ever larger numbers and promoters began building accommodations and roads to encourage them. Even during the Civil War, the US government recognized the potential for commercial overdevelopment and the desire of many to preserve America’s most scenic places. 20 In 1864, President Abraham Lincoln signed the Yosemite Grant, designating acres of the valley protected wilderness. This set a precedent for the later creation of America’s first national park. In 1871, the Hayden Geological Survey recommended the preservation of nearly 3,500 square miles of land in the Rocky Mountains, in the territories of Montana, Wyoming, and Idaho. Ferdinand V. Hayden was concerned that the pristine mountain region might soon be as overrun with tourists as Niagara Falls had by then become. 21 The following year, Congress established Yellowstone National Park, the world’s first designated “heritage” site. Yet, from the beginning, Yellowstone and subsequent parks were assumed to be tourist attractions. By 1879, tourists to Yellowstone had established over 200 miles of trails that led them to the park’s most famous attractions. Although thought of as nature preserves, parks were often furnished with railway access, and amenities and accommodations appeared, often prior to official designation. National parks were immediately popular tourist attractions. Even before it had established a centralized bureaucracy to care for them, the United States government had established nine national parks and nearly two dozen national monuments. Canada lagged, but established Rocky Mountain National Park (now Banff) in 1885 to balance interests of resource extraction and conservation. (The world’s second national park was Australia’s Royal National Park, established by the colony of New South Wales in 1879.) By the outbreak of the Great War, Canada and the United States had established fifteen national parks, all but one west of the Mississippi River.

Establishing parks was one component of building a heritage tourism infrastructure. Another was the creation of a national bureaucracy to organize it. The Canadian example reveals how heritage and tourism drove the creation of a national parks service. Much of the mythology surrounding Canada’s national parks emphasized the role of nature preservationists, yet the founder of the parks system, J. B. Harkin, was deeply interested in building a parks network for tourists. 22 Indeed, from early in the twentieth century, Canada’s parks system operated on the principle that parks should be “playgrounds, vacation destinations, and roadside attractions that might simultaneously preserve the fading scenic beauty and wildlife populations” of a modernizing nation. 23 Although Canada had established four national parks in the Rocky Mountains in the 1880s, the administration of those parks was haphazard and decentralized. It was not until the approaching third centennial of the founding of Quebec City (now a UNESCO World Heritage Site) that the Canadian government began thinking actively about administering its national heritage. In 1908, Canada hosted an international tourist festival on the Plains of Abraham, the celebrated open land where French and British armies had fought the decisive battle for supremacy in North America in 1759. The event so popularized the fabled battlefield that the government was compelled to create a National Battlefield Commission to safeguard it. This inspired the creation of the Dominion Parks Branch three years later to manage Canada’s natural heritage parks, the world’s first national parks service. By 1919 the system expanded to include human history—or at least European settler history—through the creation of national historic parks. These parks were even more explicitly designed to attract tourists, automobile tourists in particular. In 1916, five years after Canada, the United States established the National Parks Service with similar objectives.

As in Europe, nationalism played a significant role in developing heritage tourism destinations in America. The first national parks were inspired by the series of American surveying expeditions intended to secure knowledge of the landscape for political control. Stephen Pyne connects the American “discovery” of the Grand Canyon, for example, to notions of manifest destiny following the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo (1848) that ended the Mexican-American War and ceded over 500,000 square miles of what is today the western United States. Popularized by the report of John Wesley Powell (1875) , the canyon began attracting tourists in the 1880s, although Congress failed to establish it as a national park. 24 Tourism was central to developing the Grand Canyon as a national heritage destination. Originally seen by Spanish explorers as an obstacle, and as a sacred place by the Navajo, Hopi, Hualapai, and Havasupai peoples, the canyon came to mark American exceptionalism. Piece by piece, sections of the canyon were set aside as reserves and finally declared a national park in 1919. By then, the park had been serviced by a railway (since 1901) and offered tourists a luxury hotel on the canyon’s south rim.

Archaeology also entered into the construction of American heritage. Almost as soon as it was annexed to the United States, the American southwest revealed to American surveyors a host of archaeological remains. For residents of the southwest, the discovery of these ancient ruins of unknown age pointed to the nobility of a lost predecessor civilization. By deliberately construing the ruins as being of an unknown age, Anglo-American settlers were able to draw distinctions between the ancients and contemporary Native Americans in ways that validated their own occupation of the territory. The ruins also had commercial potential. In Colorado, President Theodore Roosevelt established Mesa Verde National Park in 1906 to protect and capitalize on the abandoned cliff dwellings located there. These ruins had been rediscovered in the 1880s when ranchers learned of them from the local Ute people. By the turn of the century, the ruins had attracted so many treasure seekers that they needed protection. This was the first national park in America designated to protect a site of archaeological significance and linked natural and human heritage in the national parks system. 25

If, as many argue, heritage is not innate, how is it made? Part of the answer to this question can be found in the business of tourism. Commercial exploitation of heritage tourism emerged alongside heritage tourism, but was particularly active in the postwar years. Given their association with tourism, it is not surprising that railways and associated businesses played a prominent role in promoting heritage destinations. Before World War II, the most active heritage tourism promoter was likely the Fred Harvey Company, which successfully marketed, and to a great degree created, much of the heritage of the American southwest. The Fred Harvey Company originated with the opening of a pair of cafés along the Kansas Pacific Railway in 1876. After a stuttering beginning, Harvey’s chain of railway eateries grew in size. Before dining cars became regular features of passenger trains, meals on long-distance trips were provided by outside business such as Harvey’s at regular stops. With the backing of the Santa Fe Railroad, the company also developed attractions based on the Southwest region’s unique architectural and cultural features. The image capitalized on the artistic traditions of Native Americans and early Spanish traditions to create, in particular, the Adobe architectural style now associated with Santa Fe and New Mexico. 26 These designs were also incorporated into tourist facilities on the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, including the El Tovar hotel and the Hopi House souvenir and concession complex, designed to resemble a Hopi pueblo.

Relying on existing and manufactured heritage sites, North American railways popularized attractions as heritage sites. The Northern Pacific Railroad financed a number of hotels in Yellowstone Park, including the Old Faithful Inn in 1904. In 1910, the Great Northern Railroad launched its “See America First” campaign to attract visitors (and new investments) to its routes to the west’s national parks. In Canada, the Dominion Atlantic Railway rebuilt Grand Pré, a Nova Scotia Acadian settlement to evoke the home of the likely fictional character Evangeline from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s 1848 poem by the same name. In the poem, Evangeline was deported from Acadia in 1755 and separated from her betrothed. By the 1920s, the railway was transporting tourists to Grand Pré, christened “Land of Evangeline,” where reproductions stood in for sites mentioned in the poem. 27 However, following World War I, heritage tourism in North America became increasingly dependent on automobile travel and the Dominion Atlantic eventually sold its interest to the Canadian government.

Conflict as Cultural Heritage

Tourism to sites of military history initially involved side trips from more popular, usually natural, attractions. Thomas Chambers notes that the sites of battles of the Seven Years’ War, Revolutionary War, and War of 1812 became tourist attractions as side trips from more established itineraries, such as the northern or fashionable tours. War of 1812 battlefields, many of them in the Niagara theater of the war, were conveniently close to the natural wonders people already came to see. By visiting the places where so many had sacrificed for their country, tourists began attaching new meaning to the sites. Ease of access was essential. Chambers contrasts sites in southern states with those in the north. In the south, the fields of important American Revolution victories at Cowpens and King’s Mountain were too remote to permit easy tourist access and long remained undeveloped. 28 In a contrary example, the Plains of Abraham, the scene of General Wolfe’s dramatic victory over France that led to the Conquest of Canada, was at first a curiosity. The visit to Quebec, a main destination on the northern tour, was originally based on its role as a major port and the attraction of the scenic beauty of the city on the cliffs, compared favorably to Cintra in Portugal. 29 Ease of access helped promoters convert an empty field near the city into the “hallowed Plains.”

Access to battlefields increased at almost the exact moment that one of the nineteenth century’s most devastating wars, the American Civil War, broke out. Railway travel was essential to both the success of the Union Army in reconquering the rebelling Confederacy, and in developing tourism to the sites of the slaughter. Railway travel made sites accessible for urban travelers and new technologies, such as photography and the telegraph, sped news of victories and defeats quickly around the nation. Gettysburg, the scene of a crucial Union victory in July 1863, became a tourist attraction only a few days later. Few would call the farmland of southeastern Pennsylvania sublime, but dramatic human history had unfolded there. The battle inspired the building of a national memorial on the site only four months later, the Soldiers’ National Cemetery. At the inauguration of the cemetery Abraham Lincoln delivered his “Gettysburg Address,” calling on the nation to long remember and cherish the “hallowed ground” where history had been made.

Gettysburg sparked a frenzy of marking sites of Civil War battles and events. Battle sites became important backdrops for political efforts at reunion and reconciliation after the war and attracted hundreds and later thousands of tourists for commemorative events and celebrations. Ten thousand saw President Rutherford Hayes speak at Gettysburg in 1878 and, for the 50th anniversary of Gettysburg, some 55,000 veterans returned to Pennsylvania in July 1913. What had once been a site of bloody, brutal combat had been transformed into a destination where tourists gathered to embrace their shared heritage, north and south. As the years progressed, more attractions were added as tourists began to see their heritage on the battlefield. 30

The conflict that most clearly created tourist attractions out of places of suffering was the World War I. Soon after the war ended, its sites of slaughter also became tourist attractions. As with the Civil War in America, World War I tourists were local people and relatives of the soldiers who had perished on the field of battle. By one estimate 60,000 tourists visited the battlefields of the Western Front by the summer of 1919, the same year that Michelin began publishing guidebooks to them. Numbers grew in the decades following the war. Over 140,000 tourists took in the sites of the war in 1931, which grew to 160,000 for 1939. Organizations such as the Workers’ Travel Association hoped that tourism to battle sites would promote peace, but the travel business also benefited. Travel agencies jumped at the chance to offer tours and publishers produced travel guides to the battlefields. At least thirty English guidebooks were published by 1921. 31

This interest in a conflict that killed, often in brutal fashion, so many might seem a ghoulish form of heritage tourism. Yet Peter Slade argues that people do not visit battlefields for the love for death and gore. They attend these sites out of a sense of pilgrimage to sites sacred to their national heritage. Organized pilgrimages reveal this sense of belonging most clearly. The American Legion organized a pilgrimage of 15,000 veterans in 1927 to commemorate the decade anniversary of America’s entry to the war. The following year 11,000 Britons, including 3,000 women, made a pilgrimage of their own. Canada’s first official pilgrimage involved 8,000 pilgrims (veterans and their families) to attend the inauguration of the Vimy Ridge Memorial, marking a site held by many as a place sacred to Canadian identity. Australians and New Zealanders marched to Gallipoli in Turkey for similar reasons. 32 As with the sites of the Western Front, Gallipoli and pilgrimages to it generated travel accounts and publishers assembled guidebooks to help travelers navigate its attractions and accommodations. In these episodes, tourism was used to construct national heritage. In the interwar years, tourist activity popularized the notion that sites of national heritage existed on the battlefields of foreign lands, where “our” nation’s history was forged. National heritage tourism, then, became transnational.

Since the end of World War II, battlefield tourism has become an important projection of heritage tourism. Commercial tour operators organize thousands of tours of European World War I and World War II battlefields for Americans and Canadians, as for other nationalities. The phenomenon seems particularly pronounced among North Americans. The motivation behind modern battlefield tourism reveals its connection to heritage tourism. If heritage is an appeal to the past that helps establish a sense of identity and belonging, the feelings of national pride and remorse for sacrifice of the fallen at these sites helps define them as sacred to a particular vision of a national past. The sanctity of the battle site makes the act of consuming it as a tourist attraction an act of communion with heritage.

Built Heritage and Tourism

During the upheaval of the Civil War, some Americans began to recognize historic houses as elements of their heritage worthy of preservation. These houses were initially not seen as tourist attractions, but as markers of national values. Their heritage value preceded their value as tourist attractions. The first major preservation initiative launched in 1853 to save George Washington’s tomb and home from spoliation. Behind overt sectional divisions of north and south was an implied vesting of republican purity among the patrician families that could trace their ancestors to the revolutionary age and who could restore American culture to its proper deferential state. The success of preserving Mount Vernon led to a proliferation of similar house museums. By the 1930s, the American museum association even produced a guide for how to establish new examples and promote them as sites of heritage for tourist interest. Historic houses provided tangible, physical evidence of heritage. Like scenic landscapes attached to the stories of history, buildings connected locations to significant events and people of the past. Architectural heritage came to be closely associated with tourism. Architectural monuments are easily identified, easy to promote, and, as physical structures, easily reproduced in souvenir ephemera. Although the recognition of architectural monuments as tourist draws could be said to have originated with the Grand Tour, or at least with the publication of John Ruskin’s “Seven Lamps of Architecture” (1849), which singled out the monuments of Venice for veneration, twentieth century mobility facilitated a greater desire to travel to see historic structures. Indeed, mobility, especially automobility, prompted the desire to preserve or even reinvent the structural heritage of the past.

A driving factor behind the growth of tourism to sites associated with these structural relics was a feeling that the past—and especially the social values of the past—was being lost. For example, Colonial Williamsburg developed in reaction to the pace of urban and social change brought about by automobile travel in the 1920s. Williamsburg was once a community of colonial era architecture, but had become just another highway town before John D. Rockefeller lent his considerable wealth to its preservation and reconstruction. 33 Rockefeller had already donated a million dollars for the restoration of French chateaux at Versailles, Fontainebleu, and Rheims. 34 At Williamsburg, his approach was to remove structures from the post-Colonial period to create a townscape from the late eighteenth century. By selecting a cut-off year of 1790, Rockefeller and his experts attempted to freeze Williamsburg in a particular vision of the past. The heritage envisioned was not that of ordinary Americans, but that of colonial elites. Conceived to be a tourist attraction, Colonial Williamsburg offered a tourist-friendly lesson in American heritage. Rockefeller, and a host of consultants convinced the (white) people of Williamsburg to reimagine their heritage and their past. America’s heritage values were translated to the concepts of self-government and individual liberty elaborated by the great patriots, Washington, Madison, Henry, and Jefferson. The town commemorated the planter elites that had dominated American society until the Jacksonian era, and presented them as progenitors of timeless ideals and values. They represented the “very cradle of that Americanism of which Rockefeller and the corporate elite were the inheritors and custodians.” 35

Rockefeller’s Williamsburg was not the only American heritage tourist reconstruction. Canada also underwent reconstruction projects for specifically heritage tourism purposes, such as the construction of “Champlain’s Habitation” at Port Royal, Nova Scotia or the attempt to draw tourists to Invermere, British Columbia with a replica fur trade fort. 36 Following World War I and accelerating after World War II, the number and nature of places deemed heritage attractions grew. Across North America, all levels of governments and private corporations built replica heritage sites with varying degrees of “authenticity.” Although these sites often made use of existing buildings and landscapes, they also manufactured an imaginary environment of the past. The motivation behind these sites was almost always diversification of the local economy through increased tourism. Canada’s Fortress of Louisbourg National Historic Site is perhaps the most obvious example. It is a reconstructed section of the French colonial town, conquered and destroyed in 1758, built on the archaeological remains of the original. Constructed by the government of Canada as a means to diversify the failing resource economy of its Atlantic provinces, the tourist attraction was also designated a component of Canada’s national heritage. The US government also increased its interest in the protection of heritage destinations, greatly expanding the list of national historic landmarks, sites, parks, and monuments. As postwar governments became more concerned with managing their economies, tourism quickly came to be seen as a key economic sector. The language of national heritage helped build public support for state intervention in natural and historic artifacts and sites that could be presented as sacred national places.

