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What is cultural tourism and why is it growing?

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Cultural tourism is big business. Some people seek to embark on their travels with the sole intention of having a ‘cultural’ experience, whereas others may experience culture as a byproduct of their trip. We can argue that there is some form of cultural tourism in most holidays (even when taking an all-inclusive holiday you might try to local beer, for example).

But what do we mean by the term ‘cultural tourism’? What’s it all about? In this post I will explain what is meant by the term cultural tourism, providing a range of academic definitions. I will also explain what the different types of cultural tourists are, give examples of cultural tourism activities and discuss the impacts of cultural tourism. Lastly, I will provide a brief summary of some popular cultural tourism destinations.

What is cultural tourism?

Cultural tourism is the act of travellers visiting particular destinations in order to experience and learn about a particular culture . This can include many activities such as; attending events and festivals, visiting museums and tasting the local food and drinks.

Cultural tourism can also be an unintentional part of the tourism experience, whereby cultural immersion (with the local people, their language, customs, cuisine etc) is an inevitable part of a person’s holiday.

Cultural tourism definitions

It has been suggested that tourism is the ideal arena in which to investigate the nature of cultural production (MacCannell, 1976). Tourism provides endless opportunities to learn about the way other people live, about their society and their traditions. Whether you are attending the Running of the Bulls Festival in Pamplona , visiting the pyramids in ancient Egypt , taking a tour of the tea plantations in China or enjoying the locally brewed Ouzo on your all-inclusive holiday to Greece, you will inevitably encounter some form of cultural tourism as part of your holiday experience.

The World Tourism Organisation (WTO) (1985) broadly define cultural tourism as the movements of persons who satisfy the human need for diversity, tending to raise the cultural level of the individual and giving rise to new knowledge, experience and encounters. Cultural tourism is commonly associated with education in this way, some describing it more narrowly as educational cultural tourism (e.g. Bualis and Costa, 2006; Harner and Swarbrooke, 2007; Richards, 2005).

Although a common, more specific definition has not been agreed amongst academics due to the complexity and subjectivity of the term, there do appear to be two distinct viewpoints. The first focusses upon the consumption of cultural products such as sites or monuments (Bonink, 1992; Munsters, 1994), and the second comprises all aspects of travel, where travellers learn about the history and heritage of others or about their contemporary ways of life or thought (MacIntosh and Goeldner, 1986).

Csapo (2012) pertains that the umbrella term of cultural tourism can encompass a number of tourism forms including heritage (material e.g. historic buildings and non-material e.g. literature, arts), cultural thematic routes (e.g. spiritual, gastronomic, linguistic), cultural city tourism, traditions/ethnic tourism, events and festivals, religious tourism and creative culture (e.g. performing arts, crafts).

Types of cultural tourists

In attempt to understand the scope of cultural tourism academics have developed a number of typologies, usually based upon the tourist’s level of motivation.

Bywater (1993) differentiated tourists according to whether they were culturally interested, motivated or inspired.

Culturally interested tourists demonstrate a general interest in culture and consume cultural attractions casually as part of a holiday rather than consciously planning to do so.

Culturally motivated tourists consume culture as a major part of their trip, but do not choose their destination on the basis of specific cultural experiences, whereas for culturally inspired tourists culture is the main goal of their holiday. 

A more complex typology was proposed by McKercher and Du Cros (2002), who defined tourists based upon the depth of the cultural experience sought, distinguishing them in to one of five hierarchical categories. 

The first is the purposeful cultural tourist for whom cultural tourism is their primary motive for travel. These tourists have a very deep cultural experience. 

The second category is the sightseeing cultural tourist for whom cultural tourism is a primary reason for visiting a destination, but the experience is more shallow in nature.

The serendipitous cultural tourist does not travel for cultural reasons, but who, after participating, ends up having a deep cultural tourism experience, whilst the casual cultural tourist is weakly motivated by culture and subsequently has a shallow experience. 

Lastly, the incidental cultural tourist is one who does not travel for cultural tourism reasons but nonetheless participates in some activities and has shallow experiences. 

Adapting this theory, Petroman  et al (2013) segments tourists based upon their preferred cultural activities.

The purposeful cultural tourist, described as according to Mckercher and Du Cros (2002), enjoys learning experiences that challenge them intellectually and visits history museums, art galleries, temples and heritage sites that are less known.

The tour-amateur cultural tourist is akin with the sightseeing cultural tourist above and they often travel long distances, visit remote areas, enjoy tours and wandering through the streets.

The occasional cultural tourist plays a moderate role in the decision of travelling and enjoys an insignificant cultural experience, their preferred activities being to visit attractions and temples that are easy to reach and to explore, although not to the extent that the tour-amateur cultural tourist does.

The incidental cultural tourist plays a small or no role in the decision to travel and enjoys an insignificant cultural experience, whilst visiting attractions that area within easy reach and heritage theme parks.

The last segment is the accidental cultural tourist, who plays a small or no role in the decision to travel but enjoys a deep cultural experience. This tourist type is diverse and as such has no preferred activities attributed to it. 

Importance of cultural tourism

Cultural tourism is important for many reasons. Perhaps the most prominent reason is the social impact that it brings.

Cultural tourism can help reinforce identities, enhance cross cultural understanding and preserve the heritage and culture of an area. I have discussed these advantages at length in my post The Social Impacts of Tourism , so you may want to head over there for more detail.

Cultural tourism can also have positive economic impacts . Tourists who visit an area to learn more about a culture or who visit cultural tourism attraction, such as museums or shows, during their trip help to contribute to the economy of the area. Attractions must be staffed, bringing with it employment prospects and tertiary businesses can also benefit, such as restaurants, taxi firms and hotels.

Furthermore, for those seeking a deep cultural experience, options such as homestays can have positive economic benefits to the members of the community who host the tourists.

Read also: Overtourism explained: What, why and where

Personally, I think that one of the most important benefits of cultural tourism is the educational aspect. Tourists and hosts alike can learn more about different ways of life. This can help to broaden one’s mind, it can help one to think differently and to be more objective. These are qualities that can have many positive effects on a person and which can contribute to making them more employable in the future.

Cultural tourism activities

Whether a tourist is seeking a deep cultural experience or otherwise, there are a wide range of activities that can be classified as cultural tourism. Here are a few examples:

  • Staying with a local family in a homestay
  • Having a tour around a village or town
  • Learning about local employment, for example through a tour of a tea plantation or factory
  • Undertaking volunteer work in the local community
  • Taking a course such as cooking, art, embroidery etc
  • Visiting a museum
  • Visiting a religious building, such as a Mosque
  • Socialising with members of the local community
  • Visiting a local market or shopping area
  • Trying the local food and drink
  • Going to a cultural show or performance
  • Visiting historic monuments

Impacts of cultural tourism

There are a range of impacts resulting from cultural tourism activities, both good and bad. Here are some of the most common examples:

Positive impacts of cultural tourism

Revitalisation of culture and art.

Some destinations will encourage local cultures and arts to be revitalised. This may be in the form of museum exhibitions, in the way that restaurants and shops are decorated and in the entertainment on offer, for example.

This may help promote traditions that may have become distant.

Preservation of Heritage

Many tourists will visit the destination especially to see its local heritage. It is for this reason that many destinations will make every effort to preserve its heritage.

This could include putting restrictions in place or limiting tourist numbers, if necessary. This is often an example of careful tourism planning  and sustainable tourism management.

This text by Hyung You Park explains the principles of heritage tourism in more detail.

Negative impacts of cultural tourism

Social change.

Social change is basically referring to changes in the way that society acts or behaves. Unfortunately, there are many changes that come about as a result of tourism that are not desirable.

There are many examples throughout the world where local populations have changed because of tourism. Perhaps they have changed the way that they speak or the way that they dress. Perhaps they have been introduced to alcohol through the tourism industry or they have become resentful of rich tourists and turned to crime. These are just a few examples of the negative social impacts of tourism.

Read also: Business tourism explained: What, why and where

Globalisation and the destruction of preservation and heritage.

Globalisation is the way in which the world is becoming increasingly connected. We are losing our individuality and gaining a sense of ‘global being’, whereby we more and more alike than ever before.

Globalisation is inevitable in the tourism industry because of the interaction between tourists and hosts, which typically come from different geographic and cultural backgrounds. It is this interaction that encourage us to become more alike.

Standardisation and Commercialisation

Similarly, destinations risk standardisation in the process of satisfying tourists’ desires for familiar facilities and experiences.

While landscape, accommodation, food and drinks, etc., must meet the tourists’ desire for the new and unfamiliar, they must at the same time not be too new or strange because few tourists are actually looking for completely new things (think again about the toilet example I have previously).

Tourists often look for recognisable facilities in an unfamiliar environment, like well-known fast-food restaurants and hotel chains. Tourist like some things to be standardised (the toilet, their breakfast, their drinks, the language spoken etc), but others to be different (dinner options, music, weather, tourist attractions etc).

Loss of Authenticity 

Along similar lines to globalisation is the loss of authenticity that often results from tourism.

Authenticity is essentially something that is original or unchanged. It is not fake or reproduced in any way.

The Western world believe that a tourist destination is no longer authentic when their cultural values and traditions change. But I would argue is this not natural? Is culture suppose to stay the same or it suppose to evolve throughout each generation? 

Take a look at the likes of the long neck tribe in Thailand or the Maasai Tribe in Africa. These are two examples of cultures which have remained ‘unchanged’ for the sole purpose of tourism. They appear not to have changed the way that they dress, they way that they speak or the way that they act in generations, all for the purpose of tourism.

You can learn more about what is authenticity in tourism here or see some examples of staged authenticity in this post.

Culture clashes

Because tourism involves movement of people to different geographical locations cultural clashes can take place as a result of differences in cultures, ethnic and religious groups, values, lifestyles, languages and levels of prosperity.

Read also: Environmental impacts of tourism

The attitude of local residents towards tourism development may unfold through the stages of euphoria, where visitors are very welcome, through apathy, irritation and potentially antagonism when anti-tourist attitudes begin to grow among local people. This is represented in Doxey’s Irritation Index, as shown below.

meaning culture tourism

Tourist-host relationships

Culture clashes can also be exasperated by the fundamental differences in culture between the hosts and the tourists.

