Cultural heritage and Indigenous tourism

ABSTRACT

Tourism is acknowledged as a vehicle that can help sustain both tangible and intangible elements of Indigenous cultural heritage, including languages, stories, song, art, dance, hunting methods, rituals and customs. Often, cultural heritage products developed for tourism promise to provide many socio-economic opportunities for the communities involved, however, tourism can also present a challenge as the self-management of Indigenous cultural product and cultural identity can be problematic. Given the pivotal role culture plays in the sustainability of Indigenous tourism products, it is time for a twenty-first century examination of the nexus between cultural heritage and Indigenous tourism. This paper reflects upon tourism and contemporary Indigenous cultural heritage, both tangible and intangible. Through a review of the current literature on Indigenous tourism and cultural heritage, the authors identify key areas for future research and aim to stimulate further discussion around the ways Indigenous tourism may be developed to sustain Indigenous cultural heritage.     

Seeking a competitive advantage in wine tourism: Heritage and storytelling at the cellar-door

The nature of the cellar-door experience varies between wineries and regions. While the literature has identified heritage, storytelling and authenticity as important concepts regarding interaction with tourists at the cellar-door, there is a need to understand how they are operationalised by winery staff, including their strategic objectives. This article aims to explore how New World wineries are using their heritage to engage with tourists at their cellar-doors. The approach is qualitative, based on long semi-structured phenomenological interviews with eleven representatives of south-eastern Australia wineries to understand their lived experience. Findings suggest that the cellar-door represents an important opportunity to reinforce heritage branding and differentiate the winery from its competitors. Different forms of heritage were emphasised by participants, including family and ethnic heritage. Storytelling was seen as a useful strategy to engage with tourists and the importance of authenticity, both intrinsic and existential, was emphasised as a means of competitive advantage.     

旅游利用下历史街区文化景观符号意义与建构——以北京前门大街为例

历史街区承载了城市的历史信息和文化印记,主要表征为特色鲜明的文化景观。过去40年,快速城市化和工业化改变了城市面貌,也影响了历史街区保护利用的进程。历史街区一旦变成旅游景观,符号化就成为了历史街区进行旅游发展和空间重构的主导逻辑。本研究以前门大街为案例地,通过对马蜂窝网站中游客分享照片的检索和整理,利用符号学和扎根理论方法分析了旅游利用背景下历史街区文化景观符号的意义表达,并对此过程中的符号建构与解读机制进行剖析。本研究从主客体两视角出发,深化既有研究并得出以下结论：前门大街通过指索符号、建筑符号、街道符号和商业符号共同表征这一空间。街道功能多样化和城市地位转变是符号建构与解读的具体语境,符号系统的建构存在多个权力主体,不同价值的符号其建构方式也有所不同。符号的解读需要旅游者的身体参与,当旅游地建构的符号与旅游者获得的符号存在一致性的时候,意味着文化景观符号意义被正确地接受和解读。     

Understanding wine tourism in China using an integrated product-level and experience economy framework

Wine tourism in China is an emerging market. This study addresses two research questions: the product offering and the tourist experience in this market. Findings of an exploratory study using netnography were examined by combining product levels theory and the experience economy model. The resulting proposed theoretical framework identified the status of China's wine tourism market as situated in the infancy stage. Results revealed the core product needed more customers’ involvement, and enrichment of the augmented product, to best position the wine destinations. While, enhancing educational, entertainment, and escapist experiences would benefit the whole experiences and increase future loyalty.     

Last chance tourism and the Great Barrier Reef

The publically documented decline in health of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) has led to its labelling, in media and academic literature, as a last chance tourism destination. That is, a place tourists travel to experience before it is gone. While the GBR has been labelled as such, no empirical evidence has identified that this is actually occurring. This article explores if tourists are motivated to visit the GBR to see it before it's gone, and examines the level of concern tourists have about the range of issues that are threatening the GBR. Drawing on 235 questionnaires with on-site tourists, the results indicate that tourists are seeking travel to the GBR in a bid to see the reef before it's too late. These tourists – identified as “seeking a last chance experience” – were also found to be more environmentally conscious, and have a higher level of concern about the overall health of the GBR. In terms of threats to the GBR, respondents indicated that they were mainly concerned about coral bleaching/disease and climate change, with tourism only considered as a moderate to low concern. The implications of this are discussed.     

