Inclusive Cultural Heritage Tourism

Medieval fortresses represent an important tangible heritage of a nation’s culture and a valuable development asset for a particular destination on which its place-branding strategy for tourism could be built upon. Traditionally in Serbia, heritage protection and conservation have been mainly concentrated on the tangible aspects of cultural sites and monuments. Nevertheless, with the advent of urban heritage integration in the local sustainable development processes and place-branding strategies, a greater appreciation of the spirit of the place and its intangible components, as well as the need to adapt it to local contexts with more participatory forms of heritage planning, have started to emerge. A wide range of stakeholders brought the involvement and participation of both the local government and community members, including residents, as an indispensable element of the protection actions and broader urban development policies. The paper aims to validate the correlation between both intangible and tangible cultural heritage and its contemporary use for place branding and tourism development. In doing so, we have employed the case study method on the two fortresses on the Danube in Serbia to show the ways in which local stakeholders have mobilized their forces in cooperation with the university to use their cultural heritage assets for tourism and more extensive sustainable territorial development. We have found that despite new inclusive forms of governance, which is attracting the attention of planning and heritage practitioners in Serbia, the contemporary approach of integrative protection and the intangible aspects of cultural heritage are still not fully utilized. For this reason, in this study, we consider methods based on environmental aesthetics approaches to cultural heritage that point out the significant inclusion of immaterial intangible cultural heritage in an unbreakable bond with material tangible heritage. The most remarkable result of our research is that while a vast number of stakeholders with local knowledge and sense of the spirit of the place have been involved in the planning process, intangible aspects of the analyzed heritage cases are present in educational projects, and are only partially present if it comes to implementation. This clearly demonstrates that the focus on tangible aspects and spatial interventions of the place branding of cultural heritage is still dominant in Serbia, despite acknowledgment of the economic and social aspects of sustainability in the planning phase in educational projects. Full article

This paper investigates the soft power of community archaeology in transforming isolated and diverse communities into a more inclusive society, by reviewing community archaeology as a concept, and as a process, through the case of inclusive cultural heritage in Mozan, Syria. A theory of change underpinned key interventions in Mozan to track shifts in the social behaviour of locals from cultural isolation towards participation, partnership and inclusion, while investigating the process of establishing understanding, acceptance and mutual trust within communities. The research adopted an ethnographic study and used qualitative research methods. These relied primarily on direct observations and open ended, semi-structured and in-depth interviews with local communities, an archaeological mission and governmental and civic stakeholders involved in the area. The fieldwork research was informed by conducting a review of literature on the impact of culture and heritage in social contexts, social inclusion and cultural diplomacy. The paper demonstrates how the contribution of community archaeology in soft power change has assisted personal and community empowerment through inclusive cultural heritage on an individual level while strengthening social networks to mobilise the impact on the community as a whole. It reveals how such a project enhanced dialogue, increased awareness, and built and contributed to mutual understanding in order to support a shift in the harder area of symbolic community thinking and attitude, against a backdrop of conflict, war and isolation and builds the basis for inclusive cultural heritage tourism. Full article

The aim of the paper was to create a configuration model of an inter-organizational network for post-industrial tourist organizations. Nowadays, establishing organized and structured cooperation is necessary not only from a single organization’s perspective, which fights for survival on a highly competitive market, but also from the perspective of a whole touristic region. The quality and social responsibility of a regional touristic product is determined not by a single organization, but by their collective outcome. The main goal was achieved by the analysis of tourist sites, their function within the Industrial Monuments Route (IMR) in Poland, as a case for the conducted study. The authors used trust level indicators as determinants for designating inter-organizational relations in the wrought network model. Those relations concern various forms of cooperation that the researched organizations have selected during a structured interview and were willing to undertake under given conditions. The result is a multi-dimensional model of a cooperation network that can be implemented at IMR and used as a guideline for creating similar models for other thematic tourist routes. Full article

As a crucial part of cultural tourism, museums can represent the cultural image of a destination. From the perspective of emotion, this study adopted structural equation modeling to examine the correlation between emotion, museum image, and behavioral intention of tourists. Additionally, the mediating effects of cognitive motivation (overall stratification) and emotional motivation (positive and negative emotion) on the paradigm of “museum image–behavioral intention” were compared and analyzed. This research was undertaken at three museums in Xi’an, China, with 893 valid questionnaires collected. The results showed that the image of the museum has a significant impact on tourists’ emotions and a significant positive impact on overall satisfaction and behavioral intention. Moreover, tourists’ emotions significantly influence the overall satisfaction and behavioral intention; they play different mediating effects between museum image and behavioral intention. Finally, managerial and theoretical implications were discussed. Full article

This paper presents project-based research focusing on regeneration for sustainable tourism in a rural village in China, namely Dongjingyu Village, Yuyang Township, Ji County. The research by design approach was applied, introducing to the Chinese context the concept of landscape services, with a particular focus on tradition and the evolution of historical landscape element (HLE) categories and types, whose value is determined by a qualifying relationship between human beings and the environment. The aim was to regenerate and transform the village for uses that are suitable to contemporary ways of coexistence between villagers and the growing tourism industry. Although there are partial limitations to the application of participatory methodologies in the Chinese context, the authors opted for a methodological approach based on research by design in order to foster dialogue and create awareness for both government authorities and citizens regarding potential design solutions, which were determined based on landscape patterns and not only land use. Two outcomes were achieved: (1) the research working package might lead to experimental actions, including changes to land-use models, administration capabilities and considerations of feasibility; and (2) the entire work package can be applied to and implemented in other rural villages in China. Moving beyond environmental scenarios, the outcomes provide evidence that participation and social inclusion might have a deeper and more positive impact on rural village regeneration. Full article