In Europe, many historic sites were devastated by bombardment during World War II. Aside from pressing humanitarian issues, heritage concerns also had to be addressed. In France, the war had destroyed nearly half a million buildings, principally in the northern cities, many of which were of clear heritage value. The French government established a commission to undertake the reconstruction of historic buildings and monuments and, in some cases, entire towns. Saint-Malo, in Brittany, had been completely destroyed, but the old walled town was rebuilt to its seventeenth century appearance. Already a seaside resort, the town added a heritage site destination. In the 1920s and 1930s, European fascist states had also employed heritage tourism. In Mussolini’s Italy and Nazi Germany, workers’ leisure time was to be organized to prevent ordinary Italians and Germans from falling into unproductive leisure activities. Given the attachment to racialized views of purity and identity, organized tourism was encouraged to allow people to bond with their national heritage. Hiking in the Black Forest or the alpine Allgau might help connect Germans to the landscape and reconnect them to the traditional costumes and folkways of rural Germany. As Kristin Semmens argues, most studies of the Nazi misappropriation of the past ignore the displays of history aimed toward tourists at Germany’s heritage sites. Many museums and historic sites twisted their interpretations to fit the Nazi present. 37 In ways that foreshadowed the 1980s British left’s critique of heritage, fascist regimes made use of heritage tourism to control society. After the war, a vigorous program of denazification was undertaken to remove public relics of the Nazi regime and in formerly occupied territories, as was a program of reconstruction. In the communist east, blaming the Nazis for the destruction of German heritage was an ideological gift. It allowed the communist regime to establish itself as the true custodian of German identity and heritage. 38 In the capitalist west, tourism revived quickly. By early 1947, thirteen new tourist associations were active in the Allied occupation zone. Tourism rhetoric in the postwar years attempted to distance German heritage from the Nazi regime to reintroduce foreign travelers to the “real Germany.” Despite this objective, Alon Confino notes that traces of the Nazi past can be located in postwar tourist promotions that highlighted Nazi-era infrastructure. 39

Postwar Heritage Tourism

As tourism became a more global industry, thanks in no small part to the advent of affordable air travel in the postwar era, heritage tourism became transnational. Ethnic heritage tourism became more important, and diaspora or roots tourism, which brought second- and third-generation migrants back to the original home of their ancestors, accelerated. Commodifying ethnic heritage has been one of the most distinctive developments in twenty-first century tourism. Ethnic heritage tourism can involve migrants, their children, or grandchildren returning to their “home” countries as visitors. In this form of tourism, the “heritage” component is thus expressed in the motivations and self-identifications of the traveler. It involves a sense of belonging that is rooted in the symbolic meanings of collective memories, shared stories, and the sense of place embodied in the physical locations of the original homeland. Paul Basu has extensively studied the phenomenon of “roots tourism” among the descendants of Scottish Highlanders. He suggests that in their trips to Scotland to conduct genealogical research, explore sites connected to their ancestors, or sites connected to Scottish identity, they construct a sense of their heritage as expatriate Scots. 40 Similar “return” movements can be found in the migrant-descended communities of many settler colonial nations. For second-generation Chinese Americans visiting China, their search for authentic experiences mirrored those of other tourists. Yet, travel to their parents’ homeland strengthened their sense of family history and attachment to Chinese cultures. 41 On the other hand, Shaul Kellner examines the growing trend of cultivating roots tourism through state-sponsored homeland tours. In Tours that Bind , Kellner explores the State of Israel and American Jewish organizations’ efforts to forge a sense of Israeli heritage among young American Jews. However, Kellner cautions, individual experiences and human agency limit the hosts’ abilities to control the experience and thus control the sense of heritage. 42

Leisure tourism also played a role in developing heritage sites, as travelers to sunshine destinations began looking for more interesting side trips. Repeating the battlefield tourism of a century before, by the 1970s access to historic and prehistoric sites made it possible to add side trips to beach vacations. Perhaps the best example of this was the development of tourism to sites of Mayan heritage by the Mexican government in the 1970s. The most famous heritage sites, at least for Westerners, were the Mayan sites of Yucatan. First promoted as destinations by the American travel writer John Lloyd Stephens in the 1840s, their relative inaccessibility (as well as local political instabilities) made them unlikely tourist attractions before the twentieth century. By 1923, the Yucatan government had opened a highway to the site of the Chichén Itzá ruins, and local promoters began promotions in the 1940s. It was not until after the Mexican government nationalized all archaeological ruins in the 1970s that organized tours from Mexican beach resorts began to feature trips to the ruins themselves. 43

Mexico’s interest in the preservation and promotion of its archaeological relics coincided with one of the most important developments in heritage tourism in the postwar years: the emergence of the idea of world heritage. The idea was formalized in 1972 with the creation of UNESCO’s designation of World Heritage Sites. The number of sites has grown from the twelve first designated in 1978 to well over 1,000 in 167 different countries. In truth, the movement toward recognizing world heritage began with the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, which did not limit its activities to preserving only England’s architectural heritage. Out of its advocacy, European architects and preservationists drafted a series of accords, such as the Athens Charter of 1931, and the later Venice Charter of 1964, both of which emerged from a growing sense of cultural internationalism. These agreements set guidelines for the preservation and restoration of buildings and monuments. What UNESCO added was the criterion of Outstanding Universal Value for the designation of a place as world heritage. It took until 1980 to work out the first iteration of Outstanding Universal Value and the notion has never been universally accepted, although UNESCO member countries adhere to it officially. Once a site has been named to the list, member countries are expected to protect it from deterioration, although this does not always happen. As of 2018, 54 World Heritage Sites are considered endangered. This growth mirrored the massive expansion of tourism as a business and cultural phenomenon in the late twentieth century. As tourism became an increasingly important economic sector in de-colonizing states of Asia and Latin America, governments became more concerned with its promotion by seeking out World Heritage designation.

Ironically, World Heritage designation itself has been criticized as an endangerment of heritage sites. Designation increases the tourist appeal of delicate natural environments and historic places, which can lead to problems with maintenance. Designation also affects the lives of people living within the heritage destination. Luang Prabang, in Laos, is an interesting example. Designated in 1995 as one of the best-preserved traditional towns in Southeast Asia, it represents an architectural fusion of Lao temples and French colonial villas. UNESCO guidelines halted further development of the town, except as it served the tourist market. Within the designated heritage zone, buildings cannot be demolished or constructed, but those along the main street have been converted to guest houses, souvenir shops, and restaurants to accommodate the growing tourist economy. Critics claim this reorients the community in non-traditional ways, as locals move out of center in order to rent to foreign tourists. 44 While heritage tourism provided jobs and more stable incomes, it also encouraged urban sprawl and vehicle traffic as local inhabitants yielded their town to the influx of foreign, mostly Western, visitors.

Heritage tourism may hasten the pace of change by making destinations into attractions worth visiting. To accommodate the anticipated influx of global tourists, Luang Prabang airport was renovated and its runway extended to handle larger jets in between 2008 and 2013. The influx of tourists at Machu Picchu in Peru has repeatedly led the Peruvian government to attempt to control access to the site, yet dependent on tourism’s economic contribution, such restrictions are difficult. The temple at Borobudur in Indonesia undergoes near continuous maintenance work to repair the wear and tear caused by thousands of tourists walking its steps every day. Indeed, the preserved ruins are said to be under greater threat than when they were discovered in the early nineteenth century, overgrown by the jungle.

Another colonial aspect of world heritage designation stems from the narratives of the sites themselves. Many critics accuse UNESCO of a Eurocentric conception of Outstanding Universal Value and world heritage. 45 Cultural heritage destinations in non-Western countries are often associated with sites made famous by the projects of European imperialism. The fables of discovering ancient ruins, for instance, prioritize the romance of discovery. Many of the most famous non-Western sites were “discovered” by imperial agents in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Angkor Wat in Cambodia was introduced to the world by the French explorer Henri Muhot in 1860. Machu Picchu, the Mayan sites of Yucatan, and the ancestral Anasazi sites of the American southwest were excavated, in some cases purchased, and their narratives constructed by American and European adventurers. The cultural relics of these ancient places were looted and assembled in Western museums, the stories of adventure and discovery published for Western audiences, and eventually a travel infrastructure was established to bring mostly Western tourists to the destinations. Western tourism thus forms another kind of imperialism, as the heritage of a destination is determined to suit the expectations and motivations of the visitors. This tends to obscure other features of local history, leaving those features of heritage not suitable to the tourist trade less valuable.

Made or Experienced?

Heritage is both made and experienced. Critics of heritage tourism rightly point to the ways in which heritage promotions can manipulate the past to defend specific ideological or commercial values. Yet, at the same time, heritage experiences are honestly felt and fundamental in the shaping of modern national or cultural identities. Thus, the questions of what constitutes “heritage” in a tourist attraction and whether or not the experience is “authentic” are fundamentally connected and contradictory. Neither heritage nor authenticity can be separated from both the process of their construction and the motivations and expectations of visitors. This makes heritage tourism a slippery subject for study. It involves numerous contradictions and complications. Indeed, contradiction and dissonance are at the heart of any notion of heritage tourism; what might be heritage for some is merely leisure and consumption for others. The dissonance comes from this dichotomy: the consumer exploitation of a destination that is held by many to have sacred properties. Yet, as this chapter suggests, the construction of those sacred properties is at times dependent on the consumer culture of the tourism industry.

Further Reading

Ashworth, Gregory J. , and John E. Tunbridge . The Tourist-Historic City: Retrospect and Prospect of Managing the Heritage City . London: Routledge, 2001 .

Google Scholar

Google Preview

Basu, Paul.   Highland Homecomings: Genealogy and Heritage Tourism in the Scottish Diaspora . London: Routledge, 2006 .

Dearborn, Lynne M. , and John C. Stallmeyer . Inconvenient Heritage: Erasure and Global Tourism in Luang Prabang . Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, 2010 .

Hall, Melanie , ed. Towards World Heritage: International Origins of the Preservation Movement, 1880–1930 . Farnham: Ashgate, 2011 .

Hewison, Robert.   The Heritage Industry: Britain in a Climate of Decline . London: Methuen, 1987 .

Harrison, Rodney.   Heritage: Critical Approaches . New York: Routledge, 2013 .

Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Barbara.   Destination Culture: Tourism, Museums, and Heritage . Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998 .

Lowenthal, David.   The Past Is a Foreign Country: Revisited . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015 .

Miles, Stephen.   The Western Front: Landscape, Tourism and Heritage . Barnsley: Pen and Sword, 2017 .

Macdonald, Sharon.   Memorylands: Heritage and Identity in Europe Today . London: Routledge, 2013 .

Park, Hyung Yu.   Heritage Tourism . London: Routledge, 2014 .

Shaffer, Marguerite S.   See America First: Tourism and National Identity, 1880–1940 . Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001 .

Schama, Simon.   Landscape and Memory . New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1995 .

Sears, John F.   Sacred Places: American Tourist Attractions in the Nineteenth Century . Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1998 .

Timothy, Dallen J.   Cultural Heritage and Tourism: An Introduction . Bristol: Channel View, 2011 .

Winter, Tim.   Post-Conflict Heritage, Postcolonial Tourism: Culture, Politics and Development at Angkor . London: Routledge, 2007 .

1   Peter J. Larkham , “Heritage As Planned and conserved,” in Heritage, Tourism and Society , ed. David T. Herbert (London: Mansell, 1995), 85 ; Peter Johnson and Barry Thomas , “Heritage As Business,” in Heritage, Tourism and Society , ed. David T. Herbert (London: Mansell, 1995), 170 ; David Lowenthal , The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 94.

2   David C. Harvey , “The History of Heritage,” in Ashgate Research Companion to Heritage and Identity , eds. Brian Graham and Peter Howard (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008), 22.

3   Deepak Chhabra , Robert Healy , and Erin Sills , “Staged Authenticity and Heritage Tourism,” Annals of Tourism Research 30, no. 3 (2003): 702–719.

4   Tomaz Kolar and Vesna Zabkar , “A Consumer-Based Model of Authenticity: An Oxymoron or the Foundation of Cultural Heritage Marketing?” Tourism Management 31, no. 5 (2010): 652–664.

5   John Tunbridge and Gregory Ashworth , Dissonant Heritage: The Management of the Past as a Resource in Conflict (Chichester: J. Wiley, 1996), 10–13.

6 See Lowenthal, The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History ; Robert Hewison , The Heritage Industry: Britain in a Climate of Decline (London: Methuen London, 1987) ; Patrick Wright , On Living in an Old Country: The National Past in Contemporary Britain (London: Verso, 1985).

7   John A. Jakle , The Tourist: Travel in Twentieth-Century North America (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1985).

8   John F. Sears , Sacred Places: American Tourist Attractions in the Nineteenth Century (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1998).

9   Patricia Jasen , Wild Things: Nature, Culture, and Tourism in Ontario, 1790–1914 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1995).

10   Simon Schama , Landscape and Memory (New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1995), 6–19 ; Pamela J. Stewart and Andrew Strathan (eds.), Landscape, Memory and History: Anthropological Perspectives (London and Sterling: Pluto, 2003), 2–3.

11   David Lowenthal , “European and English Landscapes as National Symbols,” in Geography and National Identity , ed. David Hoosen (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), 21–24 ; and David Lowenthal , “Landscape as Heritage,” in Heritage: Conservation, Interpretation and Enterprise , eds. J. D. Fladmark (London: Routledge, 1993), 10–11.

12   Katherine Grenier , Tourism and Identity in Scotland, 1770–1914: Creating Caledonia (London: Routledge, 2005), 5–11.

13   Patrick Young , Enacting Brittany: Tourism and Culture in Provincial France, 1871–1939 (Farnham; Burlington: Ashgate, 2012).

14   Christopher Chippindale , “The Making of the First Ancient Monuments Act, 1882, and Its Administration Under General Pitt-Rivers,” Journal of the British Archaeological Association 86 (1983): 1–55 ; Tim Murray , “The History, Philosophy, and Sociology of Archaeology: The Case of the Ancient Monuments Protection Act (1882),” in Histories of Archaeology: A Reader in the History of Archaeology , eds. Tim Murray and Christopher Evans (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 145–176.

  National Trust Act, 1907 . 7 Edward 7, Ch cxxxvi, first schedule.

Other countries developed similar programs, especially after World War II: Australia, 1947; United States, 1949; Japan, 1964; and Italy, 1975.

17   Bosse Sundin , “Nature as Heritage: The Swedish Case,” International Journal of Heritage Studies 11, no. 1 (2005): 9–20.

18   Tait Keller , Apostles of the Alps: Mountaineering and Nation Building in Germany and Austria, 1860–1939 (Chapel Hill, NC: UNC Press Books, 2015).

19 See Karl Baedeker , The Eastern Alps, Including the Bavarian Highlands, The Tyrol, Salzkammergut, Styria, and Carinthia (Leipsic: K. Baedeker, 1879).

20   Eric Zuelow , A History of Modern Tourism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), 108–109.

21   M. D. Merrill (ed.), Yellowstone and the Great West: Journals, Letters, and Images from the 1871 Hayden Expedition (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2003), 210–211.

22   Alan Gordon , Making Public Pasts: The Contested Terrain of Montreal’s Public Memories (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2001).

23   John Sandlos , “Nature’s Playgrounds: The Parks Branch and Tourism Promotion in the National Parks, 1911–1929,” in A Century of Parks Canada, 1911–2011 , ed. Claire Elizabeth Campbell (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2011).

24   Stephen Pyne , How the Canyon Became Grand (New York: Viking, 1998), 25–26, 55–60 ; J. W. Powell , The Exploration of the Colorado River and Its Canyons (New York: Dover Press, 1875).

25   Linda Rancourt , “Cultural Celebration,” National Parks 80, no. 1 (2006): 4.

26   Charles Wilson , The Myth of Santa Fe: Creating a Modern Regional Tradition (Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1997).

27   Ian McKay and Robin Bates , In the Province of History: The Making of the Public Past in Twentieth-Century Nova Scotia (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2010), 71–129.

28   Thomas A. Chambers , Memories of War Visiting Battlegrounds and Bonefields in the Early American Republic (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 2012).

29 See Alan Gordon, “Where Famous Heroes Fell: Tourism, History, and Liberalism in old Quebec,” 58–81 and J. I. Little , “In Search of the Plains of Abraham: British, American, and Canadian Views of a Symbolic Landscape, 1793–1913,” in Remembering 1759: The Conquest of Canada in Historical Memory , eds. Phillip Buckner and John G. Reid (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011), 82–109.

30   John S. Patterson , “A Patriotic Landscape: Gettysburg, 1863–1913,” Prospects 7 (1982): 315–333.

31   David Lloyd , Battlefield Tourism: Pilgrimage and the Commemoration of the Great War in Britain, Australia and Canada, 1919–1939 (Oxford and New York: Berg, 1998), 100–111.

  Lloyd, Battlefield Tourism , 98–100.