There is likely to be economic inequality between locals and tourists who are spending more than they usually do at home. This can cause resentment from the hosts towards the tourists, particularly when they see them wearing expensive jewellery or using plush cameras etc that they know they can’t afford themselves.

Further to this, tourists often, out of ignorance or carelessness, fail to respect local customs and moral values. 

There are many examples of ways that tourists offend the local population , often unintentionally. Did you know that you should never put your back to a Buddha? Or show the sole of your feet to a Thai person? Or show romantic affection in public in the Middle East?

Cultural tourism destinations

Whilst many would argue that cultural tourism is ingrained to some extent in travel to any country, there are some particular destinations that are well-known for their ability to provide tourists with a cultural experience.

Cultural tourism in India

It is impossible not to visit India and experience the culture. Even if you are staying in a 5 star Western all-inclusive hotel in Goa, you will still test Indian curries, be spoken to by Indian workers and see life outside of the hotel on your transfer to and from the airport.

For most people who travel to India, however, cultural tourism is far more than peeking outside of the enclave tourism bubble of their all-inclusive hotel.

Thousands of international tourists visit the Taj Mahal each year. Many more people visit the various Hindu and Buddhist temples scattered throughout the country as well as the various Mosques. Some visit the famous Varanassi to learn about reincarnation.

Most tourists who visit India will try the local dal, eat the fresh mutton and taste chai.

All of these activities are popular cultural tourism activities.

Cultural tourism in Thailand

Thailand is another destination that offers great cultural tourism potential. From the Buddhist temples and monuments and the yoga retreats to homestays and village tours, there are ample cultural tourism opportunities in Thailand .

Cultural tourism in Israel

Israel is popular with religious tourists and those who are taking a religious pilgrimage, as well as leisure tourists. I visited Israel and loved travelling around to see the various sights, from Bethlehem to Jerusalem . I’m not religious in any way, but I loved learning about the history, traditions and cultures.

Cultural tourism in New York

New York is a city that is bustling with culture. It is world famous for its museums and you can learn about anything from World War Two to the Twin Towers here.

Many would argue that shopping is ingrained in the culture of those who live in New York and many tourists will take advantage of the wide selection of products on offer and bargains to be had on their travels to New York.

You can also treat yourself to watching a traditional West End show, trying some of the famous New York Cheesecake and enjoying a cocktail in Times Square!

Cultural tourism in Dubai

Dubai might not be the first destination that comes to mind when you think of cultural tourism, but it does, in fact, have a great offering.

What I find particular intriguing about Dubai is the mix of old and new. One minute you can be exploring the glitz and glamour of the many high-end shopping malls and skyscrapers and the next you can be walking through a traditional Arabian souk.

Cultural tourism: Conclusion

As you can see, there is big business in cultural tourism. With a wide range of types of cultural tourists and types of cultural tourism experiences, this is a tourism sector that has remarkable potential. However, as always, it is imperative to ensure that sustainable tourism practices are utilised to mitigate any negative impacts of cultural tourism.

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Further reading

Want to learn more about cultural tourism? See my recommended reading list below.

  • Cultural Tourism – A textbook illustrating how heritage and tourism goals can be integrated in a management and marketing framework to produce sustainable cultural tourism. 
  • Deconstructing Travel: Cultural Perspectives on Tourism – This book provides an easily understood framework of the relationship between travel and culture in our rapidly changing postmodern, postcolonial world.
  • Re-Investing Authenticity: Tourism, Place and Emotions – This ground-breaking book re-thinks and re-invests in the notion of authenticity as a surplus of experiential meaning and feeling that derives from what we do at/in places.
  • The Business of Tourism Management – an introduction to key aspects of tourism, and to the practice of managing a tourism business. 
  • Managing Sustainable Tourism – tackles the tough issues of tourism such as negative environmental impact and cultural degradation, and provides answers that don’t sacrifice positive economic growth.
  • Tourism Management: An Introduction – An introductory text that gives its reader a strong understanding of the dimensions of tourism, the industries of which it is comprised, the issues that affect its success, and the management of its impact on destination economies, environments and communities.
  • Responsible Tourism: Using tourism for sustainable development – A textbook about the globally vital necessity of realising sustainable tourism.

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What is cultural tourism?

According to the United Nations World Tourism Organization, cultural tourism is “movements of persons for essentially cultural motivations such as study tours, performing arts and cultural tours, travel to festivals and other cultural events, visits to sites and monuments, travel to study nature, folklore or art, and pilgrimages.”

We expand this definition to encompass the participation of visitors in cultural activities whether those activities are the primary purpose of their travel or not.

Why should my organization take action on cultural tourism?

Cultural tourism is big business in Florida. Our state attracts more than 100 million visitors per year, and 65% of those visitors take part in at least one cultural activity. 

These visitors spend more on their trips and stay longer than other visitors.

Creating a plan to attract cultural tourism can do more than affect your bottom line, it can also help define your area as a cultural and artistic destination.

Why would a visitor come to my area?

Travelers look for an “authentic experience,” and your community has its own special attributes that set it apart from others. These features include your history, traditions, and yes, your arts and culture.

Your community has a story to tell, and finding an engaging way to tell that tale is one way to attract visitors. Tools are available for creating an inventory of community assets.  A few of them are found as links in this toolkit.

Where to begin?

That’s up to you!  Engage with other organizations and individuals in your area, or simply measure the effect visitors have on your own organization. The important thing to do is to start somewhere . You don’t even have to spend any money.

How do I approach my local Destination Marketing Organization (DMO)or Convention & Visitors Bureau (CVB)?

Sometimes arts and cultural organizations may be daunted at the idea of approaching the local DMO or CVB.  Arts and cultural organizations create value for tourists by offering experiences that cannot be found elsewhere.

You have a product that your DMO can sell… and their goal is to sell your area to visitors. You may find that showing them how many visitors take advantage of your services will catch the DMO’s interest. You may find that the excellent quality of your work will excite them as much as you know it will excite tourists.  Finding your way in may be difficult, but it can be done.

Remember, bring them a quality product and show them how they can use it to their own advantage.

Another helpful step is to integrate the boards of directors of DMO/CVB’s with the boards of arts and cultural organizations.  If a member of the DMO board is interested in arts and culture, there may be an opportunity for expanding their interest by having a conversation regarding an upcoming project or event. 

In addition, if you have someone from the tourism industry on your board, they may be able to provide some useful guidance and new ideas for promoting cultural tourism in the community.

What can I measure that relates to cultural tourism?

You can always start small in measurements. Try collecting the zip codes of your patrons as a way to find out how many of them traveled to your event or activity.  Think of what you want to accomplish, and ask yourself some important questions:

            “Why do we do what we do?”

            “Why do people take advantage of my current offerings?”

            “For what reasons are we funded?”

            “What change are we trying to create in our community?”

These questions and others like them can help you decide what to measure and how to measure it.

Once you have your numbers, analyze them and look at how you can improve what you’re doing.

Once you’ve implemented a change, no matter how small, measure again to see if you’ve achieved the outcome you wanted.

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What is Cultural Tourism?

meaning culture tourism

Tourism across the world is getting an impetus because there is so much that people want to see and experience. In fact, visiting another country is one of the best ways to learn about the culture and language of that country. However, of late, people are indulging in cultural tourism that has given tourism a whole new meaning.

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It also enables local communities to accept their culture as cultural tourism is a major driver for growth. So, communities go out of their way to celebrate and promote their culture as it makes them different from other communities. A good example is the carnival celebrated in Rio de Janeiro and Goa before Lent begins. While in Rio it is a raucous celebration where locals and tourists party and indulge in everything under the sky, in Goa, the mainstay of the event is a parade followed by dances and feasts.

Why Should Countries Focus on Cultural Tourism?

Cultural tourism benefits local communities. Some of the benefits of cultural tourism that government and local tourism bodies should be aware of include the following:

  • Cultural tourism has a positive economic impact on the destination and can help underserved communities to thrive and flourish
  • The money that this form of tourism bring in can be used within local communities for social good
  • It helps preserve the local culture while allowing communities to emphasize the uniqueness of their culture to differentiate it from other locations
  • It helps destinations market themselves and compete with more competitive locales on an even footing

Popular Countries for Cultural Tourism

As countries realize the importance of cultural tourism and how it can drive local economies, they are focusing on building cities and towns that can attract overseas visitors to experience and savor culture like never before.

No doubt France leads the field of cultural tourism, with Paris being the hub of European culture. People from across Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and the Americas visit Paris for retail therapy at the Champs Elysees. With the iconic Notre Dame Cathedral burned down, Paris still is home to gastronomy and art. People usually come to visit the Eiffel Tower, spend time at the Louvre and enjoy Arc de Triomphe. Of course, if you are in France during the Cannes Film Festival, you will be able to enjoy a unique experience.

Cambodia Clothing and Culture

China too is steeped in history and traditions that are fascinating and appealing. Many overseas visitors, particularly from the US, the UK, Europe, and Australasia throng Shanghai. It is a global financial hub and is the largest city in the country. It is the best place to experience the history and culture of this nation. Visitors can enjoy a leisurely stroll at the Bund, learn about the local history at the Shanghai Museum, and enjoy peace at the Yu Garden. There are numerous art galleries and restaurants that can fill the time in between these cultural attractions.

Turkey has always been at the forefront of cultural tourism, in particular Istanbul, which straddles Asia and Europe. Some of the best places to enjoy a cultural experience include Hagia Sophia, Topkapi Palace, Sultan Ahmed Mosque, and the Bosphorus. Even shopping and browsing through the Grand Bazaar can be a cultural experience. Istanbul fascinates cultural lovers from Asia, the UK, Europe, Australia, Canada, and the USA. People come here to check out the architecture and learn about the Ottoman Empire.