Wine tourism involvement: a segmentation of Chinese tourists

ABSTRACT

This study profiles the Chinese wine tourist market based on levels of consumer involvement. Using a sample of 503 Chinese wine tourists visiting Australian wineries, the study identified four dimensions of involvement in wine tourism among Chinese tourists: Interests and Importance, Risk Importance and Possibility, Risk Avoidance, and Status Value. Based on the various levels of involvement, four clusters of Chinese wine tourists were identified: low-involvement wine tourists, highly involved wine tourists, interest-driven wine tourists, and high-risk perception wine tourists. For the group size, high-risk perception wine tourists included the highest number of people in the sample, while a relatively small number of people belonged to the interest-driven group. Significant differences were found for behavioral variables and activity participation level across the four clusters, but similarity outweighed the differences among demographic and socio-economic variables. The research proceeded to theoretical and marketing implications.     

Cultural sustainability – a framework for Aboriginal tourism in British Columbia

ABSTRACT

This paper presents a framework to assess the cultural sustainability of Aboriginal tourism in British Columbia, which meets must take into account the protection of human rights, good self-governance, identity, control of land, the tourism product’s authenticity, and a market-ready tourism product. These criteria are specified by two indicators each. The cultural sustainability framework was generated by triangulating qualitative research methods like experts’ interviews, secondary research, and participant and non-participant observations. This paper is thus conceptual in nature and inductive in its approach. It partly leverages a collaborative approach, as it includes interviewees in an iterative research loop. Furthermore, the paper shows why cultural sustainability is a determinant of the success of Aboriginal tourism.     

An Analysis of Regional Positioning and Its Associated Food Images in French Tourism Regional Brochures

Summary

The image of France has often been associated with that of food and wines and images of food products, vineyards and restaurants have traditionally dominated national and regional promotional strategies and tour operators' brochures alike. Indeed, food represents a powerful eye-catcher and a strong symbol of quality of life and authenticity, as a result it has represented an important theme used in advertisements. However, the food theme is in fact multiple and can also be used to portray symbols of cultural identify, communication and status. Therefore, the present study first aims at identifying the different food images that can be used by tourism advertisers in their promotional material. Secondly the study aims at investigating how different food images can be used for specific destinations' positioning strategies. The research uses a content analysis to identify the types of food images used in 19 French regional tourism brochures. Results show that country products/dishes and raw/natural products dominate food images followed by wine and vineyards images. Images of food producers, chefs, restaurants and the presence of people in the pictures on the other side are underrepresented. Parallels between the categories of food images used in brochures and the corresponding positioning strategies chosen by the regions are not very strong. Nevertheless, the study indicates that regions that position themselves on the traditional/rural/authentic theme use mostly images of raw products, country products and market scenes while only a few regions position themselves on the gastronomy dimension. In other terms, the cultural dimension of food as an identity marker for the regions is its principal use, and images of food associated to communicating/sharing or to status/lifestyle statements are rarely used in French regional brochures.     

Policy communities,networks and issue cycles in tourism destination systems

This paper demonstrates how concepts derived from policy community, policy network and issues management theories can be used to understand the roles, activities and interactions of government, corporate and pressure group stakeholders engaged in tourism policy, planning and management in destination contexts. It shows the relevance and utility of an “integrated issue lifecycle approach” to trace the evolution of tourism policy, planning and destination management within specific destination contexts. The application of this approach is demonstrated through a case analysis of the tourism policy and planning system that underpins the destination system of Byron Bay, a significant domestic and international destination on the East Coast of Australia. The underlying premise adopted for this study is that the examination of the antecedents of tourism policy and planning processes, within particular destination contexts, can lead to an understanding of the driving values and ideas that have led to contemporary tourism policy issues and problems.     

Individual tourism systems

This research note tests the proposition that unique tourism systems exist through an analysis of participation in attractions and activities among a sample of free and independent tourists who visited Bali, Indonesia.     

Residents' perceptions of wine tourism development

Wine trails have been studied insufficiently within the tourism literature despite of their recent rapid development worldwide. In response, this study examines residents' perceptions of wine tourism development in terms of personal benefits and community impacts. It also explores whether residents' socio-demographics and levels of wine enthusiasm, and wine trails' tourism characterization influence residents' perceptions. Following a stratified random sampling procedure, residents living along two wine trails in the Piedmont region of North Carolina (U.S.) were surveyed. Results indicate that residents are neutral in their perceptions of the Piedmont wineries in terms of both personal benefits and community impacts. Residents' socio-demographics and level of wine enthusiasm, as well as the comprehensiveness of wine trails' tourism amenities were significantly associated with residents' perceptions. Results also indicate that personal benefits mediate residents' perceptions of community impacts. In addition to the oretical and methodological contributions, this paper outlines management implications for wine trails.     