33   George Humphrey Yetter , Williamsburg Before and After: The Rebirth of Virginia’s Colonial Capital (Colonial Williamsburg, 1988), 49–52 ; Stephen Conn , Museums and American intellectual life, 1876–1926 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 155.

34   Raymond B. Fosdick , John D. Rockefeller Jr.: A Portrait (New York: Harper, 1956), 356–357.

35   Michael Wallace , “Visiting the Past: History Museums in the United States,” in A Living History Reader , ed. Jay Anderson (Nashville: American Association of State and Local History, 1991), 190.

36   Alan Gordon , Time Travel: Tourism and the Rise of the Living History Museum in Mid-Twentieth-Century Canada (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2016), 65–70 ; Ben Bradley , “The David Thompson Memorial Fort: An Early Outpost of Historically Themed Tourism in Western Canada,” Histoire sociale/Social History 49, no. 99 (2016): 409–429.

37   Kristen Semmens , Seeing Hitler’s Germany: Tourism in the Third Reich (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005).

38   Gregory Ashworth and Peter Larkham , “A Heritage for Europe: The Need, the Task, the Contribution,” in Building a New Heritage , ed. Gregory Ashworth and Peter Larkham (London: Routledge, 1994), 127–129.

39   Alon Confino , “Traveling as a Culture of Remembrance: Traces of National Socialism in West Germany, 1945–1960,” History & Memory 12, no. 2 (2000): 92–121.

40 See, for example, Paul Basu , Highland Homecomings: Genealogy and Heritage Tourism in the Scottish Diaspora (London: Routledge, 2007).

41   Huang, Wei-Jue , Gregory Ramshaw , and William C. Norman . “Homecoming or Tourism? Diaspora Tourism Experience of Second-Generation Immigrants,” Tourism Geographies 18, no. 1 (2016): 59–79.

42   Shaul Kelner , Tours That Bind: Diaspora, Pilgrimage, and Israeli Birthright Tourism (New York: New York University Press, 2010).

43   Dina Berger , The Development of Mexico’s Tourism Industry: Pyramids by Day, Martinis by Night (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006).

44 See, for example, Dawn Starin , “Letter From Luang Prabang: World Heritage Designation, Blessing or Curse?” Critical Asian Studies 40, no. 4 (December 2008): 639–652.

45   Tim Winter , “Heritage Studies and the Privileging of Theory,” International Journal of Heritage Studies 20, no. 5 (2014): 556–572.

• About Oxford Academic
• Publish journals with us
• University press partners
• What we publish
• New features  
• Open access
• Institutional account management
• Rights and permissions
• Get help with access
• Accessibility
• Advertising
• Media enquiries
• Oxford University Press
• Oxford Languages
• University of Oxford

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide

• Copyright © 2024 Oxford University Press
• Cookie settings
• Cookie policy
• Privacy policy
• Legal notice

This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

Sign In or Create an Account

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

Heritage Tourism Market

Heritage Tourism Market by Direct Suppliers, Indirect Suppliers, Number of Bookings & Region | Forecast 2023 to 2033

Market Insights on Heritage Tourism covering sales outlook, demand forecast and up-to-date key trends

• Report Preview
• Request Methodology

Heritage Tourism Market outlook (2023 to 2033)

As per the latest findings of Future Market Insights, global heritage tourism market revenue is expected to be US$ 657.2 Billion by the end of 2023. In the long-term, the heritage tourism market is estimated to reach at around US$ 1,316.4 Billion in 2033.

Don't pay for what you don't need

Customize your report by selecting specific countries or regions and save 30%!

2018 to 2022 Heritage Tourism Market Outlook Compared to 2023 to 2033 Forecast

As per newly released data by Future Market Insights, the heritage tourism market is estimated at US$ 617.0 Billion in 2022 and is projected to reach US$ 1,316.4 Billion by 2033, at a positive CAGR of 7.2% from 2023 to 2033.

The fabric of the tourism industry is changing fast with time. Many new streams of tourism are included in the global tourism ecosystem. The popularity of heritage tourism has surged in the last few years. According to data published by the USA government, heritage rich places such as New Jersey attract more than 10 million tourists every year. Countries like India and China are also attracting quite a number of tourists every year and have a prominent place in the heritage tourism segment. The revenue generated by heritage travel is likely to have a rippling effect on the global tourism economy.

A heritage tourism boom has contributed significantly to the GDP of several developing economies of the world. Over the years the development of heritage tourism has impacted the total revenue earning of several countries spread across the globe. Visitor spending on heritage sites has increased considerably. The culturally rich and heritage rich countries are rolling out special promotional measures to showcase heritage sites and to woo visitors.

Millions of enthusiastic visitors queue up in several historical and heritage sites every year. Heritage tourists are beneficial for the tourism industry as these tourists love to spend some extra hours at heritage sites to obtain in-depth knowledge of that place. The boost in heritage tourism can generate a feeling of pride amongst the denizens and it can also elevate the standards of living of the commoners. Heritage tourism is not only a boon to the global economy; it also has a positive effect on the lives of heritage properties.

Religion based travels also play an important role in the promotion of heritage tours and travels. Every year millions of religious travellers travel from one part of the world to other. Heritage tourism is a perfect mixture of education, economy and entertainment.

The global travel and tourism industry was harmed by the COVID-19 outbreak. Due to the strict rules and regulations, the pandemic had a significant impact on the heritage travel market. There was a substantial loss of visitors which led to the key players in this market to experience a financial slump. However, the tourism industry has started to witness a positive growth since then as more people are planning vacations and tours to escape the stressful life that resulted from the pandemic and this positive growth is likely to continue during the forecasted period.

What are the Key Drivers of the Heritage Tourism Market?

Government Initiatives are Likely to Contribute to the Growth of the Heritage Tourism Market

Several governments across the globe are promoting and preserving heritage sites. The Ministry of tourism of India, for instance, launched the Swadesh Darshan initiative to develop theme-based tourist circuits to cater to both mass and specialist tourism. Since its inception in January 2015, it has continuously launched projects which aim to construct world-class infrastructure to promote the country's cultural and heritage value and increase tourist attraction.

The Ministry has also announced the National Mission for Pilgrimage Rejuvenation and Spiritual Augmentation Drive (PRASAD) initiative for the development and beautification of pilgrimage sites in order to tap the growing number of domestic tourists drawn by spiritual/religious sentiments. Another initiative, Adarsh Samark, has selected 100 monuments to become Model Monuments which will be outfitted with basic tourist amenities such as Wi-Fi, security, signage, encroachment-free areas, interpretation centers presenting short films about the importance of monuments.

The Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) and Stanford Libraries announced the launch of the Digital Library of the Middle East (DLME), which intends to become one of the world's largest online repositories of Middle Eastern and North African antiquities. This would further lead to a boost of cultural tourism in this region.

Cultural and Natural Heritage are Becoming Increasingly Important at Various Levels of the Economy which has Become a Key Driver of this Market

Heritage, culture, and nature have become synonymous and are now being embraced as tools for social and economic development. Countries can tap into their rich history to gain competitive advantage as tourism industry is more closely associated with the culture and heritage of a country than any other industry.

Heritage has been a direct contributor to the economy and society by generating income and creating employment opportunities which has consequently led to social well-being and the formation of social capital. The relationship between culture and economy has changed from basic preservation of heritage sites to ensuring economic progress. Therefore, countries are trying to preserve their heritage sites and use it as an opportunity to grow their tourism sectors further giving a boost to global heritage tourism.

Principal Consultant

Talk to Analyst

Find your sweet spots for generating winning opportunities in this market.

Restraints of the Heritage Tourism Market

The Tourism Business is Mostly Driven by Private Entities with the Primary Goal of Profit Maximization

There are various difficulties that must be addressed in order to build a successful heritage tourism sector, including considering the different views of tourism operators, cultural heritage managers, and communities themselves.

Tourism operators manage a tourism business and serve customers, but they have challenges in accessing the heritage sites and products they want to visit. Tourism operators rely on a market that can experience significant seasonal change, such as vacation seasons and yearly events. To provide dependable and efficient service to local and international clients, tourism operators try to focus on making money by getting access to all possible sites and facilities in order to attract tourists.

The primary responsibility of heritage managers is to safeguard and conserve the sites under their management. Because of the fragile nature of the cultural monument, public access is frequently prohibited. Aside from tourism operators and heritage managers, there is also the local community where the heritage site is located, which may also be protective of their privacy and concerned about the effects that tourism may have.

Lack of Maintenance of Heritage Sites Has Become a Challenge

Another obstacle is the management of heritage assets. In India, issues such as lack of conservation officers, economic downturns, terrorist activities, lack of strategic collaboration and awareness about the value of cultural heritage assets, and others are common. The involvement of stakeholders, particularly locals, is critical, and it is better to leave conservation approaches to them because they are historically associated with the location and the cultural heritage asset itself.

Category-wise Insights

Which age group prefers heritage tourism the most.

The Heritage Tourism Sector is Dominated by Millennials and Older Generations

Millennial travellers are eager to experiment with new travel opportunities and don't mind stretching their budget. The heritage tourism sector is dominated by an adult population and it plays a very important role in generating revenue. This age group values heritage trips more than normal vacations.

Which Tour Type will have the Maximum Number of Travelers During Forecasted Period?

There Will Be a Surge in the Number of Packaged Travellers

With numerous companies offering distinct services and all-inclusive programs, the 'Packaged Traveler' has become the majority class within this segmentation. The businesses provide heritage tourism programs with various activities, locations, and price ranges, thereby meeting the needs of the majority of the clientele without requiring them to go through several channels for various services, saving them time and money.

Which Booking Channel Do Tourists in the Market Place Prefer?

Online Booking Channels Lead the Booking Channel Segmentation

Planning a trip usually takes a lot of time and effort in terms of research and making the best possible choices. However, the existence of online travel agencies has unquestionably both sped up the procedure and offered clients access to more choices. People who book online prefer to compare travel on booking portals and hotel websites

Get the data you need at a Fraction of the cost

Personalize your report by choosing insights you need and save 40%!

Competitive Landscape

With the help of Heritage tourism, companies are likely to expand their customer base with attractive packages and services. Few collaborations between companies to boost heritage tourism are

• In partnership with the Beyond the Year of Return campaign, EF Go Ahead Tours, one of the major tour operators, presented a new historical trip package to Ghana in May 2022. This 12-day guided excursion across Ghana's history provides travelers with the opportunity for knowledge and reconnection.
• MyHeritage Ltd. collaborated with Expedia Group to establish the Heritage Travel Hub in November 2021, which will assist tourists in planning the best heritage tour and exploring the regions. Through this collaboration, the companies hope to support the meaningful experience of travelling with the planning of an unforgettable, heritage-focused holiday.

Scope of Report

Heritage tourism market by category, by direct suppliers:.

• Hotel Companies
• Tour Operators
• Government Bodies

By Indirect Suppliers:

• OTA (Online Travel Agency)
• Traditional Travel Agencies
• TMC’s (Travel Management Companies)

By Booking Channel:

• Phone Booking
• Online Booking
• In Person Booking

By Visit Purpose:

• Business Travel
• Leisure Travel
• Education-Employment-Pilgrimage
• Visiting Friends & Relatives

By Tour Type:

• Independent traveler
• Package traveler

By Tourism Type:

• International

By Consumer Orientation:

By age group:, frequently asked questions, which countries dominate the global heritage tourism market.

The United States, China, and France dominate the global market.

What is the Growth Forecast for the Heritage Tourism Market?

The heritage tourism market is forecast to register a CAGR of 7.2% through 2033.

How is the Historical Performance of the Heritage Tourism Market?

During 2018 to 2022, the heritage tourism market recorded a CAGR of 5.2%.

Which is the Top Trend in the Heritage Tourism Market?

The growing interest in sustainable tourism is disrupting the current market trends.

What is the Projected Size of the Market by 2033?

The global market size is projected to reach US$ 1,316.4 million by 2033.

Table of Content

Recommendations

Travel and Tourism

Trends, Growth, and Opportunity Analysis of Outbound Tourism in France

October 2022

REP-GB-15645

Hong Kong Outbound Tourism Market

REP-GB-15692

Explore Travel and Tourism Insights

- Get Free Brochure -

Your personal details are safe with us. Privacy Policy*

- Request Methodology -

- customize now -.

I need Country Specific Scope ( -30% )

- Talk To Analyst -

I am searching for Specific Info.

- Download Report Brochure -

You will receive an email from our Business Development Manager. Please be sure to check your SPAM/JUNK folder too.

• Open access
• Published: 23 March 2022

Research progress and knowledge system of world heritage tourism: a bibliometric analysis

• Juan Zhang 1 , 2 ,
• Kangning Xiong 1 ,
• Zhaojun Liu 1 &
• Lixiang He 2 , 3  

Heritage Science volume  10 , Article number:  42 ( 2022 ) Cite this article

8393 Accesses

31 Citations

Metrics details

In the context of integrating culture and tourism, world heritage tourism research has become a focus in tourism research in recent years. There are increasing discussions in academic circles on the content and methods of this field. Clarifying the knowledge system of research is conducive to dialogue with international theoretical frontiers and integrating, analyzing, and predicting the progress and lineage from a more comprehensive perspective. Still, few studies on the knowledge system of world heritage tourism research have been conducted. To fill this gap, this study uses the SSCI and SCI sub-databases of Web of Science Core Collection as the data source with the help of CiteSpace and VOSviewer software to measure the knowledge system of world heritage tourism research. A bibliometric analysis of 567 publications between 1992 and 2020 was conducted to construct a framework of a knowledge system based on literature statistics and content analysis, revealing the geographic research regions, theories and methods, themes and contents, trend evolution, and future research inspiration. The results show that: (1) the number of publications tends to increase gradually, with the highest in 2019. The authors and research institutions are mainly concentrated in Europe, America, East Asia. China has the highest publications. More literature on cultural heritage as a geographical study area than natural heritage. (2) The research themes, objects, and methods of the sample literature have become more diversified with the advancement of the research stage. The literature on multi-stakeholder research is the largest, followed by tourism impacts and research on World Heritage Sites’ resource management techniques and methods. These studies provide a multifaceted interpretation of the sustainable development of World heritage tourism, mainly from the perspectives of both supply and demand. However, the theoretical system is still incomplete. (3) Future research should strengthen the theoretical system construction, research innovation, cooperation, and research exchange in world heritage tourism research. Pay more attention to the research on the pluralistic value system of world heritage. Focus on exploring research on world heritage tourism’s resilience and localization dilemmas under the impact of the New Crown epidemic. To reveal the synergistic mechanisms and paths of diversified livelihoods of World Heritage Sites’ residents in ecologically fragile and impoverished areas.

Introduction

Research on world heritage (WH) tourism began to emerge in the mid-twentieth century and has shown rapid growth in the early twenty-first century and continues today. A World Heritage Site (WHS) is a scarce area of outstanding universal value (OUV) that requires long-term protection, is non-renewable and irreplaceable, as identified by United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) and World Heritage Committee (WHC) [ 1 ]. World Heritage-listed areas typically receive an order of magnitude more tourist visits than their non-listed counterparts [ 2 , 3 , 4 ]. These areas are also often used as a means of economic regeneration through tourism development [ 5 , 6 , 7 ], as they have a significant economic impact on local communities [ 8 , 9 , 10 , 11 ]. In addition, WHSs contribute to national image building [ 12 , 13 , 14 ] and promote destination branding [ 13 , 15 , 16 ]. Thus various national and regional governments actively apply for WHSs [ 15 ]. As of December 2021, the total number of enlisted heritage sites is 1154, including cultural, natural, and mixed categories, registered in 167 countries. In recent decades, WHSs have attracted a great deal of attention in promoting tourism and economic development and heritage conservation, driven by the benefits of the “WH” brand. The series of impacts and challenges arising from the inscription and development frenzy has led to a lively debate and a re-examination of WH tourism in the light of the increasingly popular concept of sustainable tourism development.

Tourism utilization and WH conservation are inevitably intertwined, and there is a symbiotic or tension between the two [ 17 , 18 , 19 ]. The development of tourism can create new values and social relations for WHSs and is often seen as a tool to combat poverty and promote sustainable development [ 8 , 20 , 21 , 22 , 23 ]. However, many WHSs also face challenges by the rapidly expanding tourism industry, population pressure, environmental pollution, conflicts between residents, tourists, government, and other stakeholders threaten WH conservation and sustainability. The interaction between conservation and use has become a vital issue in WH tourism research [ 24 , 25 , 26 , 27 ]. Development pressure due to local socio-economic issues, poor legislation and management, and inappropriate tourism operations are the leading causes of conflicts between heritage conservation and tourism development [ 28 , 29 , 30 , 31 ].

