Cultural heritages - Tiếng Anh | Trường Đại Học Ngoại ngữ Huế

CULTURAL HERITAGE AND TOURISM 1CHAPTER 1:
INTRODUCTION TO CULTURAL HERITAGE AND TOURISM
This chapter provides an overview of the relationship between Cultural Heritage and Tourism. It
covers the definitions, the categories of cultural heritage and its importance in tourism industry. 1.1 WHAT I S CULTURAL HERITAGE?
Heritage is the full range of our inherited traditions, monuments, objects, and culture. Most
important, it is the range of contemporary activities, meanings, and behaviors that we draw from them. UNESCO (2019)
categorizes heritage into cultural heritage, natural heritage and heritage
in the event of armed conflict.
Cultural Heritage is an expression of the ways of living developed by a community and
passed on from generation to generation, including customs, practices, places, objects, artistic
expressions and values. Cultural Heritage is often expressed as either Intangible or Tangible Cultural Heritage.
Tangible heritage includes buildings and historic places, monuments, artifacts, etc.,
which are considered worthy of preservation for the future. These include objects significant to
the archaeology, architecture, science or technology of a specific culture.
An intangible cultural heritage is a practice, representation, expression, knowledge, or
skill, as well as the instruments, objects, artifacts, and cultural spaces that are considered by
UNESCO to be part of a place’s cultural heritage. 1.2 THE PRESERVATION O F C ULTURAL H ERITAGE FOR THE S OCIAL AND HUMAN DEVELOPMENT
The question arising is what role does UNESCO play in the preservation of the cultural heritage?
Their strategy focuses on the museums and collections that best contribute to an integrated
understanding of heritage and their potential contribution to the economic and the social and
human development of local communities and disadvantaged groups.
Through a complete set of Conventions concerning heritage, UNESCO offer a unique
platform for international cooperation and dialogue, fostering mutual respect, appreciation and 1 1 CULTURAL HERITAGE AND TOURISM
understanding. These legal instruments support the development of national policies for heritage
protection, with an emphasis on preservation, management and training.
The preservation of cultural heritage is an obligation that 126 countries of the world are
bound to uphold through international agreements. The first international treaty protecting
cultural and national heritage sites was the Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural
Property in the Event of Armed Conflict (1954). The Hague Convention requires states to protect
cultural property during war. This convention created an international symbol for identifying
cultural property that is to be protected. This symbol is the Blue Shield. The Convention
concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage was then adopted by
UNESCO in 1972. This international treaty was created to identify, protect, and preserve
cultural and national heritage around the world (and the history as well as details of these
conventions will be discussed in chapter 2).
There are currently 981 cultural heritage sites in 160 countries of the world. The
International Committee of the Blue Shield (founded 1996) has country-level sections all over
the world that work to protect national and cultural heritage property by collecting and
disseminating information about threats to cultural heritage, spreading awareness about cultural
heritage, and facilitating the creation of localized cultural heritage organizations. 1.3 THE ROLE O F CULTURAL HERITAGE I N THE D EVELOPMENT O F TOURISM
Cultural heritage sites represent a varied collection of human creation across the entire globe and
the entire span of human history. With the enormous growth of knowledge, increasing mobility
and the increased accessibility of travel, there is widespread curiosity about other places and a
huge demand to visit and personally experience other societies. As a result, the vast majority of
cities, towns, villages and settled landscapes experience some form of tourism activity.
Tourists come to the cultural heritage sites for many reasons, including as a personal
experience, a basis for commercial activity, a carrier of collective memory. According to Gluvačević
(2016) , the cultural heritage plays an active role in establishing the branding and
promoting the destination because it can be used in a variety of ways from “legends, celebrities,
historic buildings and sites, folklore and presentation of traditional crafts and skills” to a modern
way that included guided tours, costumes, multimedia presentations, written guides, etc.” (p. 9). 2 CULTURAL HERITAGE AND TOURISM 1.4 THE IMPACTS O
F TOURISM ON CULTURAL HERITAGE
As an economic driver for many for countries, tourism has exerted a positive influence on host
communities. Tourism developments highly contribute to the income generation, improvement of
economic quality of life (through increasing of personal income and increasing tax revenues), the
employment opportunities, the improvement of infrastructure and public utilities.
With every positive comes a negative effect of tourism on mining and managing the
cultural heritage. The negative economic impacts of tourism development are the increase in
price of goods and services, land and housing, and other cost of living. Tourism can also bring to
a community with a dark social and cultural side and create various negative impacts to the host
culture. In addition to the increased alcohol use and underage drinking, the presence of
smugglers and buyers of smuggled products, which affects the local manufactures.
Mining and managing the cultural heritage for tourism purposes is now seen as an
important innovation and a new source for competitive advantage in the global tourism industry
because “the globalization of heritage through tourism has led to a greater respect for (both
material and living) culture than previously existed” (Salazar & Zhu, 2015, p. 240).
Without proper management, there is a potential of a lack of understanding and
appreciation of the culture and heritage of the community as a result of inadequate or
inappropriate presentation. Without the adequate integration of cultural heritage protection and
management laws at the national and regional level, certain tourism activities can unconsciously
encourage theft of cultural resources and properties. 1.5 CONCLUDING REMARK
In this chapter, we have had a look at the definition of cultural heritage as well as the categories
of cultural heritage, namely tangible and intangible heritages. We have conceptualized the
interplay between cultural heritage and the tourism industry, the mutual effects as well as raised
the awareness of the preservation the cultural heritage, the appropriate policy for mining and
managing the cultural heritage for tourism purposes. 3 CULTURAL HERITAGE AND TOURISM REFERENCES
Gluvačević, D. (2016). The power of cultural heritage in tourism - example of the city of Zadar
(Croatia). International Journal of Scientific Management and Tourism, 2(1), 3-24.
Salazar, N. B., & Zhu, Y. (2015). Heritage and Tourism. In L. Meskell (Ed.), Global Heritage: A
Reader. Chichester: John Wiley & Sons Inc.
UNESCO. (2019). The Fight against Illicit Trafficking of Cultural Property. Retrieved from
https://en.unesco.org/news/fight-against-illicit-trafficking-cultural-property-meetings-
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