Sustainable Tourism and Cultural Heritage

Dear colleagues,

We invite you to participate in a Special Issue on cultural heritage, in the context of taking into account the principles of sustainable development. Cultural heritage can take many forms, both material (i.e., paces, buildings, tools, machines, pieces of art) as well as non-material (i.e., traditions, folklore, rituals, performing arts, religious rites). All of these are subject to decay and may fall into oblivion if not preserved and cared for. In many cases, tourism has often proved itself to be an effective way to maintain heritage, by making it more accessible, popularizing it, and providing the necessary financial means. On the other hand, overtourism can lead to devastation or irreversible distortion of these cultural values. Therefore, cultural and heritage tourism, in particular, play an important role in the sustainable development of destinations, cities, and sites rich in heritage.

We are pleased to invite you to submit your contributions to the research field of the defined area. It is of great importance to monitor the effects of tourism on the remaining heritage, but also to formulate sustainable development plans for tourist destinations that offer or could offer their heritage as a tourist value. To do so, the stewards of tourist destinations, as well as managers of single sites, need modern management tools, access to the newest data and analysis, plus expert insight and recommendations to make the best decisions that will sustain heritage.

This Special Issue arises at a time when the COVID-19 pandemic has been affecting the global economy for over a year and still thrives. It has strongly affected global, national, and regional tourism in most countries. Therefore, it has also impacted heritage tourism, but the full effects of this impact have not been fully researched yet. This makes all research in this matter of high importance for the future of heritage tourism and how it will recover in the post-COVID-19 period. This Special Issue intends to narrow these gaps by tackling the mentioned issues.

In this Special Issue, original research articles and reviews are welcome. Research areas may include (but are not limited to) the following:

• the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on sustainable tourism and cultural heritage;
• the preservation of heritage through the implementation of the tourist function;
• the effects on cultural heritage by tourism;
• sustainable development models for cultural heritage sites;
• management methods and tools dedicated to sustainable tourism and cultural heritage;
• implementation of sustainability criteria for tourism.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Each of the proposed guest editors has published at least three articles in Sustainability.

Prof. Dr. Adam R. Szromek
Dr. Mateusz Naramski
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-blind 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.