Indian girl playing holi

Cultural tourism is incomplete without a visit to India, the land of the Ganges, Taj Mahal, Varanasi, and Qutub Minar. Every city in India offers a unique cultural experience to visitors. Whether you want to experience the religious culture or historical culture, India has a lot to offer. It is one of the primary reasons that people from across the globe flock to India. You can visit Varanasi to experience Hinduism or spend time in Bodh Gaya, the tiny hamlet in Bihar where Lord Buddha attained enlightenment. The art of weaving in Rajasthan and saree weaving in Andhra Pradesh also offer insights into the local culture.

Culture tourism is a win-win experience. The visitors enjoy the rich heritage and learn about the local cultures and traditions while local communities enjoy development without forsaking their cultural values and beliefs.

Having read the information provided here, you can book cruises online for Royal Caribbean, MSC Cruises, or Carnival Cruises if you want to have fun with your family and loved ones.

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What is Cultural Tourism and Why is It Important?

What is Cultural Tourism

Tourism trends come and go. What was once deemed as a necessity in travel and tourism may not be a necessity today. So what is cultural tourism and why is it important? Let’s dive in!

How is Culture Defined?

In order to understand cultural tourism, we must first understand what constitutes culture. 

Culture is rooted in many complexities and many inner workings. On the surface level, culture can be defined through symbols, words, gestures, people, rituals and more. 

However, the core of culture is in its values. 

The way a culture perceives itself or stays preserved is through a set of shared values. 

List of Jordanian Food

Maybe its an ode to ancestry and tradition or a new breadth of 

However, the core of culture is in its values.

Whether it’s an ode to ancestry or creating a new set of values as time evolves, it can be also be held true to the 

Whether it’s an ode to ancestry or creating a new set of values as time evolves, cultural tourism is uprooted in holding and preserving cultures through traditions and heritage.  [1]

What is Cultural Tourism?

Adopted by the UNWTO General Assembly in 2017, Cultural Tourism is defined as the following: “A type of tourism activity in which the visitor’s essential motivation is to learn, discover, experience and consume tangible and intangible cultural attractions/products in a tourism destination.”

The main aim of cultural tourism is to improve the quality and livelihood of the local people who are committed to preserving cultural heritage and traditions. 

This can be through the purchase of locally made goods, initiatives through local food and the learning of recipes, 

This can be through the purchase of locally made goods, initiatives to learn how to cook local recipes and supporting local inbound operators who have a good knowledge of the cities they are operating in. 

This can be done through the following six aspects:

  • Handcrafted Goods and Visual Art
  • Social Practices
  • Rituals and Festive Events
  • Oral Traditions

Imagine visiting one of our destinations: Jordan, Tunisia, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan or Tanzania. 

Imagine being able to experience all six of these aspects of cultural tourism all created in one package.

Where Can You Practice Cultural Tourism?

Jordan .

From the North to the South, Jordan’s landscapes and its people are ready to welcome you to each and every experience. 

In the North, experience the gastronomy of locally preserved recipes and take your hand at being able to learn how to cook yourself. 

Take your hand at handcrafted goods like making baskets out of wheat straws or learn the art of traditional weaving in Madaba. 

In the South, practice in rituals in the desert by learning about the infamous Bedouin tea, take some words and practices that are so pertinent to those in the South. 

See our packages in Jordan

Underground colonies, history and a rich culture are just waiting for you to learn about. 

Visit an artist in Gabes who has taken traditional methods of papermaking and carried it to the present today by honoring raw and organic materials pertinent to the atmosphere of Tunisia’s landscape. 

Then have an opportunity to stay in local accommodation in underground colonies which stay cool during the summer and warm in the winter.

You can also experience Amazigh history and the different languages present in Tunisia today that trace back to civilizations many years ago. 

See our packages in Tunisia

Uzbekistan 

One of Central Asia’s unknown wonders

Uzbekistan is located on the Silk Road and holds centuries of history that trace back to the Islamic Golden Age. It holds a unique architectural background and since it holds history between the Persian Empire and the Soviet Union, you can see a contradiction between both styles, all in one place. 

See our packages in Uzbekistan

Kyrgyzstan 

Where nature is a non-negotiable

With its beautiful nature, with over 2,000 lakes, Kyrgyzstan is another Central Asian wonder that holds beautiful fairytale naturescapes and semi-nomadic living. 

Kyrygz people still adhere to ancient civilizations and honor their ancestors by living in Yurts and sharing natural practices such as horseback riding and traditional old games, like Kok Boro and eagle hunting. 

See our packages in Kyrgyzstan 

Everything is “pole pole” in Tanzania

From visiting indigeneous tribes to participating in rituals to mother nature, Tanzanian people practice the “pole pole” lifestyle, which means slowly slowly in Swahili. 

With an intersection of different cultures and practiced rituals, Tanzania has become such a hub for many people to get together and enjoy the lifestyle and indigenous cultures. 

See our packages in Tanzania

Why is Cultural Tourism Important?

Cultural tourism is a travel and tourism trend that is here to stay. With more and more accessibility to the world and the people in it, there is peak interest in being able to immersively travel. 

  • Peaks an interest to immerse yourself in a particular culture
  • Creates meanings, stories and understanding between host and guest
  • Share cultural practices and be part of the preservation of cultural heritage
  • Gain a full understanding a culture without commodification 

What better way to honor a destination than by practicing in allowing something to be immortal. 

Also, if you’re interested in learning more about experiential tourism, check out this article. 

What are some cultural touristic experiences you are looking forward to trying?

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Encyclopedia of Tourism pp 1–4 Cite as

Culture, tourism

  • Erwei Dong 3 &
  • Garry Chick 4  
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  • First Online: 01 January 2015

154 Accesses

As early as the 1970s, tourism researchers claimed that culture is a determinant of the attractiveness of a tourism destination (Ritchie and Zins 1978 ). Unfortunately, the definition of culture is controversial even in cultural anthropology, the social science wherein it is the organizing concept. In an early attempt to explore the nature of culture and how it relates to tourism, Ritchie and Zins adopted an anthropological concept and applied it to tourism research. Among the many anthropological definitions available, they preferred Kluckhohn and Kelly’s view of culture as a “historically created system of explicit and implicit designs for living, which tends to be shared by all or specifically designated members of a group at a specified point in time” ( 1945 : 97–98).

Ritchie and Zins asserted that this definition “focused on the explicit components of culture which are readily visible to the traveler” ( 1978 : 254). Some scholars regard this definition as overly broad and have...

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Bae, S. 2013 Rail-Ro, An Emerging Rail Travel Phenomenon: A Study of Domestic Tourism, Railroad, and Culture Among Youth in Korea. Doctoral Dissertation, The Pennsylvania State University.

Google Scholar  

Chick, G. 1981 Concept and Behavior in a Tlaxcalan Cargo System. Ethnology 20:217-228.

Article   Google Scholar  

Gatewood, J., and C. Cameron 2009 Belonger Perceptions of Tourism and its Importance in the Turks and Caicos Islands. Report to the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Lehigh University www.lehigh.edu/~jbg1/Perceptions-of-Tourism.pdf (1 December 2013).

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Dong, E., Chick, G. (2014). Culture, tourism. In: Jafari, J., Xiao, H. (eds) Encyclopedia of Tourism. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01669-6_250-1

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Ethics, Culture and Social Responsibility

The Ethics, Culture and Social Responsibility Department of the World Tourism Organization (UN Tourism), a specialised agency of the United Nations, is tasked with the promotion of responsible, sustainable and universally accessible tourism.

Global Code of Ethics for Tourism

Ethics in Tourism

UN Tourism is guided by the belief that tourism can make a meaningful contribution to people’s lives and our planet. This conviction is at the very heart of the Global Code of Ethics for Tourism, a roadmap for tourism development towards a more ethical approach. 

Accessible Tourism

 Accessible Tourism

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), 16% of the world’s population (1.3 billion people) is estimated to live with some form of disability. UN Tourism is convinced that accessibility for all to tourist facilities, products, and services should be a central part of any responsible and sustainable tourist policy.

Tourism and Culture

 Tourism and Culture

Cultural tourism is a type of tourism activity in which the visitor’s essential motivation is to learn, discover, experience and consume the tangible and intangible cultural attractions/products in a tourism destination. These attractions/products relate to a set of distinctive material, intellectual, spiritual and emotional features of a society that encompasses arts and architecture, historical and cultural heritage, culinary heritage, literature, music, creative industries and the living cultures with their lifestyles, value systems, beliefs and traditions.

Women’s Empowerment and Tourism

Women Empowerment in Tourism

Tourism has the potential to contribute to greater gender equality and the empowerment of women, in line with  Sustainable Development Goal 5. The majority of people employed in tourism worldwide are women, both in formal and informal jobs. Tourism offers women opportunities for income-generation and entrepreneurship. However, women are concentrated in the lowest paid, lowest skilled sectors of the industry and carry out a large amount of unpaid work in family tourism businesses.

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A Comprehensive Evaluation: The Advantages and Disadvantages of Cultural Tourism

By: Author Valerie Forgeard

Posted on August 2, 2023

Categories Travel

You’ve probably heard about cultural tourism, but do you truly know what it entails and the impacts it holds? As a traveler, you might be drawn to the allure of immersing yourself in different cultures, tasting exotic cuisines, and experiencing traditions that have been passed down for centuries. But there’s more to this type of tourism than meets the eye.

While it offers numerous benefits such as economic growth for local communities and promoting cultural preservation, it’s not without its drawbacks. Challenges can arise for both travelers and hosts alike, including environmental impacts and potential negative effects on local culture.

So let’s dive deeper into this topic to fully understand the advantages and disadvantages of cultural tourism – because knowing is half the battle!

Definition of Cultural Tourism

Cultural tourism is when you travel to experience the culture, history, and lifestyle of different communities. It’s more than just sightseeing; it involves getting an intimate understanding and appreciation for people’s way of life in different regions.

In tourism marketing, cultural tourism is a gem because it attracts folks who have the desire to dig deeper into other cultures. However, it also has its drawbacks like cultural commodification where unique traditions are turned into commodities for tourists. This often leads to misrepresentation or over-simplification of complex cultures.