Controversies in academic circles regarding WH tourism research are becoming increasingly intense, and differences in positions and perspectives have divided the study into different categories. For example, environmentalists believe that WH and tourism are entirely contradictory. The development of tourism poses a threat to the environmental protection of WHSs [ 31 , 32 , 33 ]. Scholars concerned with social development emphasize that tourism can promote the economic development of WHSs [ 5 , 8 , 22 ]. Socio-ecological conservation advocates focus on exploring the synergy between environmental conservation and tourism economic development in WHSs [ 34 , 35 ]. It is essential to clarify WH tourism research’s progress and academic dynamics to advance research in the field, thus explaining the unique research objects and focus.

Existing studies have been categorized and reviewed mainly in terms of fundamental issues of WH tourism destinations, tourism activities, tourists, and other stakeholders, mostly an analysis of the content of the literature. While review studies based on bibliometric analysis have emerged in recent years, integrated accounting and prognosis of the development lineage of WH tourism research are relatively rare. A knowledge system is structured knowledge that members of a discipline or field use to guide their practice or work [ 36 ], including a systematization of the structure, principles, and examples of professional knowledge generated by members through continuous discovery and validation. The organization of the knowledge system facilitates the self-reflective growth and reproduction of WH tourism research [ 37 ]. A single visual knowledge map can hardly reflect the intrinsic nature of the knowledge system, and a single content analysis method is slightly lacking in objectivity. To fill this gap, this study mainly uses two types of scientometric tools, CiteSpace and VOSviewer, which integrates quantitative analysis represented by scientometric analysis, knowledge mapping, and keyword clustering, and content analysis represented by topic reading to identify the research progress and knowledge system of WH tourism research. To provide a comprehensive and objective overview of the current state of research in the field and provide a scientific reference for subsequent research. To achieve this, we set the following objectives:

To reveal the basic characteristics of the literature (section 3: changes in the number of publications, authors, research institutions, geographical research areas).

To identify key areas of research progress (sections 4–5: key research areas and contents, research theories and methods, and evolution of research trends).

To build a framework of knowledge (sections 6–7).

Material and methods

Research methods.

Bibliometric analysis helps decipher and map the cumulative scientific knowledge and evolutionary nuances of well-established fields by making sense of large volumes of unstructured data in rigorous ways. It enables and empowers scholars to gain a one-stop overview, identify knowledge gaps, derive novel ideas for investigation, and position their intended contributions to the field [ 38 ]. In recent years, bibliometric analysis in heritage tourism has emerged sporadically [ 39 , 40 ]. However, there is a relative lack of bibliometrics on tourism research in WHSs.

Science mapping is a generic domain analysis and visualization [ 41 ]. It is a study of scientific knowledge and belongs to scientometrics [ 42 ]. Several valuable scientific knowledge mapping tools have been born in bibliometric analysis, such as CiteSpace, VOSviewer, Sci2, BibExcel, Carrot2, etc. CiteSpace software can more intuitively and quickly visualize the focus and evolutionary trends in a specific field than other visualization and analysis software. It can reveal the inner connection between knowledge bases, conducive to better grasping the key points and future research development direction. VOSviewer software has unique advantages in graph display and clustering technology and is often used to display large networks [ 43 ]. The combined use of CiteSpace and VOSviewer software visualizes the highlights and trend evolution of WH tourism research. Using bibliometric visualization software for statistical data analysis, combined with content analysis, we objectively interpret WH tourism research progress and construct a knowledge system framework to provide scientific reference for WH conservation and utilization.

Defining terms

WHS is a rare and irreplaceable treasure of humanity recognized by UNESCO and WHC as a heritage site and natural landscape of OUV. OUV is the criterion for being selected as a WHS. It means cultural and/or natural significance, which is exceptional to transcend national boundaries and be of common importance for present and future generations of all humanity. The World Heritage List (WHL) published by UNESCO divides WHS into three main categories: cultural site (including cultural landscapes), natural site, and mixed cultural and natural site. According to the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage (Convention) promulgated in 1972, world cultural heritage means cultural objects, architectural ensembles, and sites of OUV. World natural heritage refers to natural features of OUV, threatened animal and plant habitat areas, wild places of interest, or delineated natural areas. Only properties that partially or fully satisfy cultural and natural heritage definitions in Articles 1 and 2 of the Convention can be considered “mixed cultural and natural heritage.” Following the Convention’s definition of WH, we focus on the tourism development of world cultural, natural, and mixed heritage sites. Therefore, publications that meet the following conditions are excluded.

A study of heritage tourism unrelated to WHS.

Articles and comments on intangible heritage.

Document selection

In this study, we used the Web of Science (WoS) Core Collection database as the data source, selected one of the Science Citation Index Expanded (SCI) and Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) databases to search. The reason for using this database is that it is one of the most widely recognized international databases with data going back to 1900 and provides a rich, comprehensive collection of information from more than 18,000 authoritative, high-impact scholarly journals worldwide. Search the literature using 5 sets of keywords. (a) “world heritage” and “tourism,” (b) “world cultural heritage” and “tourism,” (c) “world natural heritage” and “tourism,” (d) “mixed heritage” and “tourism,” (e) “cultural landscape,” “world heritage” and “tourism.” Without limiting the starting time, the data were last updated on December 31, 2020.

Searches returned 672 documents (Fig.  1 ): (a) 604 documents for world heritage and tourism, (b) 29 documents for world cultural heritage and tourism, (c) 24 documents for world natural heritage and tourism, (d) 3 documents for mixed heritage and tourism, and (e) 12 documents for cultural landscape, world heritage and tourism. We excluded 10 documents not in English, and 28 documents that appeared in two searches or more (duplicates). Finally, a full-text assessment was carried out, resulting in 567 papers (Additional file 1 : Appendix S1).

Approach for the material selection

Document analysis

In the final data analysis phase, an analysis protocol has been applied to critically analyze the collected publications’ content and describe it in a structured way (Fig.  2 ). It sought to gather each document’s essential characteristics, focus, content, and existing gaps and needs in WH tourism research. Finally, a full-text assessment was conducted to summarize findings and problems with existing studies and present future research needs.

Analysis protocol for the material collection

Basic characteristics of the selected publications

Year of publication.

As shown in Fig.  3 , the number of publications generally showed an upward trend from 1992 to 2020. At the end of the twentieth century, related scholars began to pay attention to this emerging field, and the results appeared one after another. However, the number of articles published between 1992 and 2006 was small because of the initial research stage, with an average of only 2 articles per year. Since 2007, the number of articles has increased significantly, in 2019 was as high as 94, indicating that the academic community’s research on world heritage tourism is highly enthusiastic.

The number of publications per year

First author’s country

The sample literature came from more than 50 countries in total, and the top 10 countries in terms of the number of publications were mainly concentrated in East Asia, Europe, and America (Fig.  4 ). China has the most significant number of publications, accounting for 20%. The early research literature was mainly concentrated in developed countries like Australia and the United Kingdom. Research in China began to appear in 2003, with a significant increase in volume in 2009, and maintained the world’s top-ranking number of publications during 2014–2020. Since China joined the Convention in 1985, it has become one of the fastest-growing countries in the world in terms of the number of WHSs, attracting the attention of the academic community and increasing the number of research results year by year. By the 43rd World Heritage Conference, 55 WHSs have been successfully nominated, ranking first in the world with Italy. It can be seen that the geographical distribution of research literature is positively related to the level of regional economic development and the number of WHSs.

Number of publications from the top 10 countries at different periods

Authors and institutions

(1) authorship and cooperation networks.

There were 475 first authors on the 567 sample papers. In Fig.  5 , the larger font size of the authors’ names indicates more publications, and the larger nodes indicate more collaboration between authors. It shows that Su, Rasoolimanesh, Martinez-Perez A, Xu, and Buckley are the top five in terms of the total number of publications. And the collaborative network has a core–edge structure with fewer connections between the nodes, indicating that only a few researchers collaborate, and the majority of scholars are weakly connected. Most research teams were formed after 2011, indicating that research on WH tourism has gradually increased since then. For example, Su and Wall have collaborated on many publications on community engagement in heritage sustainable management research. Rasoolimanesh and Jaafar have produced many results around resident perception research in heritage sites, with 6 articles published in 2016.

Author co-cited network

(2) Issuing institution

According to the frequency in Table 1 , the top ten research institutions in terms of the number of publications are mainly universities and colleges, and there are relatively few research institutes. Sun Yat-Sen University and the Renmin University of China are the primary research institutions in China. The rest of the research institutions are mainly located in Canada, Australia, Spain, and Malaysia. Research institutions have specialized WH tourism research groups, such as Sun Yat-sen University in China, whose primary literature is contributed by the team of Zhang, Xu, and Sun.

Geographical study area

There are 56 world natural heritage sites and 123 cultural heritage sites studied in 434 documents. 155 of these articles (36%) are about natural sites, 254 (59%) about cultural sites, and 25 about mixed heritage sites (5%). The WHSs that appeared more than 2 times in the sample literature were counted and sorted by their countries (Table 2 ). It shows that China, Australia, Spain, Malaysia, Korea, and Cambodia are the hot geographical areas of academic research, with the Great Barrier Reef (n = 18), Melaka and George Town (n = 15), and Angkor (n = 11) being the most prominent. In recent years, research results about Jiuzhaigou Valley Scenic and Historic Interest Area and Wulingyuan Scenic and Historic Interest Area in China and the archaeological heritage of the Lenggong Valley in Malaysia have increased.

Key research areas and content

Keywords are a condensation and distillation of the core content of the literature. A high frequency of keywords can reflect the focus in a particular area [ 44 ]. Using the CiteSpace keyword analysis function to identify the main topics of interest to the academic community. Table 3 shows the keywords with a word frequency greater than 10 times. It can be seen that management, conservation, impact, perception, satisfaction, sustainable tourism, and stakeholders are the concerns in WH tourism research. In addition, we found that keywords such as customized authenticity, adaptive management, social-ecological system, sustainable livelihood, and resilience had a word frequency of fewer than 5 times, giving us some clues to track the frontier. Although the high-frequency keywords can reflect the main focus of existing research, the article’s overall idea and the mainline cannot be seen through the keywords.

Research themes

After identifying the high-frequency keywords, the research themes in the field were further clarified. To avoid the limitation of keywords, combining keyword clustering with full-text reading, the key research areas of WH tourism research were summarized into the following 8 themes.

(1) Sustainable tourism

The sustainable tourism theme contains 86 articles (15% of total). Scientific research has always been very focused on assessing the sustainability of tourism [ 45 ]. The development of governmental sustainable management strategies (n = 25), community residents’ perceptions and attitudes towards participation in tourism development (n = 28), spatial evolution of destinations (n = 8), low-carbon environmental measures in ecotourism (n = 12), and community livelihood diversification (n = 13) have been studied as factors influencing sustainable tourism in WHSs. Among them, the most crucial academic attention has been paid to the relationship between community support and sustainable tourism. Several empirical studies have been conducted, showing that local and community participation in WH management is necessary for sustainable tourism [ 46 , 47 ]. Empowering local communities to participate effectively in tourism decision-making and to be able to share equitably in the benefits of tourism development is an essential principle of sustainable tourism [ 25 , 48 , 49 , 50 , 51 , 52 ]. Sustainable tourism has been widely accepted to mediate tensions and balance the relationship between heritage conservation, tourism management, social pressure, and economic development.

(2) Authenticity

The theme includes 14 articles (2% of total). The UNESCO have adopted authenticity as a critical principle for inscription on the WHL [ 1 ]. In the tourism context, three commonly used authenticity concepts are objective authenticity, constructive authenticity, and existential authenticity [ 53 ]. Studies of authenticity in WH tourism focus on existential authenticity (n = 10) and constructive authenticity (n = 4). Existential authenticity emphasizes tourists’ perceptions, experiences, and preferences of authenticity, including experiences, emotions, attachments, and identities [ 54 ]. Scholars generally agree that the authenticity of the tourist experience has a significant impact on satisfaction and loyalty and that the quality of WH tourism is enhanced by authenticity [ 55 , 56 , 57 , 58 , 59 ]. The perception of authenticity increases the heritage destination value [ 60 ]. Constructed authenticity discussions focus on customized authenticity that tourists can seek and embrace even in publicly staged or produced contexts [ 61 ]. The debate on the authenticity of WH tourism has shifted from the static perspective to how authenticity is interpreted [ 62 ]. The acceptance of authenticity itself depends on tourists’ perceptions.

Authenticity is a controversial concept in WH tourism studies [ 53 , 63 ]. Some scholars have even suggested that the concept should be abandoned because of its problematic nature [ 64 ]. Despite its clear importance, authenticity is a problematic and insufficiently explored concept, which hinders its practical application [ 53 ]. So fewer articles are examining the use of authenticity in WH tourism practice. However, with the rapid development of WH tourism and the microscopic shift in WH tourism research, Scholars have attempted to explore the impact of different authenticity on the visitor experience. They have confirmed that understanding how visitors interpret authenticity is vital for marketing and managing heritage sites [ 56 , 57 ]. After 2017, there has been a marked increase in research on the application of authenticity in WH tourism practice. The number of articles is relatively small because it is still exploratory.

(3) Management techniques and methods of tourism resources

The second-highest number of publications (22% of the total) studied management techniques and strategies for WH tourism resources, with 124 articles. Dynamic conservation and multidisciplinary research are fundamental approaches to planning and sustainable management of WH. The main focus is on techniques and methods for WH resource survey and assessment (n = 32), management and conservation enhancement (n = 57), presentation and education (n = 14), visitor flow forecasting (n = 3), visitor safety management (n = 6), and itinerary design (n = 12). Thanks to the continuous progress of technology, a series of new technologies and methods such as 3D technology [ 65 ], geoinformation technology, and remote sensing(RS) [ 66 , 67 ], augmented reality(AR) [ 68 ], and mixed reality (MR) [ 69 ] have facilitated the management and conservation of WH tourism resources. Western scholars focus on the physical conservation of heritage sites, and research and conservation also focus on achieving this goal through technology [ 65 , 70 , 71 ]. Recently, scholars have taken social-ecological system theory [ 34 ], adaptive management theory [ 72 ], and resilience theory [ 35 , 73 ] to analyze the resource conservation and tourism development contradictions and propose synergistic paths on this basis.

(4) Tourism impacts

There are 110 articles on the tourism impacts (20% of total). The impacts of tourism on WHSs is mainly environmental (n = 50), economic (n = 13), social (n = 15), and cultural (n = 5), with some studies discussing the combined impact (n = 27). There is a consensus in the academic community that demographic pressure from tourism remains a major threat to WHSs’ environmental and cultural integrity. Highly intensive tourist demand significantly challenges the sustainability of WHSs [ 74 , 75 ]. In addition, local socio-economic development pressures and mismanagement also pose challenges to its health. Most studies have examined the objective environmental impacts by assessing tourism environmental capacity, ecological tourism footprint, and eco-efficiency. The destruction of the natural environment and ecosystems of WHSs and the intensification of environmental pollution of air, water, vegetation, soil, etc. are the major negative environmental impacts [ 31 , 32 , 33 , 76 , 77 , 78 , 79 ], or assessing the environmental impacts from the perspective of residents’ perceptions [ 10 , 80 , 81 ]. Tourism development contributes to sustainable livelihoods, women’s empowerment and gender equality, and improved recreational facilities and public amenities in WHSs [ 9 , 22 , 23 , 82 , 83 , 84 ]. However, it can also result in negative impacts such as increased cost of living, rising real estate and prices, income imbalance, littering, and host-client conflict [ 85 ]. In addition, scholars represented by Jimura, Rasoolimanesh, and Kim have confirmed through their studies that the rapid development of WH tourism has improved the cultural identity of residents to some extent. Traditional arts and culture have been preserved and revived to some extent. Still, it has also weakened the local spirit of local communities and created a series of conflicts between village historical heritage conservation and tourism development [ 8 , 9 , 80 , 86 , 87 ].

