Special Issue "Tourism and Cultural Heritage Management"

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Tourism, Culture, and Heritage".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 1 April 2022.

Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. Jan van der Borg
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Division of Geography and Tourism, KU Leuven & Department of Economics, University Ca’Foscari Venice, 30123 Venice, Italy
Interests: urban and regional development; tourism economics; urban tourism; overtourism; visitor management
Special Issues and Collections in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The relationship between tourism and cultural heritage assets, being both extremely strong and controversial, is a very challenging one.

Extremely strong, potentially, because tourists are important users of material and immaterial cultural heritage. In fact, the presence of cultural heritage is one of the main reasons for tourists to choose their destinations, and destinations in their turn valorize cultural heritage to make themselves more attractive on the international tourism market. However, not all cultural heritage assets are optimally used, and this leads to a loss of economic and social development opportunities.

Controversial, because, on one hand, tourists generate plenty of positive energy and resources, that not only sustain local economies but may also be used to conserve the cultural heritage, but on the other hand, excessive pressure from tourism on destinations of cultural tourism might very well endanger the integrity of cultural heritage and the local society at large.

This apparent dilemma between under- and overutilization (or conservation and valorization) of cultural heritage by tourists can only be solved by an adequate cultural heritage policy. Cultural heritage management today suffers from the fact that the cultural sector has started to be interested in tourism rather recently and the dialogue between the tourism sector and the cultural sectors is, wrongly, still rather weak. This Special Issue of Sustainability on ‘’Tourism and Culture Heritage Management’’ might contribute to removing some of the conflicts that lead to the abovementioned dilemma.

Possible Themes:

  • Maximizing economic and social value of material and immaterial cultural heritage for tourism;
  • Tourism as a possible contributor to heritage conservation;
  • Can heritage conservation policies boosts tourism development?
  • Managing host-guest relations in view of heritage conservation and tourism development;
  • Achieving the sustainability of heritage tourism products;
  • Best and worst management practices in touristic heritage sites;
  • Valorization of heritage through educational efforts;
  • A recipe for actively using cultural heritage for identity, empathy, and citizenship development;
  • Contribution of heritage to meanings and memories, to a sense of place, and to other ingredients of intangible cultural heritage;
  • UNESCO’s recognition of world heritage: its impact on heritage tourism and how to use the label smartly;
  • The role of tourism in management of UNESCO WHS and WHC.

Prof. Dr. Jan van der Borg
Guest Editor

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 papers will be 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 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

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 1900 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.

Keywords

  • management
  • policy
  • cultural heritage
  • tourism
  • conservation
  • valorization
  • economic and social impact

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

Article
Brand Personality Traits of World Heritage Sites: Text Mining Approach
Sustainability 2021, 13(11), 6142; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13116142 - 29 May 2021
Viewed by 726
Abstract
UNESCO World Heritage Sites (WHSs) must necessarily display Outstanding Universal Values (OUVs), as these play a vital role in constructing competitive brand personality (BP) in tourism marketing. However, how these WHS qualities are perceived by visitors still needs substantial investigation. Adopting a visitor-driven [...] Read more.
UNESCO World Heritage Sites (WHSs) must necessarily display Outstanding Universal Values (OUVs), as these play a vital role in constructing competitive brand personality (BP) in tourism marketing. However, how these WHS qualities are perceived by visitors still needs substantial investigation. Adopting a visitor-driven approach, this study seeks to explore the intangible attributes of WHSs and, for the first time, uses the BP concept to measure these attributes in cultural attractions. To investigate how visitors perceive WHS personality traits, 5579 visitor-generated reviews of 175 French (39), German (44), Italian (50), and Spanish (42) cultural WHSs on TripAdvisor were analysed using empirical, mixed methods. Results show that four personality dimension categories can be attributed to WHSs: Sophistication, Sincerity, Competence, and Excitement. Moreover, a novel BP lexical technique is presented along with a 222-item personality trait dictionary, which can be used to measure personality traits in cultural attractions. Theoretical and practical implications of the study are also discussed. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Tourism and Cultural Heritage Management)
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