So while cultural tourism opens doors to enlightening experiences and knowledge exchange, there must be a careful balance in appreciating without exploiting these richly diverse cultures.

The Growth and Popularity of Cultural Tourism

The growth and popularity of cultural tourism cannot be ignored. This trend is expanding at an unprecedented rate, with more and more people seeking out travel experiences that allow them to immerse themselves in local traditions, history, and art. But why is cultural tourism becoming so popular? There are several reasons for this phenomenon.

Firstly, tourism marketers have become increasingly savvy in promoting unique cultural experiences. They understand that highlighting events like traditional festivals or historical tours can attract travelers who are looking for something different and authentic.

Secondly, travelers themselves are becoming more curious about understanding different cultures firsthand. They want to go beyond just visiting landmarks and attractions; they want to engage with local communities, learn about their customs, and gain a deeper appreciation for their way of life.

Thirdly, governments around the world are recognizing the economic benefits of cultural tourism. They are implementing policies that encourage the preservation of heritage sites and the development of cultural experiences. This not only boosts tourism revenue but also ensures that cultural traditions are safeguarded for future generations.

Lastly, the global connectivity we have today plays a significant role in the growth of cultural tourism. With advancements in technology and transportation, remote cultures that were once inaccessible are now within reach. This has opened up a whole new world of possibilities for travelers who are eager to explore diverse cultural landscapes.

Given these factors, it is clear that the growth of cultural tourism shows no signs of slowing down. In the future, travel will not only be about seeing new places but also about deeply exploring and appreciating different cultures.

Benefits to the Traveler

Embarking on a journey of cultural tourism can significantly impact you in ways you might not expect. It’s not just about seeing new places; it’s also an opportunity for personal growth and learning as well as broadening your perspectives.

Personal Growth and Learning

Diving headfirst into cultural tourism isn’t just about snapping pretty pictures; it’s a profound journey of personal growth and learning. It opens your mind to different perspectives and allows for identity exploration. Through cultural tourism, you can gain a better understanding of who you are in relation to the world around you.

Cultural tourism fosters a deeper appreciation for diversity. It helps you develop enhanced cultural sensitivity that aids in interpersonal relationships. It also provides a more enlightened perspective on global issues. Additionally, cultural tourism offers insights into traditions and customs different from your own. It even provides opportunities for language learning.

These experiences not only enrich your life but also broaden your worldview. They help you navigate through our culturally diverse world with greater understanding and empathy. So, embrace the advantages of cultural tourism for a journey that transcends beyond sightseeing.

Broadening Perspectives

You’re not just expanding your horizons, you’re shattering them, stepping into the shoes of others and seeing the world through a different lens. Cultural tourism’s ability to broaden perspectives is undeniable.

It allows you to experience diverse cultures firsthand, challenging any ethnocentric bias you may hold. However, there’s an important line that shouldn’t be crossed: cultural appropriation. While it’s beneficial to immerse yourself in another culture, adopting elements without respect or understanding can lead to exploitation and harm.

It’s a delicate balance; authentic engagement with other cultures requires sensitivity and awareness. So remember, as you explore unfamiliar corners of the globe, approach every tradition and custom respectfully – not as spectacle for consumption but as a rich tapestry of human experiences waiting to expand your worldview.

Memorable and Unique Experiences

Imagine standing beneath the towering pyramids of Egypt or riding a gondola through Venice’s winding canals. These experiences aren’t just vacations; they’re transformative journeys that stay with you long after you’ve returned home.

Such experiences stem from cultural tourism and are often unique and unforgettable. However, there’s an ongoing debate surrounding their authenticity. While immersing in local culture enriches your travel experience, it can sometimes unintentionally turn cultural practices and traditions into commodities.

Cultural tourism provides an extraordinary window into different ways of life, but it also risks diluting the deeper meaning and significance of cultural expressions. This has sparked discussions on how to maintain authenticity while promoting cultural tourism.

Striking the right balance is crucial. It ensures that your experiences remain memorable without sacrificing the integrity of the cultures you visit.

Economic Benefits to the Host Community

When you visit a new destination, your spending can significantly boost the local economy, contributing to the growth and prosperity of the host community. This economic benefit is particularly notable in cultural tourism. Your interest in experiencing different cultures firsthand translates into direct revenue for local businesses, encouraging tourism employment. From cafe owners to tour guides, many people reap the benefits of your visit.

Moreover, increased tourism often leads to infrastructure development. As more tourists flood in, governments invest in improving roads, public transport systems, and facilities like museums or historical sites. However, it’s crucial that this development respects and preserves the unique culture you’ve come to experience.

So while you’re enriching yourself through travel, remember – you’re also playing a key role in global cultural preservation and economic growth.

Promotion of Cultural Preservation

As you stroll through bustling local markets, taste exotic foods, or observe traditional ceremonies, your curiosity fuels the preservation of these unique customs and traditions. Cultural tourism provides an incentive for communities to maintain their traditions and share them with visitors.

Yet, it’s not without its pitfalls. Heritage exploitation can occur when practices are commercialized solely for tourist consumption. This can lead to authenticity debates as original cultural elements might be altered or stylized to cater to tourists’ tastes or expectations.

While this form of tourism encourages cultural preservation on one hand, it also raises questions about the potential watering down or misrepresentation of cultures on the other. It’s a delicate balance that needs careful navigation to ensure benefits outweigh drawbacks in promoting cultural preservation through tourism.

Encourages Mutual Respect and Understanding

There’s no denying it, exploring different traditions and customs can deepen our appreciation for diversity, fostering respect and understanding across borders. Cultural tourism isn’t just about sightseeing; it’s a form of cultural exchange that offers you the chance to engage with locals and delve into their way of life.

By immersing yourself in another culture, you promote intercultural communication, breaking down stereotypes and dispelling misconceptions. You learn to value different viewpoints and ways of doing things that may be far removed from your own experiences.

However, this requires an open mind and respectful behavior towards local customs and traditions. So tread lightly, because while cultural tourism brings many benefits, it also holds potential pitfalls when not engaged with responsibly.

Risks and Challenges for the Traveler

Venturing into unfamiliar territories can certainly be thrilling, but it’s not without its fair share of risks and challenges. As a cultural tourist, you’re bound to encounter unique obstacles that require adequate preparation and a strong sense of caution.

  • Safety precautions : It’s crucial for you to understand the safety norms and regulations in the foreign land. Always stay alert and keep your belongings secure.
  • Travel scams : Be aware of common travel scams in the area. Knowledge is your best defense against tricksters.
  • Language barriers might complicate navigation or interactions with locals.
  • Different culinary practices may affect your health if you’re not accustomed to them.
  • Cultural misunderstandings could potentially offend locals.

Despite these challenges, cultural tourism can still be rewarding if approached with respect, openness, and due diligence.

Negative Impact on the Host Community

While it’s easy to get caught up in the thrill of exploring new places, we can’t ignore the potential strain our travels put on local communities. Cultural tourism can lead to community exploitation as locals may feel pressured to commodify their cultural practices for tourist consumption. They might even alter or exaggerate aspects of their culture to meet tourists’ expectations, which risks eroding the authenticity of their traditions.

Additionally, an influx of tourists can cause social disruption. The sudden surge in visitors during peak seasons may overcrowd public spaces and disrupt daily life. Furthermore, increased demand for resources can escalate living costs for locals.

So while cultural tourism boosts economies and promotes intercultural understanding, it’s crucial to balance these benefits with its potential drawbacks on host communities.

Environmental Impact

You might not realize it, but your globetrotting adventures can have a significant impact on the environment. Cultural tourism often leads to ecological degradation and an increase in pollution.

  • Ecological Degradation : High tourist footfall can disrupt natural habitats, leading to erosion or damage to local flora and fauna.
  • Pollution Increase : The use of transportation, littering by tourists, and increased energy consumption can escalate pollution levels.
  • Waste Management Issues : An influx of tourists may strain waste disposal systems, adding to environmental problems.
  • Unsustainable Practices : Sometimes cultural tourism encourages activities that aren’t environmentally friendly, such as souvenir production from endangered species.

So while you’re soaking up new cultures, do remember the footprint you’re leaving behind. Be mindful of your actions for a more sustainable travel experience.

Strategies for Sustainable Cultural Tourism

Let’s explore some smart strategies that can make your travel experiences more sustainable, reducing harm to our planet and preserving the richness of local cultures. The first step begins with policy implementation. This involves governments setting regulations that guide tourists’ behavior towards protecting cultural sites.

Stakeholder engagement is another crucial factor. It includes involving locals in tourism planning and decision-making processes, ensuring their traditions are respected.

Here’s a table summarizing these strategies:

By adopting these approaches, you’re not just visiting a place—you’re actively contributing to its preservation for future generations.

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A Meaning-Aware Cultural Tourism Intelligent Navigation System Based on Anticipatory Calculation

1 School of Design, Jiangnan University, Wuxi, China

2 School of Artificial Intelligence and Computer Science, Jiangnan University, Wuxi, China

Associated Data

The original contributions presented in the study are included in the article/supplementary material, further inquiries can be directed to the corresponding author/s.

To improve the personalized service of cultural tourism, anticipatory calculation has become an essential technology in the content design of intelligence navigation system. Culture tourism, as a form of leisure activity, is being favored by an increasing number of people, which calls for further improvements in the cultural consumption experience. An important component of cultural tourism is for tourists to experience intangible cultural heritage projects with local characteristics. However, from the perspective of user needs and the content adaptive system, there are few suitable intelligent navigation and user demand anticipatory systems for intangible cultural heritage content. Purple clay culture is one of the first batches of national intangible cultural heritage protection projects in China. Therefore, taking purple clay culture exhibition as an example, this paper attempts to analyze the personalized information demand of tourism consumption experience in intangible cultural heritage communication activities with affective computing and meaning-driven innovative design method, by taking the content design in the navigation system as the research object. This paper uses the theory of planned behavior to calculate the relationship between tourists’ attitude, experience behavior, and display information demand. The findings indicate two issues. First, tourists’ demand for the entertainment and leisure attributes of intangible cultural heritage is greater than the demand for educational function attributes. Second, the meaning elements of information can change tourists’ beliefs in intangible cultural heritage and affect their attitude and behavior toward such heritage. According to the research results, strengthening the meaning elements of specific group information can improve people’s cultural identity and tourism satisfaction. The research results provide the basis for the content design direction of future museum intelligent navigation systems.