(5) Stakeholders

This topic has the largest publications, including 143 articles (25% of total). WH tourism stakeholders were studied mainly by residents (n = 45), tourists (n = 54), government departments (n = 19), tourism enterprises (n = 10), and multiple stakeholder interactions (n = 15). Scholars often use perception studies as a breakthrough to study stakeholder synergy. Visitor perception studies are useful for understanding their motivations and expectations for undertaking WH tourism, strengthening visitor management, and promoting destination marketing and promotion. Studies have been conducted on visitor perceptions mainly from heritage presentation and interpretation, marketing, and management. The research mainly focuses on the relationship between tourists’ perceived value, quality of experience, satisfaction, and loyalty [ 88 , 89 , 90 , 91 , 92 , 93 , 94 ]. The perceived impact of tourism development by community residents is a key and necessary element of community engagement research [ 25 , 95 , 96 , 97 ]. Scholars have studied residents’ perceptions or attitudes through cross-sectional and longitudinal comparisons. They agree that socio-economic status, local attachment, environmental attitudes and values, and participation in the planning and decision-making process become the main factors determining residents’ perceptions of tourism impacts [ 98 , 99 ]. The local attachment is the most critical element [ 100 ].

As the leading force in the “inscription” process, the government is the guarantor of the rational development of heritage tourism resources and the involvement of stakeholders. Many issues hinder the sustainable development and management of heritage tourism in developing countries. Lack of political will, government priorities, and financial assistance are the main constraints to WH management [ 101 , 102 , 103 ]. Although governments do not hesitate to develop tourism, their mismanagement is inevitably criticized [ 104 , 105 , 106 ]. Travel agencies and tourism companies are an integral part of WH conservation. Research on tourism companies has focused on maximizing economic benefits and exploring breakthrough innovations at the firm level in the context of cultural tourism clusters [ 107 , 108 ]. The perceptions of corporate managers regarding their social responsibility in WH conservation have not received much attention from scholars [ 109 , 110 ].

(6) World heritage value

21 papers discuss the value of WH (4% of total). The study is mainly focused on OUV (n = 8), economic value (n = 6), and social value (n = 7). Research on OUV of WH focuses on different stakeholders’ perceptions of heritage values and the factors that influence them. Some studies focus on discussing OUV narration from a guide’s perspective [ 111 , 112 ]. However, the understanding and claiming of the pluralistic value of heritage has not been given much attention. Tourists’ tourism satisfaction and education level are the main factors influencing their perception of OUV [ 113 , 114 ]. Residents’ perception of OUV positively impacts local attachment and willingness to preserve heritage. The conditional value assessment method (CVM) is a commonly used method for estimating the economic value of WHSs, providing a scientific reference for admission management systems and better brand marketing [ 86 , 103 , 115 , 116 ]. In addition, recent studies have explored how to construct heritage social values based on OUV and have indicated that social values are beneficial to enhance the international and national image and tourism attractiveness of WH destinations [ 117 ]. Heritage values are artificially assigned by different heritage subjects rather than naturally generated and self-evidently existing. The identified OUV emphasizes the materiality of heritage with a Eurocentric perspective. However, there is also a need to focus on non-material content such as people and activities associated with WHSs to better convey heritage stories and a sense of place [ 112 , 118 ].

(7) Destination brand image building and marketing

The theme includes 40 articles (7% of total). Studies have focused on WH brand equity management (n = 11), marketing strategies, platforms and tools (n = 12), stakeholder perceptions of WHS brand image (n = 8), visitor market segmentation (n = 5), and heritage promotional discourse (n = 4). WH represents the international identity of the inducted country, and it can play an essential role in building a national image and the highly competitive global tourism market [ 12 ]. The success of the inscription is a great honor for the selected country, and the “WH” brand is widely used in marketing campaigns to promote national tourism and increase the destination’s visibility. Scholars generally agree that the WHL helps build destination images [ 13 , 119 ] and discusses using the WH brand for destination image building and marketing. It is also argued that establishing emotional attachment to build destinations and the interpretation of authenticity by tourists are vital issues in branding tourism destinations in today’s tourism market [ 56 , 120 ]. Although the WHL is a powerful brand that significantly impacts tourism, it still requires proper management to maintain brand equity. However, brand image building and marketing need to be integrated with the local culture [ 121 ], focus on local storytelling, and highlight the elements that characterize its heritage value to develop differentiated marketing.

(8) Impact of the World Heritage List on tourism demand

The literature examining the impact of the WHL on tourism demand includes 29 articles (5% of total). The majority of scholars see “inscriptions” and “accessions” as “magnets” that attract tourists and guarantee an increase in the number of visitors to heritage sites. They generally believe that “inscription” positively impacts local tourism demand (n = 22). It has been shown to have a positive impact on local tourism demand through the use of “inscription” in China [ 4 , 122 , 123 , 124 ], Italy [ 125 , 126 ], Spain [ 127 ], Israel [ 15 ], and other case studies confirm this finding. Contrary findings (n = 7) argue that the WHL does not necessarily promote tourism [ 128 , 129 , 130 ]. Some scholars in the recent literature have questioned the assumption of a linear relationship between the total number of WHSs and tourism demand in previous studies, emphasizing the need to distinguish between the different impacts of tangible and intangible heritage on tourism demand [ 131 ]. The effects of the WHL on heritage tourism vary from country to country and region to region, with findings running depending on the study area, research perspective, and methodology. The disagreement among scholars makes the research on the effect of WHL on tourism demand consistently popular [ 4 , 130 , 132 ].

Research theory and methodology

Given the small number of high-frequency keywords regarding research methods reflected in Table 3 , all keywords were analyzed in this paper to gain insight into the main theories and methods in the field. In addition, a glossary of terms representing specific research theories and methods was summarized by analyzing the content of the literature (Table 4 ). Various well-established theories such as sustainability development theory (n = 67), community participation theory (n = 62), stakeholder theory (n = 25), place attachment theory (n = 17), authenticity theory (n = 16), sustainable livelihood (n = 13), social-ecological system theory (n = 10), resilience theory (n = 7), social exchange theory (n = 6), and planned behavior theory (n = 5). Scholars have used these theories to argue for problem and pathway studies of WH tourism. Research methods are mainly qualitative (n = 151) and quantitative (n = 327), or a combination of both (n = 89), and quantitative analysis methods are becoming increasingly diverse.

Evolution of research trends

With the continuous advancement of WH conservation practices, WH tourism research themes are becoming increasingly diverse (Fig.  6 ). Based on the number of publications, keyword clustering analysis, and interpretation of the leading research content of the literature, the following stages are used to characterize the evolution of research trends in this field.

Evolution map of world heritage tourism research theme

The first stage (1992–2006): the newborn stage. The number of WHSs grew slowly during this period, and research in WH tourism is beginning to receive attention, but not much heat. The literature in this stage is small, and the clustering of keywords is not apparent because of the small amount of literature. The research package mainly includes the functional zoning planning of WHSs, the impact of tourism activities on the natural environment, and the impact of national tourism policies on the development of WHSs. More studies at the macro level mainly focus on proper conservation management of tourism resources and exploring sustainable development strategies. In addition, there are more studies on the management and conservation of WH based on tourists’ perspectives, emphasizing the management of tourists to promote the WH conservation. In terms of resource types, there are more case studies about the Great Barrier Reef, a world natural heritage site.

Phase 2 (2007–2017): rapid development phase. During this period, the proliferation of WHSs and the range of challenges and impacts of tourism overdevelopment have generated a lively debate in academic circles. The publications showed a rapid growth trend in 2007 and beyond, with increasingly rich keywords and rapidly diversifying research themes. Theoretical thinking and practical research have been expanded, and research perspectives have been broadened with distinctive interdisciplinary features. The research on WH conservation gradually changes from “balancing conservation and development” to the paradigm of “conservation for development.” Therefore, besides focusing on the conservation of heritage resources, the socio-economic benefits of WH are gradually being paid attention to, and the impact of WHL on tourism demand has become a more intense issue of debate among scholars. In addition, the conservation philosophy of world natural heritage sites is undergoing a shift from neglecting communities to valuing them, from absolute conservation to gradient conservation, and paying more attention to human needs and development. Therefore, studies on multiple stakeholders have become more prosperous. Residents’ perception, community involvement, local attachment, tourists’ experience, tourists’ loyalty, and satisfaction and the relationship between them have become the focus of scholars’ attention.

Phase 3 (2018-): deepening research phase. The WH has moved from rapid quantitative growth to enhanced conservation and management quality. Research in this period expands slowly and is the most in-depth type of research. New ideas such as digitalization, cultural creativity, and low-carbon tourism are also penetrated in WH resource conservation. Scholars began to focus on areas such as the evolution of cultural space in WHSs, the construction of WH brand assets, residents’ responsibility and attitude towards heritage conservation, well-being, and the resilience of socio-ecological systems. Meanwhile, further deepening research on the impact of the WHL on tourism continuity, the spatial and temporal evolution of residents’ perceptions, the promotion of destination images and brand effects, the construction of heritage authenticity, and sustainable livelihoods of communities. Continued attention is paid to exploring pathways for the management and sustainable tourism development of WHSs.

Knowledge system framework for world heritage tourism research

To better understand the progress and lineage of WH tourism research, a framework of knowledge system is constructed. This framework is based on the basic characteristics of the literature, the key research areas and content, research theories, the evolution of research trends, and future research gaps summarized in the previous section [ 133 ] (Fig.  7 ). The first box’s contents in the left column are derived from high-frequency keywords. The keywords in each box are sorted in word frequency from highest to lowest. For example, in the first box of the first column, the highest frequency is “management,” and the lowest is “conflict.” The sustainable tourism theme is summarized by extracting 11 keywords and interpreting the content of the literature and presented inside the first column of key research areas and content. The other 7 themes were extracted by the same method. The endpoint of the whole knowledge system framework points to two intersecting circles. It consists of three high-frequency keywords: “world heritage,” “tourism,” and “world heritage tourism,” indicating that world heritage and tourism are inseparable.

Knowledge system of world heritage tourism research

Around the binary debate of conservation and utilization, the conservation and management practices and the tourism and leisure practices of WHSs have become two main lines of research, respectively. Research perspectives are mainly cut from both supply and demand sides but are not discrete. For example, WH tourism authenticity focuses on both the interpretation of authenticity by tourists in the demand perspective and the management and development of heritage resources in the supply perspective. The supply-side perspective emphasizes the study of destination management, the tourism impacts on WHSs, and stakeholders such as communities and governments in management as the focus of WH tourism. In particular, the ecological, social, economic, and cultural impacts of tourism on WHSs, sustainable livelihoods, and community perceptions have received continued attention from scholars. The demand-side perspective focuses on WH tourism from a marketing perspective, with branding and marketing of destinations, the impact of the WHL on tourism demand, and the relationship between visitor experience, perception, and satisfaction as the primary research components.

In terms of research theories, academics mainly draw on relevant theories from sociology, anthropology, and ecology to explain and solve the contradiction between WH conservation and tourism development. The interdisciplinary trend is more prominent. However, there is a lack of theoretical research on geography. From the perspective of the human-land relationship system in WHS, future research should fully use geography’s comprehensive and systematic nature. And apply it more to the management techniques and methods of WH tourism resources to better understand the contradiction between WH conservation and tourism development and balance the relationship between them.

Knowledge gaps with implications for future research

WH tourism research focuses on the conservation and use of WHSs and examines the development of society through the interaction of the two. How to realize the synergy between WH conservation and tourism development will be a continuing focus of scholars in this field of research. Future research can focus on exploring the following areas.

Innovative ways of representing World Heritage

From a demand-side perspective, subsequent WH tourism demand research should focus on people’s subjective constructs, such as tourists’ cultural needs and preferences. To match consumer perceptions with the intrinsic values characterized by WH [ 14 ] and target brand building and marketing. Demand research on the supply side should explore how to cut through the origin and form of WH and bring heritage back to today’s social life through the industrialization of cultural tourism. The storytelling of WH and cultural communication in WH tourism should be the focus of scholars’ later research. Among them, local culture plays a vital role in the sustainable management of WHSs, and intangible elements such as memories, emotions, and feelings related to WHSs should also attract the attention of scholars. In addition, most of the current studies are on cultural heritage, while there is relatively little research literature on the cultural lineage of natural heritage. Future research should strengthen the value of natural heritage constructed based on OUV and pay attention to local spiritual maintenance and humanistic values. Mainly focus on exploring the mechanism of the construction of cultural confidence and cultural identity in WH conservation and exploring the synergistic path of heritage conservation and tourism development.

To explore world heritage management models with local characteristics in developing countries to synergize conservation and tourism development

Compared with leading foreign studies, WH tourism research in developing countries is more concerned with management systems, government policies, and community participation. Most of the existing studies have explored the issues themselves. There are more case studies and fewer studies that summarize the patterns. More attention needs to be paid to micro-area studies to draw on the results and paradigms of current research. Taking China as an example, localized management and development models should be explored in light of the unique characteristics of WHS, such as focusing on the sustainable development of WHS in karst ecologically fragile and poor areas. It is necessary to propose targeted WH tourism management policies based on adaptive and collaborative community management [ 77 ] and seek a win–win model for WH conservation and regional development. A multi-element, multi-scale and multi-system approach should be adopted to explore the evolutionary patterns of tourism development in WHSs. The aim is to strengthen the capacity to predict the evolution of WHSs’ spatial patterns and structures and improve the ability to regulate and support decision-making for sustainable development. In addition, it is necessary to build an inclusive, democratic, and dialogical space, deepen the research on the role mechanisms of different stakeholders in WH conservation and tourism development, pay attention to the research on the value perception and local attachment of tourism business managers, further clarify their social responsibilities, attitudes, and behaviors, and their influencing factors, and optimize their roles in heritage conservation and management. At the same time, it should strengthen the research on the localization dilemma of WH under the influence of the new corona epidemic and focus on the multiple livelihood synergy mechanism and path of residents in WHSs in ecologically fragile and poverty-stricken areas.

Promote the integration of World Heritage research with cutting-edge issues of the times

The help of modern science and technology such as big data, cloud computing, the internet of things, artificial intelligence, digital conservation technology, interactive display technology, information space management technology, and other vital technologies provide new paths for comprehensive, systematic, and complex research on WH. They provide scientific and technological support to expand further the depth and breadth of research on WH tourism. Subsequent research should focus on combining technology and local heritage characteristics, highlighting the “materialization” of technology while emphasizing humanistic care. In addition, the new crown epidemic has exposed and exacerbated tourism’s vulnerability, especially for communities that are highly dependent on tourism as a source of livelihood, and sustainability is threatened. At the same time, the epidemic has also had a tremendous impact on government management practices, tourist travel behavior, tourism business operation models, changes in management models, host-client relationships, market demand, and consumption habits. They are making it necessary to explore adaptive management models and future directions for the industry appropriate for local practices. Finally, resilience theory emphasizes studying the historical relationship between society and its environment. The study of the mechanism of community resilience on WH conservation may become a breakthrough point for adaptive management research. In the future, we need to pay attention to the study of the resilience path of WH tourism after the new crown epidemic to enhance the resilience of communities in WHSs.

Based on the “Web of Science” database, the knowledge mapping software CiteSpace and VOSviewer were applied, combined with bibliometric and content analysis methods, to reveal the knowledge system’s themes, trends, and frameworks of WH tourism research. From the essential characteristics of the literature, chronologically, the research began in the 1990s, achieved rapid development in the first decade of the twenty-first century, and is booming. It is mainly concentrated in countries and regions with rich WH resources, developed economies, and more mature tourism industries. Although a specific group of authors has been formed, a particular research circle has not yet been created. The cooperative relationship between most authors is weak. Research institutions are mainly concentrated in universities.

The increasing refinement of WH conservation concepts and tourism development practices has contributed to research trends. The evolution of the research phases shows that WH tourism research has gradually become more microscopic and specific, with further development of theoretical analysis and scientific practice and the expansion of the study to multiple stakeholders such as tourist objects and external societies. Research topics have shifted to the micro-level, such as residents’ perceptions of tourism impacts and the cultural and economic impacts on WHSs. As research deepened and diversified, several new concepts and techniques began to be applied to WH resource conservation and evaluation. Although the expansion of research has gradually slowed down, deepening research exploring the multidisciplinary intersection and multiple research methods and perspectives have further advanced.

