Heritage, Cultural Tourism and Sustainability: Meaningful Travel for a Green Planet

Dear Colleagues,

Recently, tourism has been experiencing unprecedented perturbations. First, the COVID-19 pandemic and lockdowns, and now the energy crisis related to Russia's aggression against Ukraine, as well as increasingly noticeable climate change impacts, have led to the need to redefine the directions of tourism development. Additionally, the effects of tourism itself—gentrification of historic town centres, and environmental issues related to cruisers and flying—force us to reflect on its future.

Various concepts are formulated, which, according to the authors' assumption, can be a panacea for the above-mentioned threats. More ethical, responsible, sustainable and environmentally friendly tourism, less energy-intensive, and implemented over shorter distances travel, is a necessity (Oh, Assaf and Baloglu, 2014). An important concept is slow tourism (Calzati and de Salvo, 2018), which focuses on individual tourist experience (slowness and responsible consumerism), sustainability and the quality of life (as opposed to simply development as economic growth, “degrowth” and “a- growth”), individualized well-being and quality of life paradigm. Slow tourism values a slowness of pace, enjoying the journey itself, and making connections with local practices and cultures (Clancy (2014).

Contemporary, post-COVID-19 tourism should be characterized by shorter distances, with less energy expenditure and less pollution; a new type of small-scale tourism, for more meaningful experiences, which F. Diaz (2020) calls 3 x S (Slow, Smart and Small). It is characterized by the search for meaning, for more authentic, genuine experiences, relaxed sociability, creative activities and the manifestation of spirituality. Vertical travel writers speak in a similar vein (Forsdick, Zoë Kinsley and Walchester, 2022). It is a temporary dwelling in a location for a time where the traveller begins to travel down into the particulars of place either in space (botany, exhaustive exploration of local landscape) or in time (local history, folklore) (Cronin, 2000).

The scope of this Special Issue is a collection of contemporary texts on research and experience in the field of innovative, cultural and heritage tourism carried out ethically and sustainably. The goal is a reflection on the post-COVID-19 recovery of the tourism economy implemented in a more energy-efficient, authentic and creative way.

The focus of this Special Issue is on the ethical and sustainable use of natural and cultural heritage resources, the use of contemporary, creative, innovative forms of heritage interpretation and the presentation of tourist attractions and destinations.

Prof. Dr. Marek Nowacki
Dr. Yash Chawla
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the Special Issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.