Introduction

According to the report of the nineteenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China, the main contradiction of China’s society has been transformed into “the contradiction between the growing needs of the people’s life and the development of imbalanced development” ( Jinping, 2017 ). People’s life needs have also developed from tangible “material” needs to intangible and living “process” experience ( Chiara, 2007 ). Pursuing the enrichment of material life and spiritual life in one’s own culture along with life satisfaction has become the norm. Cultural tourism has become a popular cultural leisure activity ( Blazquez-Resino et al., 2020 ). In addition, the intangible cultural heritage experience tourism projects provided by tourist attractions and travel agencies have helped in enhancing the ability to promote the cross-border integration of intangible cultural heritage in recent years ( Su et al., 2020 ). The original purpose of UNESCO’s intangible cultural heritage protection convention is to protect and promote cultural diversity and alleviate the alienation of human beings caused by industrial society and global commercialization ( Saito, 2005 ; UNESCO, 2005 ). The intangible cultural heritage inherited by one generation from another is constantly recreated by different communities and groups in the process of adapting to the surrounding environment and nature and interacting with their history. This provides them with a continuous sense of identity and enhances respect for cultural diversity and human creativity ( UNESCO, 2003 ). This sense of identity can generate community cohesion and improve quality of life. The core of protecting intangible cultural heritage is to enhance its vitality and sustainability ( Lenzerini, 2011 ). The protection and dissemination of intangible cultural heritage is significant for the promotion of cultural belonging and the generation of self-confidence and happiness. Intangible cultural heritage exhibitions not only play an important role in improving personal well-being, emotional belonging, psychological identity, self-confidence, and relieving pressure but are also significant in promoting social inclusiveness. Therefore, it is necessary to pay attention to the research and design of the intelligent navigation systems’ content to improve the dissemination efficiency and user experience of intangible cultural heritage display information by affective computing and meaning innovation. Since 2005, the protection of intangible cultural heritage has been greatly promoted across all government departments in China. From 2005 to 2019, local governments have built many cultural infrastructures, such as high-quality exhibition space and supporting facilities, to meet the needs of people’s tourism and leisure experience and for intangible cultural heritage protection ( Maags, 2019 ; Luo, 2020 ). The establishment of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism is an important measure to promote the integration of culture and tourism (2018). Such an integration attests to the government’s proactive promotion in the protection, inheritance, and effective utilization of intangible cultural heritage. Contrarily, when intangible cultural heritage (ICH) protection is combined with tourism, a new phenomenon of ICH protection is created: intangible cultural heritage living performance for cultural tourism ( Zandieh and Seifpour, 2020 ).

The national intangible cultural heritage project “Qinhuai Lantern Festival,” for example, includes tourism elements, such as “eating, living, traveling, shopping and entertainment” which are deeply combined to create a representative cultural tourism brand in Nanjing, Qinhuai District. In 2018, during the festival, the number of tourists exceeded 10 million in Nanjing, and the total tourism revenue exceeded 10 billion yuan ( Le, 2019 ). Whether ICH living performance or exhibition is of a nostalgic, an appreciative, or an interactive type, it has already attracted specific groups of people. As tourists’ target needs to change from material to experience, appropriate regional cultural experience will induce a positive effect on their sense of experience and well-being.

Past studies on the communication activities of intangible cultural heritage mostly focused on inheritors teaching the next generation about traditional skills, program performance and recording, and cultural tourism activities publicity ( An et al., 2015 ). A few studies focused on the exploratory issue of the design of cultural and creative products ( Boix and Lazzeretti, 2012 ; Boccella and Salerno, 2016 ; Thorne et al., 2017 ). In addition, Wang (2018) investigated the effect of the productive protection of intangible cultural heritage on the inheritors of intangible cultural heritage. However, from the perspective of cultural tourism integration, there is a big gap between the demand for intangible cultural heritage exhibitions for leisure and entertainment and the original utilitarian communication demand. Stephenson (1967) believes that communication can be divided into working communication and game communication. The result of game communication is the pleasure of communication; work communication entails communication of others’ behavior, such as command, help-seeking, persuasion, and request. The Play Theory of Communication is applicable to the mode of intangible cultural heritage communication from the perspective of cultural tourism. Schramm and Porter (2019) believe that communication is closely related to the formation of cultural communities. Without communication, there will be no community; conversely, without community, there will be no communication ( Lo and Janta, 2020 ). Therefore, targeted information delivery and community formation can help enhance the motivation and behavior of tourists for active dissemination of information. Nevertheless, in the intangible cultural heritage exhibition activities, there are few studies on the behavior and motivation of tourists’ voluntary and active information dissemination activities.

With the increasing popularity of intangible cultural heritage exhibition activities after the integration of culture and tourism, the research attention and depth has also increased in the field of intangible cultural heritage display. Some scholars ( Huang et al., 2019 ; Kim et al., 2019 ; Tan et al., 2020 ) believe that previous research on the design content of intangible cultural heritage exhibitions primarily focused on the “how” of the design, and not on the “why” ( Verganti, 2016 ).

Focusing on the scenario of cultural tourism, this study analyzes the interaction between people and objects and information related to intangible cultural heritage exhibition. In addition, the study points out that the significant factors of exhibition content are influencing tourists’ emotional experience and cultural consumption and innovation of the meaning of content, which is an important way to improve the protection and communication efficiency of intangible cultural heritage. The study considers tourists as the research object, and calculates the tourists’ attention variations on the functional level and significance level of information while contacting intangible cultural heritage. It also explores the design framework of adaptive content in intelligent navigation systems to meet the user’s demand perception through the relationship among tourists’ attributes, attitudes, and behaviors. Through an empirical analysis, this study can provide relevant suggestions for the content designers of museum navigation system, intangible cultural heritage protection practitioners, and cultural tourism management departments.

The structure of this paper is as follows: Literature review introduces the Museum digital navigation system, cultural tourism, intangible cultural heritage, and theory of planned behavior. The research methodology provides the research hypothesis and framework, measurement, sampling method, and respondents’ profile of this research. Results include reliability and validity, hypothesis testing, and so on. Discussion and Conclusions present the discussion, conclusions, theoretical contributions, and suggestions for future research in this study.

Literature Review

Intelligent navigation system for exhibition in museums.

Over the past few years, the prevalence of smart mobile devices has also increased the popularity of personalized content navigation services in the field of cultural heritage display and communication. In addition, the exponential rise of location-based services (LBSs) ( Wu et al., 2017 ) has made indoor positioning, navigation ( La Delfa et al., 2016 ), and content context aware adaptive system into research hotspots ( Wei et al., 2018 ). For museums, the ICH exhibition hall, and other public buildings, the development of mobile positioning and navigation-related intelligent navigation systems ( Wang, 2019 ) helps improve the visitors’ user experience in exhibition venues and their quality of life ( La Delfa et al., 2016 ). Research on intelligent navigation systems in the field of culture and museums mainly focuses on the following aspects:

First, research on positioning technology and methods needed for indoor navigation. Smartphones have become indispensable in most people’s lives. Given the various kinds of sensors built into smartphones, resolving indoor navigation problems using these phones has become the key solution ( Gareev et al., 2019 ; Xia et al., 2019 ). Specifically, smart phones combined with widely deployed unlimited LANs provide technical solutions for indoor navigation ( Carboni et al., 2015 ). To cope with the limitations and complexity of indoor environments, indoor positioning solutions based on UWB, WiFi, and Bluetooth have also been proposed ( Wang et al., 2015 ; Yang and Shao, 2015 ). In addition, a smartphone camera can be used to locate users by detecting common static objects, such as doors and windows in indoor space as a reference, and then calculate the location of smart phones ( Xiao et al., 2018 ). Based on the functions of modern smart phones, low-cost indoor navigation systems without any physical infrastructure or reliance on any wearable devices have also been studied ( Carboni et al., 2015 ). Under this research topic, there is scope of finding a solution for achieving a low-cost and accurate positioning system.

Second, research on auxiliary equipment or systems related to mobile navigation. Research on auxiliary equipment primarily focuses on helping people with special needs, for example, Blind Museum Tourer, a system for indoor interactive autonomous navigation for blind and visually impaired persons and groups (such as primary school students), which has primarily addressed blind or visually impaired (BVI) accessibility and self-guided tours in museums ( Meliones and Sampson, 2018 ). In the navigation process of blind tourists, effective walking can be achieved through the integration of multi-sensor integrated audio tactile signal and motion feedback ( Gori et al., 2017 ). In addition, due to the high performance of smartphone cameras, marker-less and maker-based computer vision approaches have been investigated. For example, a technique for indoor localization and navigation using Bluetooth low energy (BLE) and a two-dimensional visual marker system ( La Delfa et al., 2016 ) were deployed on the floor. A reliable and high-precision indoor positioning system can also be designed and implemented by combining wireless local area networks (WLANs) with surface-mounted auxiliary tactile path indication, BLE beacon, and inertial dead reckoning ( Meliones and Sampson, 2018 ).

Third, digital content development and interactive experience research of cultural heritage. Digital content recommendation services in display and communication include a mobile audio guide to enhance tourists’ experience ( Ambard et al., 2015 ), AR and VR solutions for digital image superimposing real scenes of cultural heritage, etc. ( Wang, 2019 ). In the past, augmented reality (AR) projects have made it possible to provide enhanced visual and acoustic stimulation through the application of smartphones ( Gimeno et al., 2017 ; Wang, 2019 ). DinofelisAR, for example, uses mobile AR technology to give users a panoramic view of a grand reconstruction forum in the Roman era from its existing ruins. As a result, users can continue to perceive the current surroundings of a Roman city in ruins, while exploring matching virtual models ( Marto and Goncalves, 2019 ).