The knowledge system has formed a multidisciplinary and multi-level comprehensive research situation. In terms of research methods, the combination of qualitative and quantitative is the main focus. The methods of quantitative analysis are becoming more and more diversified, mostly cutting from micro cases for empirical research, and the research content is mainly focused on both supply and demand of WH tourism. However, the theoretical system is not yet perfect. The knowledge mapping, constructed knowledge systems, and inherent knowledge linkages presented in WH tourism research have specific academic value. The evolution of the knowledge system further deepens the disciplinary innovativeness. Whether from supply or demand, future research should seek breakthrough points based on existing research, innovate WH representation, tell heritage stories, and strengthen research on the cultural lineage of natural heritage sites. To promote the integration of WH research with cutting-edge issues of the times, research the paths of resilience and localization dilemmas of WH tourism after the new crown epidemic, and focus on the inhabitants of WHSs in ecologically fragile and impoverished areas. We will also study the mechanism and paths of multi-livelihood synergy for residents in environmentally vulnerable and poor regions. We will strengthen theoretical system construction, research innovation, and exchange and cooperation to form a more prosperous and in-depth knowledge system of WH tourism research.

Availability of data and materials

Data sharing is not applicable to this manuscript as no datasets were generated or analyzed.

Abbreviations

World Heritage

World Heritage Site

United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation

World Heritage Committee

World Heritage List

Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage

Conditional value assessment method

Geographic information system

Partial least square-structural equation modelling

Analytic hierarchy process

Principal component analysis

Analysis of variance

Remote sensing

Augmented reality

Mixed reality

UNESCO World Heritage Centre. Operational guidelines for the implementation of the world heritage convention. WHC.21/01. Paris: UNESCO, 2021. https://whc.unesco.org/en/guidelines/ . Accessed 17 Jan 2022.

Yang CH, Lin HL, Han CC. Analysis of international tourist arrivals in China: the role of world heritage sites. Tour Manag. 2010;31(6):827–37.

CAS   Google Scholar  

Gao YY, Su W. Is the world heritage just a title for tourism? Ann Tour Res. 2019;78: 102748.

Google Scholar  

Han W, Cai JM, Wei YG, Zhang Y, Han Y. Impacts of the world heritage list inscription: a case study of Kaiping Diaolou and Villages in China. Int J Strateg Prop Manag. 2020;24(1):51–69.

Buckley R, Shekari F, Mohammadi Z, Azizi F, Ziaee M. World heritage tourism triggers urban–rural reverse migration and social change. J Travel Res. 2020;59(3):559–72.

Agapiou A. UNESCO World Heritage properties in changing and dynamic environments: change detection methods using optical and radar satellite data. Herit Sci. 2021;9(1):1–14.

Su MM, Wall G, Xu KJ. Heritage tourism and livelihood sustainability of a resettled rural community: mount Sanqingshan world heritage site, China. J Sustain Tour. 2016;24(5):735–57.

Jimura T. The impact of world heritage site designation on local communities—a case study of Ogimachi, Shirakawa-mura, Japan. Tour Manag. 2011;32(2):288–96.

Zhang X. Impact of rural tourism on residents’ well-being in traditional ancient villages: a case of North Guangxi. Herit Sci. 2021;9:138.

Slabbert E, Du Plessis E, Digun-Aweto O. Impacts of tourism in predicting residents’ opinions and interest in tourism activities. J Tour Cult Chang. 2021;19(6):819–37.

Christensen J, Jones R. World heritage and local change: conflict, transformation and scale at Shark Bay, Western Australia. J Rural Stud. 2020;74:235–43.

Silverman H. Border wars: the ongoing temple dispute between Thailand and Cambodia and UNESCO’s world heritage list. Int J Herit Stud. 2011;17(1):1–21.

Kim H, Stepchenkova S, Yilmaz S. Destination extension: a faster route to fame for the emerging destination brands? J Travel Res. 2019;58(3):440–58.

Wang ZG, Yuan BC. Harmonizing the branding strategy of world natural heritage in China: visitors’ awareness of the multiple brands of Wulingyuan, Zhangjiajie. Geoheritage. 2020;12:1–11.

Poria Y, Reichel A, Cohen R. World heritage site—is it an effective brand name? A case study of a religious heritage site. J Travel Res. 2011;50(5):482–95.

Xu HG, Ye T. Dynamic destination image formation and change under the effect of various agents: the case of Lijiang’, The Capital of Yanyu’. J Destin Mark Manag. 2018;7:131–9.

Li Y, Lau C, Su P. Heritage tourism stakeholder conflict: a case of a world heritage site in China. J Tour Cult Change. 2020;18(3):267–87.

Panzera E, De Graaff T, De Groot HL. European cultural heritage and tourism flows: the magnetic role of superstar world heritage sites. Pap Reg Sci. 2021;100(1):101–22.

Ryan C, Zhang CZ, Deng Z. The impacts of tourism at a UNESCO heritage site in China—a need for a meta-narrative? The case of the Kaiping Diaolou. J Sustain Tour. 2011;19(6):747–65.

Vargas A. The tourism and local development in world heritage context. The case of the Mayan site of Palenque, Mexico. Int J Herit Stud. 2018;24(9):984–97.

Lin YX, Chen MH, Lin BS, Su CH. Asymmetric effects of cultural and natural world heritage sites on tourism receipts. Curr Issue Tour. 2020;23(24):3134–47.

Su MM, Wall G, Xu KJ. Tourism-induced livelihood changes at Mount Sanqingshan world heritage site, China. Environ Manag. 2016;57(5):1024–40.

Maruyama NU, Woosnam KM. Representation of ‘mill girls’ at a UNESCO world heritage site in Gunma, Japan. J Sustain Tour. 2021;29(2–3):277–94.

Drost A. Developing sustainable tourism for world heritage sites. Ann Tour Res. 1996;23(2):479–84.

Rasoolimanesh SM, Jaafar M. Sustainable tourism development and residents’ perceptions in world heritage site destinations. Asia Pac J Tour Res. 2017;22(1):34–48.

Zhen RC, Chao YF, Qian Z, Fu LC. Joint development of cultural heritage protection and tourism: the case of Mount Lushan cultural landscape heritage site. Herit Sci. 2021;9(1):1–16.

Rongna A, Sun J. Integration and sustainability of tourism and traditional livelihood: a rhythm analysis. J Sustain Tour. 2020;28(3):455–74.

Zhang CZ, Fyall A, Zheng YF. Heritage and tourism conflict within world heritage sites in China: a longitudinal study. Curr Issue Tour. 2015;18(2):110–36.

Bloch N. Evicting heritage: spatial cleansing and cultural legacy at the Hampi UNESCO site in India. Crit Asian Stud. 2016;48(4):556–78.

Allen A, Lennon M. The values and vulnerabilities of ‘Star Wars Island’: exploring tensions in the sustainable management of the Skellig Michael world heritage site. Int J Sust Dev World. 2018;25(6):483–90.

Thinh NA, Thanh NN, Tuyen LT, Hens L. Tourism and beach erosion: valuing the damage of beach erosion for tourism in the Hoi An world heritage site, Vietnam. Environ Dev Sustain. 2019;21(5):2113–24.

Simsek S, Günay G, Elhatip H, Ekmekci M. Environmental protection of geothermal waters and travertines at Pamukkale, Turkey. Geothermics. 2000;29(4–5):557–72.

Galas A. Problems of the environmental resources management around Colca Canyon, Peru. Gospodarka Surowcami Mineralnymi-Miner Resour Manag. 2008;24(2):135–52.

Van Dijk J, Broersma L, Mehnen N. Options for socioeconomic developments in ICZM for the tri-national Wadden area. Ocean Coast Manag. 2016;119:76–92.

Heslinga J, Groote P, Vanclay F. Understanding the historical institutional context by using content analysis of local policy and planning documents: assessing the interactions between tourism and landscape on the Island of Terschelling in the Wadden Sea Region. Tour Manag. 2018;66:180–90.

Varghese J, Crawford SS. A cultural framework for Indigenous, local, and science knowledge systems in ecology and natural resource management. Ecol Monogr. 2021;91(1): e01431.

Yang R, Duan ZW, Du MJ, Miao X. A comprehensive knowledge pedigree on environmental transparency. Pol J Environ Stud. 2020;30(1):535–54.

Donthu N, Kumar S, Mukherjee D, Pandey N, Lim WM. How to conduct a bibliometric analysis: an overview and guidelines. J Bus Res. 2021;133:285–96.

Bhowmik P. Heritage tourism: a bibliometric review. Anatolia. 2021. https://doi.org/10.1080/13032917.2021.1875250 .

Article   Google Scholar  

Kumar S, Sureka R, Vashishtha A. The journal of heritage tourism: a bibliometric overview since its inception. J Herit Tour. 2020;15(4):365–80.

Chen CM. Science mapping: a systematic review of the literature. J Data Inf Sci. 2017. https://doi.org/10.1515/jdis-2017-0006 .

Powell TH, Kouropalatis Y, Morgan RE, Karhu P. Mapping knowledge and innovation research themes: using bibliometrics for classification, evolution, proliferation and determinism. Int J Entrep Innov Manag. 2016;20(3–4):174–99.

Feng Y, Cui SZ. A review of emergency response in disasters: present and future perspectives. Nat Hazards. 2021;105(1):1109–38.

Xie L, Wang JW, Lv JH. Knowledge mapping of international dark tourism research: a bibliometric analysis using CiteSpace. Resour Sci. 2019;41(3):454–66 ( In Chinese ).

Marinello S, Butturi MA, Gamberini R, Martini U. Indicators for sustainable touristic destinations: a critical review. J Environ Plan Manag. 2021. https://doi.org/10.1080/09640568.2021.1978407 .

Orgaz-Agüera F, Castellanos-Verdugo M, AcostaGuzmán JA, Cobeña M, Oviedo-García MDLÁ. The mediating effects of community support for sustainable tourism, community attachment, involvement, and environmental attitudes. J Hosp Tour Res. 2020;12:1–24.

Rastegar R, Zarezadeh Z, Gretzel U. World heritage and social justice: insights from the inscription of Yazd, Iran. J Sustain Tour. 2021;29(2–3):521–40.

Zheng DN, Liang ZX, Ritchie BW. Residents’ social dilemma in sustainable heritage tourism: the role of social emotion, efficacy beliefs and temporal concerns. J Sustain Tour. 2020;28(11):1782–804.

Kaltenborn BP, Thomassen J, Wold LC, Linnell JD, Skar B. World heritage status as a foundation for building local futures? A case study from Vega in Central Norway. J Sustain Tour. 2013;21(1):99–116.

Lee TH. Influence analysis of community resident support for sustainable tourism development. Tour Manag. 2013;34:37–46.

Tavares AO, Henriques MH, Domingos A, Bala A. Community involvement in geoconservation: a conceptual approach based on the geoheritage of South Angola. Sustainability. 2015;7(5):4893–918.

Eslami S, Khalifah Z, Mardani A, Streimikiene D, Han H. Community attachment, tourism impacts, quality of life and residents’ support for sustainable tourism development. J Travel Tour Mark. 2019;36(9):1061–79.

Wang N. Rethinking authenticity in tourism experience. Ann Tour Res. 1999;26(2):349–70.

Su XY, Sigley GG, Song CQ. Relational authenticity and reconstructed heritage space: a balance of heritage preservation, tourism, and urban renewal in Luoyang Silk Road Dingding Gate. Sustainability. 2020;12(14):5830.

Park E, Choi BK, Lee TJ. The role and dimensions of authenticity in heritage tourism. Tour Manag. 2019;74:99–109.

Fu X. Existential authenticity and destination loyalty: evidence from heritage tourists. J Destin Mark Manag. 2019;12:84–94.

Katahenggam N. Tourist perceptions and preferences of authenticity in heritage tourism: visual comparative study of George Town and Singapore. J Tour Cult Chang. 2020;18(4):371–85.

Latiff K, Ng SI, Aziz YA, Basha NK. Food authenticity as one of the stimuli to world heritage sites. Br Food J. 2019;122(6):1755–76.

Shen SY, Guo JY, Wu YY. Investigating the structural relationships among authenticity, loyalty, involvement, and attitude toward world cultural heritage sites: an empirical study of Nanjing Xiaoling Tomb, China. Asia Pac J Tour Res. 2014;19(1):103–21.

Kolar T, Zabkar V. A consumer-based model of authenticity: an oxymoron or the foundation of cultural heritage marketing? Tour Manag. 2010;31(5):652–64.

Wang Y. Customized authenticity begins at home. Ann Tour Res. 2007;34(3):789–804.

Lugosi P. Socio-technological authentication. Ann Tour Res. 2016;58:100–13.

Zhu YJ. Performing heritage: rethinking authenticity in tourism. Ann Tour Res. 2012;39(3):1495–513.

Reisinger Y, Steiner CJ. Reconceptualizing object authenticity. Ann Tour Res. 2006;33(1):65–86.

Aldighieri B, Testa B, Bertini A. 3D exploration of the San Lucano Valley: virtual geo-routes for everyone who would like to understand the landscape of the Dolomites. Geoheritage. 2016;8(1):77–90.

Orimoloye IR, Kalumba AM, Mazinyo SP, Nel W. Geospatial analysis of wetland dynamics: wetland depletion and biodiversity conservation of Isimangaliso Wetland, South Africa. J King Saud Univ Sci. 2020;32(1):90–6.

Liu J, Ren HG, Wang XY, Shirazi Z, Quan B. Measuring and predicting urban expansion in the Angkor region of Cambodia. Remote Sens. 2019;11(17):2064–85.

Koo S, Kim J, Kim C, Kim J, Cha HS. Development of an augmented reality tour guide for a cultural heritage site. J Comput Cult Herit. 2019;12(4):1–24.

Okura F, Kanbara M, Yokoya N. Mixed-reality world exploration using image-based rendering. J Comput Cult Herit. 2015;8(2):1–26.

Wright AM. Assessing the stability and sustainability of rock art sites: insight from southwestern Arizona. J Archaeol Method Theory. 2018;25(3):911–52.

Saintenoy T, Estefane FG, Jofré D, Masaguer M. Walking and stumbling on the paths of heritage-making for rural development in the Arica Highlands. Mt Res Dev. 2019;39(4):D1–10.

Wardell-Johnson G, Schoeman D, Schlacher T, Wardell-Johnson A, Weston M, Shimizu Y, et al. Re-framing values for a world heritage future: what type of icon will K’gari-Fraser Island become? Australas J Environ Manag. 2015;22(2):124–48.

Heslinga J, Groote P, Vanclay F. Towards resilient regions: policy recommendations for stimulating synergy between tourism and landscape. Land. 2020;9(2):44.

Li MM, Wu BH, Cai LP. Tourism development of world heritage sites in China: a geographic perspective. Tour Manag. 2008;29(2):308–19.

Berg F. Wear and tear of world heritage: preventive conservation and tourism in Norway’s stave churches. Stud Conserv. 2018;63(sup1):320–2.

Hardiman N, Burgin S. Effects of trampling on in-stream macroinvertebrate communities from canyoning activity in the Greater Blue Mountains world heritage area. Wetl Ecol Manag. 2011;19(1):61–71.

Lin MS, Xiao XN, Xu Y, Xie HB. The impact of water quality changes on tourism capacity at Golden Lake, China. J Food Agric Environ. 2013;11:1069–72.

Pan YD, Deng GP, Wang LZ, Cao Y, Pang WT, Wang QX, et al. Effects of in situ phosphorus enrichment on the benthos in a subalpine karst stream and implications for bioassessment in nature reserves. Ecol Ind. 2017;73:274–83.

Li QY, Wu JL, Zhou JC, Sakiev K, Hofmann D. Occurrence of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) in soils around two typical lakes in the western Tian Shan Mountains (Kyrgyzstan, Central Asia): local burden or global distillation? Ecol Indic. 2020;108: 105749.

Rasoolimanesh SM, Jaafar M, Kock N, Ramayah T. A revised framework of social exchange theory to investigate the factors influencing residents’ perceptions. Tour Manag Perspect. 2015;16:335–45.

Türker N. Host community perceptions of tourism impacts: a case study on the world heritage city of Safranbolu, Turkey. Revista de Cercetare şi Intervenţie Socială. 2013;43:115–41.

Tucker H, Boonabaana B. A critical analysis of tourism, gender and poverty reduction. J Sustain Tour. 2012;20(3):437–55.