Managing tourism and cultural heritage in historic towns: examples from Romania

Due to the impressive development of the cultural heritage tourism, there is an increasing need to investigate the relationship between tourism and cultural heritage management, in order to avoid conflicts that may occur from parallel, independent development of these activities. At present the Romanian historic towns face an increasing process of fast tourism development within many rehabilitation projects that take place on historic monuments. Assessing their tourism potential in a realistic way may help in developing sustainable tourism at cultural destinations. In this context, the assessment matrix method proposed by McKercher and du Cros is applied to 10 case studies of Romanian historic towns, as a first step in tourism development planning. A refinement of this method is proposed by considering the distribution of the qualifiers assigned to the indicators that are being assessed. The matrix method is shown to be a useful tool for a correlated approach to both tourism development and cultural heritage management.     

Tracking the concept of sustainability in Australian tourism policy and planning documents

In the current climate of intense turbulence, tourism must transform to a more sustainable development platform. Yet it remains unclear how the concept of sustainability is embedded at different levels of government policy and planning, and how this has evolved over time. This paper identifies the concept of sustainability as it is articulated in 339 Australian tourism strategic planning and policy documents published between 2000 and 2011. The paper examines the extent to which the concept of sustainable tourism is evident in the discourse of Australian tourism strategic planning documents at the national, state, regional and local levels, as well as the balance of the discourse in relation to sustainability objectives. The results show that the frequency of occurrence of sustainability as a concept has slightly increased in strategies over the past decade. At the same time, there has been a shift in the conceptualisation of sustainability, with thinking evolving from nature-based, social and triple bottom line concepts toward a focus on climate change, responsibility, adaption and transformation.     

旅游开发对语言文化景观的影响效应研究--以西安为例

语言变化是衡量社会文化变迁与旅游开发之间关系的一个重要指标。本文在国内外相关研究进展综述的基础上,以西安为例,从文化地理学的角度,就旅游开发对目的地语言文化景观的影响效应进行了综合分析,并探讨了产生这些效应的原因和空间特征。研究发现。旅游开发导致了目的地当地方言的淡化,外来方言的渗入以及外语产生的影响,具体表现在：①土语景观萎缩,普通话景观扩张,形成新语言占据土语空间和两者并存的现象;②目的地语言景观曼趋多元化,空间上形成了以旅游区为主体的粤方言渗透区;③外语作为一种异质文化,与方言相互交融。形成中外语言景观并存,交互并用的格局。文章最后指出,经济上的巨大落差。构成了文化能量的累积差异。从而产生西方文化、粤文化等经济发达地区文化向旅游目的地的传播和影响。同时,旅游开发对目的地语言文化景观的影响表现出其独特的影响方向和空间特征。     

New perspectives in Caribbean tourism

Forests are an important store of carbon within the global carbon cycle and increasingly play a role in climate change adaptation and mitigation. The review illustrates that the cultural, economic and environmental services of forests that are utilized for tourism and recreation are being affected by climate change. In addition to the changes to the distribution and composition of forests as a result of climate change, forest tourism is also affected by changes in frequency and intensity of fires, storm damage and the introduction of alien species. On examining the relevant literature on forests, tourism and climate change, the review identifies the need for a greater understanding of tourist perception of forest change as a major research task. There is also a need for better understanding of systemic effects of tourism-related climate change adaptation and mitigation policies on forest conservation and deforestation. The need for further research of urban forests and woodlands for climate change adaptation and mitigation and their potential implications for tourism and leisure is also highlighted.     

Re-envisioning community-based heritage tourism in the old city of Nazareth

This study specifically examines the potential for heritage tourism development to promote cross-cultural dialog in the historic old city of Nazareth (Israel). The paper focuses on a case study of a small-scale heritage tourism venture that seeks to influence tourism development in Nazareth's old city. This is an exploratory case study that uses qualitative research methods including extensive participant observation and in-depth interviews with the venture's senior management group and selected employees. Study findings indicate a model of the relationship between community-based tourism development, heritage, and peace-building in a city that has experienced a wide range of cross-cultural conflicts. This model represents an alternative view to the notion that heritage serves to enhance differences and dissonance between different cultural groups. In contrast, findings from this study suggest that heritage in the form of tourism can help create shared interests between different communities in settings characterized by cross-cultural conflict.     

The concept of smart tourism in the context of tourism information services

Smart tourism has become increasingly popular in mainland China. Different types of events and activities have been classified as smart tourism, leading to the misuse of the term. What, then, is smart tourism? How to define it? Although researchers have defined the term, there has not been any consensus on a widely accepted interpretation. The definition provided by this study emphasizes smart tourism as an individual tourist support system within the context of information services and an all-encompassing technology. This paper compares the characteristics of both traditional tourist information services and those incorporated in smart tourism. Based on the concepts, recommendations are provided and future research/industrial directions are discussed. For the Chinese tourism market, smart tourism represents a new direction implying a significant influence on tourist destinations, enterprises, and also tourists themselves.