In the field of cultural relics and museums, intelligent navigation includes relatively in-depth research on equipment development, positioning technology, digital content ( Huang et al., 2019 ; Kim et al., 2019 ), and user experience ( Wang, 2019 ). However, from the perspective of meaning innovation, the function and efficiency of displaying communication content in the navigation system are still insufficient. Through the analysis of tourists’ interests and attributes, this study provides a design idea of meaning-driven navigation personalized content. It is no longer a simple discussion on how to design and implement technology, but to explore its “why” and explain the value of intelligent navigation systems. This integrated system design brings together human, technology, content, and other factors.

Cultural Tourism and Intangible Cultural Heritage

Culture is one of the driving forces behind the growth of tourism ( Pololikashvili, 2018 ). According to the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), cultural tourism is “movements of persons for essentially cultural motivations such as study tours, performing arts and cultural tours, travel to festivals and other cultural events, visits to sites and monuments, travel to study nature, folklore or art, and pilgrimages.” Cultural tourism includes travel, the purpose of which is to visit scenic spots and participate in activities of cultural and historical value. Cultural tourism is a type of tourism activity in which the visitor’s essential motivation is to learn, discover, experience, and consume tangible and intangible cultural attractions or products in a tourism destination. These attractions/products relate to a set of distinctive material, intellectual, spiritual, and emotional features of a society ( UNWTO, 2017 ). Exploring the global wealth of traditions is a principal motivation for travel, with tourists seeking to engage with new cultures and experience the global variety of performing arts, handicrafts, rituals, and cuisines. The cultural interaction spurred by such encounters prompts dialogue, builds understanding, and fosters tolerance and peace. Tourism offers a powerful incentive for preserving and enhancing intangible cultural heritage because its revenue can be channeled back into initiatives to aid its long-term survival. Therefore, tourism activities and intangible cultural heritage protection are inseparable.

The general conference of the United Nations Education Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) issued the Convention on the safeguard of intangible cultural heritage in 2003. It defines “intangible cultural heritage” as follows: “The intangible cultural heritage means the practices, representations, expressions, knowledge, skills—as well as the instruments, objects, artifacts and cultural spaces associated therewith—that communities, groups and, in some cases, individuals recognize as part of their cultural heritage. This intangible cultural heritage, transmitted from generation to generation, is constantly recreated by communities and groups in response to their environment, their interaction with nature and their history, and provides them with a sense of identity and continuity, thus promoting respect for cultural diversity and human creativity.” Intangible cultural heritage protection is an important way to maintain cultural diversity, cope with globalization, and provide sustainable cultural development. It also guarantees to improve the quality of life. Cultural diversity is a source of communication, innovation, and creation, and is as essential to human beings as it is to maintain biological balance ( UNESCO, 2001 ). With the change of transportation and information dissemination, people frequently visit places outside their normal living environment for a certain purpose. Therefore, tourism has become a social, cultural, and economic phenomenon ( World Tourism Organization [UNWTO], 2008b ). The growing interest of tourists in cultural experiences brings along many opportunities and complex challenges for tourism. Only by truly understanding the wishes and values of all parties can a true partnership be established between the community and the tourism and heritage sector; this can ensure the sector’s survival and prosperity. Novelty is the foundation of tourism ( Mitas and Bastiaansen, 2018 ). Excellent exhibitions can meet the needs of tourists who are looking for novelty. Tourism novelty is associated with nostalgia ( Skavronskaya et al., 2020 ). Intangible cultural heritage display in cultural tourism is an important channel to provide novelty and nostalgia. Common types of cultural tourism related to ICH mostly include digital tourism of legends and folklore ( Vassiliadi et al., 2018 ) and community-based cultural ecotourism ( Lo and Janta, 2020 ). Digital tourism carries out cultural experiences through digital narrative. For example, through the digital narration of the volcanic eruption scene of Pompeii ancient city by MR technology, we can get a higher sense of experience ( Vassiliadi et al., 2018 ). In terms of community tourism ( Lo and Janta, 2020 ), it is important to empower communities, involve local residents, cultivate cultural resources, and ultimately maintain the sustainability of the overall tourism resources.

Exhibition is a typical communication activity. Communication is closely related to the formation of a cultural community. Without communication, there will be no community; conversely, without community, there will be no communication ( Zeng et al., 2017 ). As the stakeholders, tourists, and local residents are becoming increasingly important in tourism destinations ( Shen et al., 2019 ), their support is seen as an important prerequisite for the sustainability of tourism in destinations ( Sinclair-Maragh and Gursoy, 2016 ; Ribeiro et al., 2017 ). In this study, the experience of an intangible cultural heritage exhibition is a participatory narrative experience based on community cultural ecology. Tourists are the protagonists of experience activities.

According to Mckercher and Tolkach (2020) , the “depth of experience” pursued by tourists is different. According to the depth of experience, cultural tourists are divided into sightseeing, serendipitous, casual cultural tourism, and so on. In the process of cultural communication, tourists are not only audiences but also participants and disseminators of community culture ( Ezio, 2014 ). Most of the research on tourism culture experience has mainly focused on tourists. For tourists, the essential motivation is to learn, discover, experience, and consult through tourism. Indeed, this kind of research focuses on the purpose and sightseeing cultural tourism. This study focuses on tourists and local community residents who have been identified as inhibitors of intangible cultural heritage. Their motivations for participating in cultural tourism exhibition activities are likely to be different from the motivations and cognitions of the other types of tourists.

The Theory of Planning Behaviors (TPB)

The applicability of information in the intelligent navigation system is determined by the emotional experience of each tourist. Emotional experience is closely related to behavior and attitude in intangible cultural heritage exhibition activities. TPB is based on the theory of rational action proposed by Fishbein and Ajzen (1975) . According to the TPB, behavior intention is one of the best variables for behavior prediction ( Ajzen, 1985 ). Intention is influenced by attitude, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control. Behavioral intention is the closest predictor of behavior, reflecting the level of motivation for executive behavior ( Jekaus et al., 2015 ). The premise of the theoretical hypothesis is that “behavior is based on rational reasoning, which believes that individuals can properly control their own behavior through personal will” but in fact, individual behavior and personal will are not consistent. Behavior is also affected by the external objective environment or resource constraints. For example, the expensive price and complicated production process of purple clay pots will determine the degree of personal preference for purple clay culture. These factors make the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA) inapplicable in explaining tourists’ behavior of participating in intangible cultural heritage exhibition activities. For this reason, Ajzen (1985) adds the “perceived behavioral control” into the TRA model. Among the three core variables of TPB, “attitude” is a personal positive or negative view and belief about a specific behavior. The social pressure that individual feels to his/her behavior is called “subjective norm.” The level of individual control over a particular behavior is called “perceived behavioral control,” which means that individuals predict the possible difficulties in performing the behavior according to his/her past experience. This study investigates whether tourists think that the dissemination of intangible cultural heritage–related information can gain the admiration and respect of their relatives and friends and that it is a beneficial behavior for their own cognition and knowledge. Accordingly, their attitude toward active communication and tourism consumption behavior will also tend to be positive. In this process, the “attitude” and “subjective norm” variables in TPB will be enhanced. If tourists release relevant information through social media, few people agree with it, or friends do not support participating in intangible cultural heritage exhibition activities, or they do not have time or money for tourism consumption, they will regard “lack of resources” as an obstacle to behavior, which will ultimately affect their behavioral intention to actively participate in the dissemination. Hsu (2006) points out that the limitations of TPB itself are obvious. Although TPB can predict the relationship between intention and behavior, there are inconsistencies in age group, education level, and income level. In addition, the influence of consumption habits and social customs on behavioral intention has also been verified ( Lin et al., 2020 ). Due to the influence of subjective factors, different groups have different demands on the same exhibits. Different demands also mean that different meanings and connotations need to be considered in the design of the display content. Therefore, this paper will explore the relationship between content meaning and behavioral intention.

In cultural tourism, the active participation of tourists determines the effectiveness of information exchange and the quality of tourism experience. Different groups of people have different beliefs about actively participating in exhibition activities ( Bastiaansen et al., 2019 ). For example, young people will pay attention to personality and fashion elements in intangible cultural heritage; local people and foreigners also have different needs for the same cultural information. This finding comes from field investigation and literature review, which constitutes the motivation of the current study. Therefore, this study will take tourists and community personnel as the research subjects. Further, it will expand the TPB by adding a factor of meaning cognition to investigate their behavioral intention of showing communication participation in cultural tourism, investigate the relationship between content meaning and their behavioral beliefs or behavioral intention, realize the clustering of communication groups on this basis, and finally, realize the accuracy of information dissemination.

The Purple Clay of ICH Theme Cultural Tourism in Yixing

Purple clay ceramic is the local cultural characteristic of Yixing, which is well regarded worldwide. Purple clay ceramic–themed cultural tourism is an important tourism resource and cultural brand in Yixing City. The local cultural and Tourism Bureau actively promotes cultural tourism with a purple clay theme, and develops the whole regional tourism brand with multiple themes. For example, “Tea Zen culture tour to Yixing in April” is a tourism season from March to June each year, highlighting theme activities, such as new tea picking and selection, vegetarian culture expansion, rural homestay experience, and pottery handicraft tours. The theme tour of ceramic culture has a positive impact on people’s lives based on its profound historical accumulation, rich ceramic cultural resources, and tea Zen culture. According to the master plan for the development of the tourism industry in Yixing City, Jiangsu Province (2013), Yixing City is positioned as the “ceramic capital of China,” creating a “ceramic” lifestyle Builder (see Figure 1 ), which introduces the tourism image slogan of “China’s ceramic capital, intoxicated China” (This is a homonym in Chinese, which is easy to remember). The tourism industry has been welcomed by tourists through a clear cultural theme. According to the data of the national economic and social development statistical bulletin of Yixing City in 2019, Yixing received 29.511 million domestic tourists and 98,000 foreign tourists in 2019, and the total tourism income reached 29.144 billion yuan ( Yixing Bureau of Statistics, 2020 ). Yixing’s purple clay ceramic theme cultural tour is among the favorite tourist destinations for domestic and foreign tourists alike. It not only meets the needs of tourists for local cultural experience but also becomes a powerful working mode of intangible cultural heritage theme and cultural ecological protection zone. Therefore, taking Yixing purple clay ceramic culture tourism as a case study, exploring the relationship between the significance of intangible cultural heritage display content and tourists’ demand becomes an important topic of this paper.