Qian C, Sasaki N, Jourdain D, Kim SM, Shivakoti PG. Local livelihood under different governances of tourism development in China—a case study of Huangshan Mountain area. Tour Manag. 2017;61:221–33.

Chen FF, Xu HG, Lew AA. Livelihood resilience in tourism communities: the role of human agency. J Sustain Tour. 2020;28(4):606–24.

Jha S. Can natural world heritage sites promote development and social harmony? Biodivers Conserv. 2005;14(4):981–91.

Kim SS, Wong KK, Cho M. Assessing the economic value of a world heritage site and willingness-to-pay determinants: a case of Changdeok Palace. Tour Manag. 2007;28(1):317–22.

Okech RN. Socio-cultural impacts of tourism on world heritage sites: communities’ perspective of Lamu (Kenya) and Zanzibar Islands. Asia Pac J Tour Res. 2010;15(3):339–51.

Su DN, Nguyen NAN, Nguyen QNT, Tran TP. The link between travel motivation and satisfaction towards a heritage destination: the role of visitor engagement, visitor experience and heritage destination image. Tour Manag Perspect. 2020;34: 100634.

Hoang TDT, Brown G, Kim AKJ. Measuring resident place attachment in a world cultural heritage tourism context: the case of Hoi An (Vietnam). Curr Issue Tour. 2020;23(16):2059–75.

Shakoori A, Hosseini M. An examination of the effects of motivation on visitors’ loyalty: case study of the Golestan Palace, Tehran. Tour Manag Perspect. 2019;32: 100554.

Lee KY, Lee H. Traditional costume experience at a cultural heritage festival. Tour Manag Perspect. 2019;32: 100555.

Hew JJ, Leong LY, Tan GWH, Lee VH, Ooi KB. Mobile social tourism shopping: a dual-stage analysis of a multi-mediation model. Tour Manag. 2018;66:121–39.

Chen CF, Leask A, Phou S. Symbolic, experiential and functional consumptions of heritage tourism destinations: the case of Angkor world heritage site, Cambodia. Int J Tour Res. 2016;18(6):602–11.

Prayag G, Hosany S, Odeh K. The role of tourists’ emotional experiences and satisfaction in understanding behavioral intentions. J Destin Mark Manag. 2013;2(2):118–27.

Gannon M, Rasoolimanesh SM, Taheri B. Assessing the mediating role of residents’ perceptions toward tourism development. J Travel Res. 2021;60(1):149–71.

Escudero Gómez LA. Residents’ opinions and perceptions of tourism development in the historic City of Toledo, Spain. Sustainability. 2019;11(14):3854.

Md Noor S, Rasoolimanesh SM, Jaafar M, Barghi R. Inscription of a destination as a world heritage site and residents’ perceptions. Asia Pac J Tour Res. 2019;24(1):14–30.

Benham CF. Editor understanding local community attitudes toward industrial development in the Great Barrier Reef region world heritage area: are environmental impacts perceived to overshadow economic benefits? Natural Resources Forum; 2017: Wiley Online Library.

Della Lucia M, Franch M. The effects of local context on world heritage site management: the Dolomites natural world heritage site, Italy. J Sustain Tour. 2017;25(12):1756–75.

Aleshinloye KD, Fu X, Ribeiro MA, Woosnam KM, Tasci AD. The influence of place attachment on social distance: examining mediating effects of emotional solidarity and the moderating role of interaction. J Travel Res. 2020;59(5):828–49.

Yan HL, Bramwell B. Cultural tourism, ceremony and the state in China. Ann Tour Res. 2008;35(4):969–89.

Sun JX, Zhou Y, Wang XJ. Place construction in the context of world heritage tourism: the case of ‘Kaiping Diaolou and Villages.’ J Tour Cult Chang. 2019;17(2):115–31.

Othman J, Rahajeng A. Economic valuation of Jogjakarta’s tourism attributes: a contingent ranking analysis. Tour Econ. 2013;19(1):187–201.

Nicholas LN, Thapa B, Ko YJ. Residents’ perspectives of a world heritage site: the pitons management area, St. Lucia. Ann Tour Res. 2009;36(3):390–412.

Gao X, Roder G, Jiao YM, Ding YP, Liu ZL, Tarolli P. Farmers’ landslide risk perceptions and willingness for restoration and conservation of world heritage site of Honghe Hani Rice Terraces, China. Landslides. 2020;17(8):1915–24.

Wardana A. Neoliberalizing cultural landscapes: Bali’s agrarian heritage. Crit Asian Stud. 2020;52(2):270–85.

Martínez-Pérez Á, Beauchesne M-M. Overcoming the dark side of closed networks in cultural tourism clusters: the importance of diverse networks. Cornell Hosp Q. 2018;59(3):239–56.

Martínez-Pérez Á, Elche D, García-Villaverde PM, Parra-Requena G. Cultural tourism clusters: social capital, relations with institutions, and radical innovation. J Travel Res. 2019;58(5):793–807.

Chi CG, Zhang CZ, Liu YY. Determinants of corporate social responsibility (CSR) attitudes: perspective of travel and tourism managers at world heritage sites. Int J Contemp Hosp Manag. 2019. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCHM-03-2018-0217 .

Su LJ, Hsu MK, Swanson S. The effect of tourist relationship perception on destination loyalty at a world heritage site in China: the mediating role of overall destination satisfaction and trust. J Hosp Tour Res. 2017;41(2):180–210.

Weng LS, Liang ZX, Bao JG. The effect of tour interpretation on perceived heritage values: a comparison of tourists with and without tour guiding interpretation at a heritage destination. J Destin Market Manag. 2020;16: 100431.

Gao J, Zhang CZ, Liu L. Communicating the outstanding universal value of world heritage in China? The tour guides’ perspective. Asia Pac J Tour Res. 2020;25(9):1042–55.

Verma A, Rajendran G. The effect of historical nostalgia on tourists’ destination loyalty intention: an empirical study of the world cultural heritage site—Mahabalipuram, India. Asia Pac J Tour Res. 2017;22(9):977–90.

Alazaizeh MM, Ababneh A, Jamaliah MM. Preservation vs. use: understanding tourism stakeholders’ value perceptions toward Petra Archaeological Park. J Tour Cult Change. 2020;18(3):252–66.

Baral N, Kaul S, Heinen JT, Ale SB. Estimating the value of the world heritage site designation: a case study from Sagarmatha (Mount Everest) National Park, Nepal. J Sustain Tour. 2017;25(12):1776–91.

Dong XW, Zhang J, Zhi RZ, Zhong SE, Li M. Measuring recreational value of world heritage sites based on contingent valuation method: a case study of Jiuzhaigou. Chin Geogr Sci. 2011;21(1):119–28.

Parga-Dans E, González PA, Enríquez RO. The social value of heritage: balancing the promotion-preservation relationship in the Altamira world heritage site, Spain. J Destin Mark Manag. 2020;18: 100499.

Santos PM. Crossed gazes over an old city: photography and the ‘experientiation’ of a heritage place. Int J Herit Stud. 2016;22(2):131–44.

Wuepper D, Patry M. The world heritage list: which sites promote the brand? A big data spatial econometrics approach. J Cult Econ. 2017;41(1):1–21.

Veasna S, Wu WY, Huang CH. The impact of destination source credibility on destination satisfaction: the mediating effects of destination attachment and destination image. Tour Manag. 2013;36:511–26.

Brown S, Baldwin C, Chandler L. Representation of Butchulla cultural heritage values in communication of K’gari (Fraser Island) as a tourism destination. Australas J Environ Manag. 2015;22(2):163–80.

Yang CH, Lin HY. Revisiting the relationship between world heritage sites and tourism. Tour Econ. 2014;20(1):73–86.

Su YW, Lin HL. Analysis of international tourist arrivals worldwide: the role of world heritage sites. Tour Manag. 2014;40:46–58.

Gao YY, Su W. The disclosure of quality on tourism performance: evidence from top tourist cities in China. J Travel Res. 2021;60(7):1492–509.

Patuelli R, Mussoni M, Candela G. The effects of world heritage sites on domestic tourism: a spatial interaction model for Italy. J Geogr Syst. 2013;15(3):369–402.

Cellini R. Is UNESCO recognition effective in fostering tourism? A comment on Yang, Lin and Han. Tour Manag. 2011;32(2):452–4.

Santa-Cruz FG, López-Guzmán T. Culture, tourism and world heritage sites. Tour Manag Perspect. 2017;24:111–6.

Huang CH, Tsaur JR, Yang CH. Does world heritage list really induce more tourists? Evid Macau Tour Manag. 2012;33(6):1450–7.

Cuccia T, Guccio C, Rizzo I. The effects of UNESCO world heritage list inscription on tourism destinations performance in Italian regions. Econ Model. 2016;53:494–508.

Ribaudo G, Figini P. The puzzle of tourism demand at destinations hosting UNESCO world heritage sites: an analysis of tourism flows for Italy. J Travel Res. 2017;56(4):521–42.

Bak S, Min CK, Roh TS. Impacts of UNESCO-listed tangible and intangible heritages on tourism. J Travel Tour Mark. 2019;36(8):917–27.

Yang Y, Xue L, Jones TE. Tourism-enhancing effect of world heritage sites: Panacea or placebo? A meta-analysis. Ann Tour Res. 2019;75:29–41.

Yu GX, Dai GQ. Construction of Chinese and English event study knowledge system based on tourism perspective. Tour Tribune. 2018;2(33):90–104 ( In Chinese ).

Download references

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support of Guizhou normal university. We would also like to thank anonymous reviewers for their helpful and productive comments on the manuscript.

This work was supported by the Key Project of Science and Technology Program of Guizhou Province (No. 5411 2017 Qiankehe Pingtai Rencai), the World Top Discipline Program of Guizhou Province (No.125 2019 Qianjiao Keyan Fa), the China Overseas Expertise Introduction Program for Discipline Innovation (No.D17016), the Strategic Action Plan of Guizhou Undergraduate Higher Education Institutions to Serve the Rural Industrial Revolution(No. Qianjiaohe KY[2018]086), the Postgraduate Education Innovation Program Project of Guizhou Province (No. Qianjiaohe YJSCXJH [2020] 112).

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

School of Karst Science, Guizhou Normal University/State Engineering Technology Institute for Karst Desertification Control, Guiyang, 550001, China

Juan Zhang, Kangning Xiong & Zhaojun Liu

School of Management Science, Guizhou University of Finance and Economics, Guiyang, 550025, China

Juan Zhang & Lixiang He

School of Urban and Environmental Sciences, Central China Normal University, Wuhan, 430079, China

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Contributions

JZ and KNX developed the concept of this work. JZ wrote the manuscript, KNX and ZJL reviewed the whole text and made comments and suggestions to improve it. LXH edited parts of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kangning Xiong .

Ethics declarations

Competing interests.

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Additional information

Publisher's note.

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Supplementary Information

Additional file 1: appendix s1..

List of the 567 publications considered in bibliometric analysis.

Rights and permissions

Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver ( http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article.

Zhang, J., Xiong, K., Liu, Z. et al. Research progress and knowledge system of world heritage tourism: a bibliometric analysis. Herit Sci 10 , 42 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1186/s40494-022-00654-0

Download citation

Received : 15 November 2021

Accepted : 21 January 2022

Published : 23 March 2022

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s40494-022-00654-0

Share this article

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• World natural heritage
• World cultural heritage
• Sustainable tourism
• Stakeholders
• Tourism impacts
• Conservation
• Development

UNESCO presents progress on sustainable tourism and intangible heritage project in Latin America and the Caribbean

The 3-year project strengthens the cooperation between cultural, tourism and urban development sectors towards more sustainable tourism practices, as well as better safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage in urban contexts. Generously supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, a total of 10 countries in the region benefits from the ongoing efforts: Belize, Costa Rica, Cuba, Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua and Panama.

During the discussion at its Headquarters in Paris, France, UNESCO presented the various undergoing activities, including the workshop ‘World Heritage and Sustainable Tourism: Enhancing visitor management and community engagement’ to take place in June 2024 in Oaxaca, Mexico.

‘This landmark project creates meaningful synergies between tangible and intangible heritage. Through an integrated approach, we aim to unlock the potential of cultural tourism for sustainable livelihoods with communities firmly in the driving seat’ said Ernesto Ottone R., Assistant Director-General for Culture of UNESCO. 

Abel Abdiel Aronátegui Vivies, coordinator of the Central American Integration System (CECC/SICA) which serves as the regional implementation partner, emphasised the importance of visitor management in World Heritage sites and safeguarding intangible cultural heritage in urban contexts. Praising the inclusive approach, he said ‘The footprints of those who journeyed together are never wiped away.’

Representatives from the above countries underlined the symbiotic relationship between World Heritage and living heritage in the region. The project thus reflects the way culture is understood, practiced and passed down over generation, in which tangible and intangible heritage are seen as one. They also thanked the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, represented by Faisal Al Omair, Advisor, Permanent Delegation of Saudi Arabia to UNESCO, for making this timely project a reality.

The project responds to a call made by the historic  MONDIACULT 2022 Declaration , which recognized culture as an enable for ‘context-relevant models of economic and social development’ including tourism. 

This exchange session was held in parallel with the tenth session of the General Assembly of the States Parties to the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage.

Related items

• UN ＆ International cooperation

More on this subject

Other recent news

• Announcements
• AUTHOR'S GUIDELINES

Organization of the Use of Moscow Cultural and Historical Heritage in Tourist Activities

• Elena KRYUKOVA Russian State Social University, Russian Federation
• Valeriya KHETAGUROVA Russian State Social University, Russian Federation
• Anton MOSALEV Russian State Social University, Russian Federation
• Irina MUKHOMOROVA Russian State Social University, Russian Federation
• Elena EGOROVA Russian State Social University, Russian Federation

Analysis of scientific sources on the problems of cultural tourism shows that there are significant theoretical developments on this issue. However, despite the intensification of research efforts aimed at analyzing the development of cultural tourism, certain aspects of the regulation and development of this direction remain, in the authors’ opinion, insufficiently studied. The need to develop evidence-based practical recommendations to promote the national cultural tourism product at the national, federal and local levels currently exists. The paper defines the role of the business sector in the use of cultural heritage.

Insufficient knowledge on the matter, as well as the relevance and the theoretical and practical significance of the use of cultural heritage in the tourism industry, determine the choice of the topic, the purpose of the study and its objectives

• EndNote - EndNote format (Macintosh & Windows)
• ProCite - RIS format (Macintosh & Windows)
• Reference Manager - RIS format (Windows only)

Copyright© 2023 The Author(s). Published by ASERS Publishing 2023. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of CC-BY 4.0 license.

• Come and join our team! become an author
• Soon, we launch the books app stay tune!
• Online support 24/7 +4077 033 6758
• Tell Friends and get $5 a small gift for you
• Privacy Policy
• Customer Service
• Refunds Politics

Mail to: [email protected]

Phone: +40754 027 417

Russia hopes to build relations and break stereotypes with new BRICS Tourism Cities Club

T he first BRICS Tourism Forum , held in Moscow brought together over 600 leading experts and business and government representatives from the BRICS countries.

A major part of the forum was the signing of 12 commercial agreements by representatives of the tourism business sector and the creation of the BRICS Tourism Cities Club.

The meeting was also created to help develop practical actions, with participation from all 9 member countries.

The initiative to create this platform was first put forward by South Africa in 2018 and finally created under the Russian presidency in BRICS this year.

IOL Business was invited to the forum where the main priority or strategy of the event was to attract tourism to Moscow.

The government hopes to establish long-lasting ties with South Africa and hopes to make it easier for South Africans to visit Russia and in particular Moscow.

Over 24 million people visited Moscow in 2023 according to Evgeny Kozlov, the chairman of Moscow City Tourism Committee.

But this is not enough and he told IOL that the Russian government want to double this by 2030 with the help of South Africa and other BRICS nations.

“We need to establish a new or deeper connection with local business and federal government to promote tourism in Moscow. There is a huge drive to bring in BRICS nations to Moscow and intra-BRICS cooperation with these nations is vital,” Kozlov said.

“In the first quarter of 2024, our capital has already been visited by 129,000 guests from BRICS countries and, by the end of the year, we expect more than 600,000 tourists from these countries,“ Kozlov noted

“We are focusing on the development of multilateral co-operation with the BRICS countries and expanding the formats of partnership.”