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Yixing purple clay ceramic themed cultural tourism development planning framework. Source: Yixing Municipal People’s Government, The People’s China (2013).

Research Methodology

Research framework and hypotheses.

According to results of research by Pierre Bourdieu (1984) , the relationship between “taste” and “class” means that there are significant differences in the artistic and life “taste” of people from different classes. This paper uses these results to define the difference between the needs and responses of visitors to the exhibition. In recent discussions on Museum Visitor Studies, visitors have changed from “the undifferentiated mass public” to “active meaning-makers” in complex cultural sites ( Hooper-Greenhill, 2006 ; Recupero et al., 2019 ). For the evaluation of exhibitions, the shift from “effects” to “affect” also describes the idea of tourists as “active meaning-makers” ( MacDonald, 2007 ). According to Krukar and Dalton (2020) and Kirchberg and Tröndle (2012) , exhibition information affects visitors’ cognition and experience. Roberto Verganti (2016) considers that “meaning” focuses on the cause of things; the attribute of meaning is determined by people’s individual interpretations and judgments. Therefore, there is a close correlation between meaning and cognitive behavior ( Martela and Pessi, 2018 ; Wei et al., 2020 ). Based on the aforementioned theoretical research results, and according to the literature review regarding cultural tourism, intangible cultural heritage exhibition, intelligent navigation system, TPB, exhibition meaning innovation, and the research framework, the following hypotheses are proposed:

  • H1: Meaning has a positive impact on tourists’ attitudes toward intangible cultural heritage exhibitions by influencing beliefs.
  • H2: Meaning has a positive impact on the subjective norms of tourists’ participation and dissemination of information through influencing beliefs.
  • H3: Meaning has a positive impact on tourists’ perception behavior control of intangible cultural heritage tourism through influencing belief.
  • H4: Attitude has a positive impact on a tourist’s communication behavioral intention toward intangible cultural heritage tourism consumption.
  • H5: Subjective norm has a positive impact on a tourist’s behavioral intention toward intangible cultural heritage tourism consumption.
  • H6: Perceived behavior control has a positive impact on a tourist’s communication behavioral intention toward intangible cultural heritage tourism consumption.

Based on the TPB and principles, and the relationship between the hypotheses, a research framework was developed, as shown in Figure 2 .

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Research framework.

Measurement

Drawing on previous studies and the exhibition case of this research, we construct the behavioral tendency scale. Cultural tourism is a type of cultural consumption behavior. Therefore, our questionnaire survey is not only based on the meaning and function of intangible cultural heritage communication ( UNESCO, 2003 ) and the TPB ( Ajzen, 1991 ; Han and Kim, 2010 ) but also on social identity related to symbolic consumption behavior ( Hogg and Turner, 1987 ; Jetten et al., 2012 ). The contents of the questionnaire of “ICH theme cultural tourism habits scale” included 35 questions. It is divided into three parts: demographic information, the relationship between meaning and social identity, and behavior tendency information. The behavioral tendency scale has 20 questions, categorized into five parts: attitude, subject norm, perceived behavior control, behavior intention, and the meaning of exhibition. All the questions about TPB are assessed by Likert scale with 7 points. The scores were 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7, respectively ( Table 1 ). The sociodemographic features of the participants are shown in Table 2 . Table 3 shows the tourists’ cognitive needs differences in the meaning and function of the purple clay tea set. The mean and SD of behavior and attitudinal measurement problems are shown in Table 1 . Informed consent was obtained from each subject after providing an explanation of the study.

Means and standard deviations of all questions of the measurement.

Participant’s sociodemographic features [sample demographics ( N = 105)].

Cognitive needs and cognitive level of the purple clay pot.

Sampling Method

Purple clay culture is representative of Chinese ceramic culture. The traditional handicraft artistry of purple clay utensils has been listed in the national intangible cultural heritage protection list of China. In this study, Yixing’s purple clay cultural ecological zone in traditional street shops and the purple clay Museum of tourists’ behaviors are taken as the research objects. A questionnaire survey was conducted in China Yixing ceramics museum, Huishan ancient town, and Shushan old street. The survey was conducted by convenient sampling among the tourists from the three previously mentioned places. The specific sampling methods are as follows: first, the questionnaire is generated into two-dimensional code through the questionnaire star platform; second, the two-dimensional code is printed on the paper card, and the sampling population is randomly selected at the sampling location. After scanning the QR code through WeChat, the sample population can complete the questionnaire through the digital platform. All participants received a brief training, and 116 samples were generated by a convenient sampling method, of which 105 were valid questionnaires, with a 90.5% effective questionnaires rate.

Respondent Profiles

Among the 105 valid samples, 46 were male and 59 were female, accounting for 43.81 and 56.19% of the samples, respectively. In terms of age distribution, 20–25 age group is 57.78%, 26–30 age group is 14.29%, 30–40 age group is 16.19%, and 40–60 age group is 11.42%. Most of the people who participated in the survey were young, with college students and newly employed people as the key group (affected by the COVID-19, tour groups for the middle-aged and the elderly have been canceled; in addition, most of the “free travel” tourists are young people, which is the main reason for this age distribution). In terms of education level, 84.76% of the population had a college degree or above. With respect to the income level, 63.81% of the effective samples failed to reach the local average income level of 7,000 yuan, and only about one-third of the people reached or exceeded the local average income level. The urban population exceeded the sub-urban samples, accounting for 93.33%. In the research on the purpose of tourists’ contact with purple clay culture, 60.58% of them are leisure for better health, and 21.15% are collection and investment. Only 3.85% showed off their tastes and socialized. According to the data, most tourists’ interest in purple clay display information focuses on the meaning aspects of production artisanship, shape implications, and creation reasons.

Examination of the Offending Estimate

According to the two conditions of offering estimate examination criteria proposed by Hair et al. (2016) , one is whether the negative error variance exists; the second is whether the standardized expression coefficients are higher than or close to 1.0. In this study, the sampling results were sorted. From Table 4 , the error variances are non-negative, ranging from 0.020 to 0.038, and the standardized regression coefficients are between 0.614 and 0.981. The results show that the entire model can be tested.

Test results of offending estimate.

Reliability and Validity

Measurement model analysis.

Before testing the proposed hypotheses, this study used the SPSS analysis function provided by the SPSSAU platform to evaluate the measurement model. Specifically, we employed the online SPSS analysis software in the online data analysis platform “Questionnaire Star” to analyze the individual reliability, reliability, convergence validity, and discriminant validity of each item and conducted relevant tests combined with convergence validity and discriminant validity.

Composite Reliability and Convergent Validity

In this study, the standardized path coefficient, average coefficient of variation, and comprehensive reliability were used to examine the convergent validity of the measurement model. According to Fornell and Larcker (1981) , the comprehensive reliability should be greater than 0.60 and the average value should be greater than 0.50.

The standardized parameter estimates used in confirmatory factor analysis related to behavioral propensity are shown in Table 5 : the factor loading ranges of the attitude dimension are from 0.775 to 0.882; the subjective norm dimension is from 0.815 to 0.952; the perceived behavior control dimension is from 0.839 to 0.922; in the behavior intention dimension, the range is between 0.614 and 0.798; and the factor load range of the meaning demand dimension is from 0.831 to 0.918. For the five potential variables of attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavior control, behavior intention, and meaning demand, the prediction results of the compound variables were as follows: the composite reliabilities were 0.827, 0.930, 0.909, 0.905, and 0.923, and the average values were 0.715, 0.831, 0.832, 0.839, and 0.812, respectively.

Composite reliability and convergent validity.

The results show that the comprehensive reliability of each dimension is >0.60; the average value is >0.50, indicating that the internal quality of the model is good, with the required composite reliability and convergent effectiveness.

Discriminant Validity

In this study, we examined whether the correlation coefficient between the two dimensions was 1.0 ( Torkzadeh et al., 2003 ) to verify if there was a statistical difference between the two dimensions. As shown in Table 6 , discriminant validity exists among the dimensions.

Empirical results of hypotheses.

Hypotheses Testing

In this study, the values of structural equation modeling are consistent with the criteria of model fitness. The analysis values are shown in Table 6 and Figure 3 . The results show that the hypothesis causality proposed in this study has statistical significance at different levels of probability ( Gladence et al., 2015 ). Hypothesis 1—the meaning has a significant and positive impact on attitude (β = 0.452, p < 0.001); Hypothesis 2—meaning to subjective norm (β = 0.671, p < 0.001); Hypothesis 3—meaning to perceptual behavior control (β = 0.568, p < 0.001); Hypothesis 4—attitude to behavioral intention (β = 0.146, p < 0.001); hypothesis 5—subjective norm to behavioral intention (β = 0.247, p < 0.001); and Hypothesis 6—perceived behavior control over behavioral intention (β = 0.588, p < 0.001). The results show that all of them have positive effects. Therefore, the hypotheses are supported.

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Model design for this research.

The results of the data analysis show that the meaning demand of exhibition content is a strong predictor of attitude, subjective norms, and perceived behavior control. The values of the three paths were as follows: in the case of subjective norms, the β value was 0.671, the R 2 value was 0.354; in the case of subjective behavior control, the β value is 0.568, the R 2 value is 0.544; these two situations are significantly higher than the values of attitude (β = 0.452, R 2 = 0.253). In the traditional TPB model, the three antecedent beta value coefficients of behavioral intention are 0.146, 0.247, and 0.588, respectively. The three antecedents explained 0.721 of the variances of behavioral intention. According to Han and Kim (2010) , an R 2 of about 0.7 indicates a high predictability of behavioral intention.