BRICS Tourism Cities Club

Kozlov said that the Tourism Cities Club is a planned association that will serve as a driver for the development of inter-regional tourism and become a convenient platform for direct dialogue between BRICS representatives.

“We hope that this initiative will be approved by our partners and will become an effective tool and a base for increasing mutual tourist flow.”

"As the global survey conducted last year showed, city breaks account for one-third of al international tourism. The UN statistics suggest that a majority of the population already live in cities and the urbanization will continue further. The BRICS countries are home to 45% of the global population. These figures suggest that interaction between cities, city tourism really are an accomplished fact and the future," Kozlov explained.

He said that BRICS nations have the ability to create a platform that will foster inter-city interaction and take it to the next level.

"This is why we are putting forward the initiative to create a tourist club of BRICS cities and we invite every city and every tourist destination to cooperate. And we assumed that such a platform could become both the basis for sharing practices and an analytical data hub, and in fact, could start a tradition for creating a new type of tourism product," Kozlov added.

The main aim of the club is to share information amongst Brics nations and to reduce stereotypes.

"The more platforms there are for communication on the inter-city level, the fewer stereotypes, on the one hand, and the more economic opportunities for interaction, on the other. And so the platform of BRICS touristic cities potentially can become precisely what breaks stereotypes," he explained.

The club is also looking to organise the first BRICS tourism award in 2025, Kozlov said.

IOL BUSINESS

Text: A A A Print Culture

• Taiyuan aims to build key cultural, tourism destination

A dancer in traditional costume performs at the Jinci Temple Museum in Taiyuan, the capital of Shanxi province, in March. (Photo: China Daily/Zhu Xingxin)

Taiyuan, the capital of Shanxi province, has been promoting the deep integration of culture and tourism and improving the quality of services in sectors such as catering, accommodation, transportation, sightseeing, shopping and entertainment in recent years, said the city's top official.

The city aims to create an important cultural and tourist destination both domestically and internationally, Wei Tao, Party secretary of Taiyuan, told China Daily in a recent exclusive interview.

According to data from the Taiyuan Bureau of Culture and Tourism, during this year's three-day Dragon Boat Festival holiday that started on June 8, major scenic spots, parks, museums, tourist leisure districts and nighttime cultural tourism hubs in the city received nearly 2 million visitors, up 29.7 percent year-on-year.

The city's tourism revenue during the holiday totaled more than 32.8 million yuan ($4.51 million), a year-on-year increase of 39.9 percent.

"Taiyuan is a nationally renowned historical and cultural city with a history of over 2,500 years," Wei said. "It has been deeply exploring historical and cultural resources, inheriting and protecting urban cultural heritage, and making concerted efforts to build a city of museums."

Taiyuan currently has a total of 101 museums of various levels and types, he added.

"There are 2,237 immovable cultural relics and 541 cultural heritage sites in Taiyuan, bearing rich historical and cultural legacies from the city of Jinyang in the early Jin Dynasty (1115-1234) to the city of Longcheng in the Sui Dynasty (581-618) and the city of Bingzhou in the Tang Dynasty (618-907)," Wei said. "Each museum connects the past, present and future of a city."

There are over 30 forest parks spread across the city and the Fenhe River, the second-largest tributary of the Yellow River, flows through Taiyuan, creating a picturesque scene. 

"Taiyuan experiences mild winters and summers without extreme heat, with an average summer temperature of 23.5 C, offering a cool and pleasant climate and making it a well-known summer resort," Wei said. "The city also boasts unique folk customs, such as Jin Opera and drums performance as well as a diverse culinary culture with a wide variety of dishes — the famous mature vinegar, and nutritious and healthy foods like millet and buckwheat." 

Meanwhile, Taiyuan has prepared a luxury package for tourism investors, setting up a special fund of 1.3 billion yuan, with project investments eligible for rewards of up to 50 million yuan, he said.

"For travel agencies, we have prepared a lucky bag, implementing a policy of rewarding bulk tourism reception. Travel agencies that attracted visitors will be rewarded based on the number of tourists and those ranking top will be eligible for a one-time reward of up to 1 million yuan."

In addition, the city has prepared a value-for-money gift package for tourists, with 11 departments jointly issuing measures to support the development of the concert economy.

"We have set up a dedicated service guarantee team and introduced heartwarming measures such as free visits to State-owned key scenic spots and free rides on public transportation like buses and subways for concert ticket holders," Wei said. "These initiatives aim to support the growth of the concert economy and accelerate the construction of an important performing arts center in North China."

To accelerate the pace of building an important cultural and tourism destination at home and abroad, Taiyuan has already established a tourism brand system that features elements such as history, culture, ecology, revolutionary heritage, industrial bases, as well as leisure and health.

Wei summarizes the essence of Taiyuan with four phrases — integration of ancient and modern, amazing mountains and waters, rich and vibrant atmosphere, and abundant vitality.

"The 2024 Shanxi Tourism Development Conference will start at the end of June," Wei said. "We warmly invite tourists to the city for a cultural journey, a study tour, a discovery trip, and a health and wellness voyage."

Related news

Free subway rides for passengers in ancient attire bring 'Hanfu' into daily life

Chinese cities issue vouchers to prop up consumer spending

• Water level of Liujiang River rises to 82.84 meters in SW China's Guangxi

Guangzhou's Nansha International Cruise Homeport officially opens

Roundtable held during China-U.S. Youth Exchange Week in Kuliang, Fuzhou

China Team unveils medal ceremony uniform for Paris Olympics

Tallest building in Hainan surpasses halfway construction point

Two scientists win China's top sci-tech award for 2023

In Numbers: 2024 Summer Davos

National Land Day: China's spectacular landscapes

Chinese President Xi Jinping meets Polish President Andrzej Duda in Beijing

Extended metro line put into operation in Paris for upcoming Olympics

First cross-broader electric coach linking Hong Kong and Shenzhen starts operation

Lion dance on water cheers for dragon boat race

Picturesque scene of wild elk living in Tiaozini Wetland

Yak-riding race held in Lhasa

Chinese researchers discover new species of perleidid fish

In Numbers: 'China Travel' becomes a global buzzword

Miniature art exhibition restores lifestyle of Hong Kong People

Gorgeous scenery of Qumar River, north headwater of Yangtze River

Wild animals appear at the foot of Kunlun Mountains

Rescue work underway in First Ancestral Hall of Hakka

Guilin combats the city's most severe flooding since 1998

Badain Jaran Desert gets on 'green' look

China-Malaysia ties in numbers

30th Beijing International Book Fair kicks off

Hong Kong streets decorated to celebrate HKSAR's 27th anniversary

Huangmao cross-sea channel fully connected

Rescue teams rush to transfer flood-trapped people in Guilin

Chinese vocational school student ranks 12th in Alibaba Global Math Competition

World's largest liquid air energy storage demonstration project expected to be commissioned by end of the year

Shenzhen Window of the World celebrates 30th anniversary

In Numbers: C919 sees more take off

In Numbers: Chinese economy extends upward trend

Photo exhibition on China-Laos Railway opens to public

Flood in Fuzhou turns Jinshan into 'isolated temple'

Russia-born giant panda cub lives happily at Moscow Zoo

Wild red-crowned cranes forage in sunshine

Most popular in 24h, more top news.

• Old millet given modern twists in Inner Mongolia
• China urges EU to stop listing Chinese firms in sanctions
• 3-way FTA talks back on agenda

(W.E. Talk) Scholar: On the road to building an ecological civilization, China is walking hard but with no regrets

Nine-year passion: American youth brings green to Inner Mongolia desert

• Latest News
• Emergencies
• Ask the Law
• GN Fun Drive
• Visa+Immigration
• Phone+Internet
• Reader Queries
• Safety+Security
• Banking & Insurance
• Dubai Airshow
• Corporate Tax
• Top Destinations
• Corporate News
• Electronics
• Home and Kitchen
• Consumables
• Saving and Investment
• Budget Living
• Expert Columns
• Community Tips
• Cryptocurrency
• Cooking and Cuisines
• Guide to Cooking
• Art & People
• Friday Partner
• Daily Crossword
• Word Search
• Philippines
• Australia-New Zealand
• Corrections
• Special Reports
• Pregnancy & Baby
• Learning & Play
• Child Health
• For Mums & Dads
• UAE Success Stories
• Live the Luxury
• Culture and History
• Staying Connected
• Entertainment
• Live Scores
• Point Table
• Top Scorers
• Photos & Videos
• Course Reviews
• Learn to Play
• South Indian
• Arab Celebs
• Health+Fitness
• Gitex Global 2023
• Best Of Bollywood
• Special Features
• Investing in the Future
• Know Plan Go
• Gratuity Calculator
• Notifications
• Prayer Times

Moscow hosts UAE Culture Days on Manezhnaya Square amid growing tourism

Business corporate news.

• Travel & Tourism

Discover Emirati heritage, cuisine and artistry in the heart of Russia's capital city

Moscow: Manezhnaya Square will host Days of UAE Culture, a highlight of the "Summer in Moscow" initiative. Visitors, including both citizens and tourists, are invited to explore the country's attractions, traditional attire, cuisine, henna painting, and an exhibition featuring paintings and photographs.

The program, organized by the UAE Embassy and the Government of Moscow, is part of reciprocal events under bilateral cooperation, explained Deputy Mayor Natalia Sergunina.

"Our partnership covers diverse areas, including tourism. In 2023, Moscow welcomed over 42,000 visitors from the UAE—an eightfold increase from the previous year. This trend continues in 2024, with ongoing growth. We invite everyone to Manezhnaya Square to enjoy exhibitions, musical performances, master classes, photo opportunities with art installations, and sample popular Arab delicacies," announced Natalia Sergunina.

According to her, UAE guests are drawn to Moscow's rich cultural heritage, parks, museums, and the city's diverse culinary scene, blending cuisines from around the world. The majority prefer traveling alone (34.2%) or with a partner (23.8%), opting for comfortable accommodations, with approximately a quarter staying in five-star hotels (23.4%).

"We are delighted to host UAE Culture Days in the heart of Moscow, on iconic Manezhnaya Square. This historical area is among Moscow's most beautiful tourist spots, and we eagerly anticipate showcasing UAE culture and heritage to the Russian people," noted Dr Mohammed Ahmed Sultan Essa Al Jaber, UAE Ambassador to Russia.

The cultural event spans five days, featuring folk performances, an ancient Emirati wedding demonstration, falconry shows, engraving exhibitions, henna art, and displays of antiques and traditional crafts. Visitors can savor Emirati coffee and dishes, purchase UAE goods, and capture memories in specially designed photo zones.

"Cultural exchange between our friendly nations has entered a new phase, reflecting increased UAE tourism to Moscow and growing interest in Russian culture, art, history, and traditions," Dr. Al Jaber added.

Moscow remains a key international tourist destination, with 23 million visitors in 2023, primarily from China, India, CIS countries, and the Middle East. The city actively engages in international collaborations through exhibitions, business missions, and events aimed at global audiences.

More From Corporate-News

Al Tayer Motors signs deal with VinFast Auto

Aramco ranks largest oil company in proven reserves

Saudi Arabia inks deal for gas-powered plants

EY relocates headquarters to Riyadh

Oman plans to build $31 million film city

Saudi launches renewable energy geographic survey

UAE residents enjoy visa-free entry to 9 destinations

Dubai Airports set new forecast standards using AI

UAE tech sale: Up to 50% discount ahead of AI launch

After canada, germany tells citizens to leave lebanon, uae discover route to 2026 world cup, rice husk ash vs cement study on at university in rak, spaniards standout as euro heads into knockout stage.

Get Breaking News Alerts From Gulf News

We’ll send you latest news updates through the day. You can manage them any time by clicking on the notification icon.

• Travel, Tourism & Hospitality ›
• Leisure Travel

Industry-specific and extensively researched technical data (partially from exclusive partnerships). A paid subscription is required for full access.

Countries with the highest share of tourism spending on experiences worldwide 2024

According to a March 2024 study, Australia was the country worldwide with the highest share of tourism spending on experiences. Overall, experiences and nightlife accounted for roughly 19 percent of the total expenditure by Australian travelers over the past 12 months.

Countries with the highest share of tourism spending on experiences and nightlife worldwide over the past 12 months as of March 2024

To access all Premium Statistics, you need a paid Statista Account

• Immediate access to all statistics
• Incl. source references
• Download as PDF, XLS, PNG and PPT

Additional Information

Show sources information Show publisher information Use Ask Statista Research Service

Other statistics on the topic

IT Services

• Benefits to working remotely worldwide 2022

Travel, Tourism & Hospitality

• Share of digital nomads worldwide 2024, by income

Business Travel

• Number of U.S. digital nomads 2019-2023
• Nationalities of digital nomads worldwide 2024

To download this statistic in XLS format you need a Statista Account

To download this statistic in PNG format you need a Statista Account

To download this statistic in PDF format you need a Statista Account

To download this statistic in PPT format you need a Statista Account

As a Premium user you get access to the detailed source references and background information about this statistic.

As a Premium user you get access to background information and details about the release of this statistic.

As soon as this statistic is updated, you will immediately be notified via e-mail.

… to incorporate the statistic into your presentation at any time.

You need at least a Starter Account to use this feature.

• Immediate access to statistics, forecasts & reports
• Usage and publication rights
• Download in various formats

* For commercial use only

Basic Account

• Free Statistics

Starter Account

• Premium Statistics

The statistic on this page is a Premium Statistic and is included in this account.

Professional Account

• Free + Premium Statistics
• Market Insights

1 All prices do not include sales tax. The account requires an annual contract and will renew after one year to the regular list price.

Statistics on " Digital nomads "

• Global weekly interest in selected travel trends on Google search 2023-2024
• Countries that offer digital nomad visas 2024, by region
• Share of employees working primarily remotely worldwide 2015-2023
• Share of digital nomads worldwide 2023, by age
• Share of digital nomads worldwide 2024, by gender
• Share of digital nomads worldwide 2024, by race and ethnicity
• Share of digital nomads worldwide 2024, by education level
• Share of digital nomads worldwide 2023, by employment
• Main occupations of female digital nomads worldwide 2024
• Main occupations of male digital nomads worldwide 2024
• Most visited countries by digital nomads worldwide 2024
• Most visited cities by digital nomads worldwide 2024
• Preferred places to work for digital nomads worldwide 2023
• Time spent in visited destinations by digital nomads worldwide 2023
• Number of U.S. digital nomads 2019-2023, by employment status
• Share of U.S. digital nomads 2023, by generation
• Most popular professions of U.S. digital nomads 2023
• People aspiring to be digital nomads in the United States 2020-2023

Other statistics that may interest you Digital nomads

• Basic Statistic Global weekly interest in selected travel trends on Google search 2023-2024
• Premium Statistic Nationalities of digital nomads worldwide 2024
• Premium Statistic Countries that offer digital nomad visas 2024, by region
• Premium Statistic Share of employees working primarily remotely worldwide 2015-2023
• Basic Statistic Benefits to working remotely worldwide 2022

Demographics

• Premium Statistic Share of digital nomads worldwide 2023, by age
• Premium Statistic Share of digital nomads worldwide 2024, by gender
• Premium Statistic Share of digital nomads worldwide 2024, by race and ethnicity
• Premium Statistic Share of digital nomads worldwide 2024, by income
• Premium Statistic Share of digital nomads worldwide 2024, by education level
• Premium Statistic Share of digital nomads worldwide 2023, by employment
• Premium Statistic Main occupations of female digital nomads worldwide 2024
• Premium Statistic Main occupations of male digital nomads worldwide 2024
• Premium Statistic Most visited countries by digital nomads worldwide 2024
• Premium Statistic Most visited cities by digital nomads worldwide 2024
• Premium Statistic Preferred places to work for digital nomads worldwide 2023
• Premium Statistic Time spent in visited destinations by digital nomads worldwide 2023

U.S. digital nomads

• Premium Statistic Number of U.S. digital nomads 2019-2023
• Premium Statistic Number of U.S. digital nomads 2019-2023, by employment status
• Premium Statistic Share of U.S. digital nomads 2023, by generation
• Premium Statistic Most popular professions of U.S. digital nomads 2023
• Premium Statistic People aspiring to be digital nomads in the United States 2020-2023

Further Content: You might find this interesting as well