The results show that the demand sensitivity of subjective norms and perceived behavior control to the meaning of exhibition content is higher than the structural sensitivity to attitude. This may indicate that the demand dimension of content meaning has a relatively important relationship with group cognition, social identity, and ability improvement. It also indicates that strengthening the meaning of exhibition content may become an important way to enhance the protection and dissemination of ICH under the background of cultural and tourism integration. It is also important to realize tourists’ social and self-identity and enhance their cultural confidence by experiencing the ICH-themed tourism activities section.

Discussion and Conclusion, Contributions, and Suggestions

Discussion and conclusion.

In the first part of this paper, we addressed the cultural tourism as an important form for tourists to experience culture. One of the core demands of tourists to experience local culture is to experience the intangible cultural heritage of local communities. From the perspective of tourists’ demand and content adaptive systems, tourists need intelligent navigation to guide their visiting behavior and cognitive demand prediction system suitable for intangible cultural heritage content. Although there are rich research results on the application of digital technology in navigation system, such as indoor positioning ( Carboni et al., 2015 ; Wang et al., 2015 ; Yang and Shao, 2015 ; Wu et al., 2017 ), auxiliary equipment ( La Delfa et al., 2016 ; Meliones and Sampson, 2018 ), and AR and VR navigation solutions ( Marto and Goncalves, 2019 ; Wang, 2019 ), the researches on the satisfaction mechanism of tourists’ personalized needs are relatively insufficient. As for the meaning construction of the content of the guide system in the process of intangible cultural heritage communication to tourists, researchers believe that there is no design paradigm that can meet the content framework design of dynamic complex navigation system in the context of cultural tourism.

The purpose of this study is to use the theory of planned behavior to calculate the relationship among tourists’ attitude, experience behavior, and the need to show the meaning of information. Through the verification of the relationship between the meaning information of intangible cultural heritage and tourists’ cognition, attitude, and behavior, this paper puts forward the view that the content design framework of intangible cultural heritage display intelligent navigation system should pay attention to meaning. The results of this paper provide a direction for the design framework of the next generation intelligent navigation system. By analyzing the interaction between tourists and tour guide system in the process of cultural tourism, the guide system can identify the personalized content needs of tourists. Under the content framework to meet the needs of tourists, the diversified combination of meaning information and functional information in the content of navigation system is realized through meaning innovation design, so as to achieve the goal of intelligent navigation system and personalized content presentation.

Through a questionnaire survey and empirical data analysis, with the help of planned behavior theory, this paper verifies that the “significance” of intangible cultural heritage dissemination content is an important factor affecting tourists’ attitude and behavior. The research data verify that the innovative design of displaying the meaning of information is the key to providing tourists with experience satisfaction. Meaning innovation can give different explanations and reasons for why intangible cultural heritage “why spread” ( Verganti, 2016 ) combined with tourism context. Tourists can get the explanation and reason for the different “tastes” embodied in the same intangible cultural heritage display content by means of interactive behavior, enhancing their satisfaction and sense of identity. The deficiency of this study is that the TPB model is based on rational reasoning ( Fishbein and Ajzen, 1975 ; Ajzen, 1985 ; Hsu, 2006 ), while the cognitive needs and emotional experience of tourists in cultural tourism are not only rational but also perceptual to a large extent ( Lin et al., 2020 ). Therefore, emotional computing will become an important method to further improve the follow-up research in this paper.

This study’s hypotheses are supported by its findings. The meaning of the navigation system’s content is closely related to the attitude and behavior of tourists toward the dissemination and experience of intangible cultural heritage. There is a positive correlation between tourists’ perceived demand for the meaning of exhibition content and tourists’ participation. Through the demand degree of content meaning elements, tourists’ attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavior control can be predicted. The results show that mining the meaning of the display content for crowd attributes has a clear causal relationship with subjective norms and perceived behavior control. Perceived behavioral control also has a significant effect on behavioral intention. It is noteworthy that the influence of attitude antecedents on behavioral intention is relatively weak. This also shows that when the TPB is applied to different research fields, it cannot capture every decision-making behavior, which also supports the views ( Han and Kim, 2010 ; Chang et al., 2014 ) that TPB needs to be modified and perfected when studying specific empirical phenomena.

For the comparative study of the content design function factors and meaning elements of the display guide system, the sample size of the model proposed in this study is relatively small, with a sample size of 105. Although the small sample size can also meet the model validation requirements of a small number of elements to a certain extent ( Hair et al., 2016 ), because of objective factors, such as the time and place of the survey, it is difficult to determine qualified and sufficient visitors to participate in the survey. Therefore, the small sample size is a limitation of this study. For example, more than 70% of the sample size is under 30 years old, and nearly 85% of the tourists have received university or higher education. These limitations may affect the results of this study and should be considered.

Theoretical Contributions

As previously mentioned, this study expands the TPB model by adding a variable of information meaning. In the context of cultural tourism, this study reconsiders the influence of meaning as a variable on attitude, social norms, and perceived behavior control related to belief and behavior. Taking tourists’ cultural experience behavior as the research object, this study investigates people’s experience and communication behavior intention of intangible cultural heritage theme cultural tourism, and makes contributions to the meaning innovation design, along with the literature and theory of cultural tourism and intangible cultural heritage display and dissemination. This study emphasizes the meaning of the exhibition content for tourists. It not only conforms to Bourdieu’s (1984) theory that “taste” is affected by the social class but also meets the development needs of museums from “information provider centered” to “information receiver centered” ( Hooper-Greenhill, 2006 ; Recupero et al., 2019 ). These findings provide a theoretical basis for the study. In contact with the meaning of information rather than function, tourists are highly satisfied with the information experience, which also meets the greatest demand for leisure and entertainment in cultural tourism. For tourists, the motivation to arouse cultural consumption is to a large extent the meaning attribute of tourism products, rather than their functional attributes. For example, the attraction of purple clay tea sets comes from the content of “who made it,” “why do it,” and “the reason for creation and the implication of modeling,” rather than the functional information, such as capacity and usage. Among the various factors of displaying intangible cultural heritage projects, meaning is the main motivation to actively participate in and spread culture to meet the emotional experience and knowledge demands of tourists. Meaning can also satisfy tourists and help realize their personal identity and social communication through tourism consumption. Cultural tourism needs sharing, co-creation, and empathy to realize deep experience and social innovation. As emphasized by Ezio (2014) and Verganti (2016) , meaningful innovation and joint participation contribute to the design of the system. The healthy and sustainable development of cultural tourism requires special emphasis on the active participation of tourists and the meaning of innovative design. The theoretical value of this study lies in inheriting the aforementioned academic viewpoints, which is different from the previous research on intelligent navigation system focusing on technology exploration, but develops the personalized and emotional research on the content of intelligent navigation system through meaning innovation.

Empirical Suggestions

The purpose of this study is to explore the relationship between the meaning elements of intangible cultural heritage exhibition related to content design and tourists’ experience, attitude, and behavior. Through the analysis of tourists’ behavioral intention, this paper further discusses the influencing factors of tourists’ behavioral intention from the subjective and objective dimensions. According to the results of the empirical analysis, this paper provides constructive suggestions for intangible cultural heritage protection and communication departments. Two suggestions are put forward to provide some enlightenment for future research on the intangible cultural heritage theme cultural tourism. Based on the research results, the following suggestions are proposed for reference.

First, for cultural tourism tourists, hypotheses 1 and 2 of this study imply that if they have an understanding of the use value and internal significance of intangible cultural heritage product information in cultural tourism, they are more likely to choose and participate in the dissemination and secondary creation of intangible cultural heritage information. Therefore, it is suggested that the departments of intangible cultural heritage protection and communication should not only present the functional elements but also highlight the emotional, psychological, and social significance of information content. The meaning of information has a positive effect on the satisfaction of tourists. As early as 1959, Sidney levy put forward that “consumers not only pay attention to function, but also value the content and meaning of products.” Professor Clayton M. Christensen, a scholar in the field of innovation management, believes that it is very important to accurately locate the intrinsic meaning of products and understand the real motivation of consumers to buy products. According to the aforementioned research results, Roberto Verganti (2016) clearly proposed that products have dual attributes: one is the functional attribute, which primarily involves the function and performance of the product; the other is the internal meaning, which is related to the symbolic meaning, internal characteristics, and emotional factors of the product. In cultural tourism, there are two kinds of information dimensions to attract tourists. First is the use value of the product, which is its functional side. The most intuitive response is product performance, which mainly depends on the development and progress of technology. Second is the intrinsic meaning of the product, which refers to the reason why tourists consume a certain product, that is, the deep psychological and cultural factors that motivate consumers to choose the product. This dimension can be divided into individual motivation and social motivation. Personal motivation is related to the psychological and emotional factors of consumers. For example, the reason someone bought a purple clay tea set is that it can reflect the traditional cultural atmosphere, so that one can get a real-life feel. Social motivation is related to the symbolic meaning and cultural significance of the product, that is, social norms, or how other people evaluate the consumers and products of cultural products. For example, a person’s consumption of purple clay tea sets is to show others their unique taste, life attitude, strong economic strength, or a lot of leisure time. It should be noted that the two dimensions of a product that attracts consumers are not clearly distinguished; sometimes, they overlap and relate to each other. As “function follows inner meaning,” the results show that the design of the information content framework in navigation systems needs to present good cognitive experience to consumers through innovative design of meaning.

Second, for the design of the intelligent navigation system model, the core is the organization and design of the content in the model. Based on the research results, the intensity of demand for meaning cognition can affect perceived behavior control and perceptual behavior control, and subjective norms of tourists have a significant influence on behavior intensity. Therefore, to enhance the positive attitude of tourists, it is suggested that the information design of intangible cultural heritage display content should reflect the entertainment and leisure value pursued by cultural tourism, rather than functional preaching. According to the game theory of information communication ( Stephenson, 1967 esp., chs. 4 and 11), one characteristic of mass communication is “no intention of accomplishing anything, only seeking satisfaction and happiness.” Tourism is not to cope with reality and make a living, nor is it for production. On the contrary, tourism is mostly for self-satisfaction. Therefore, the principle of content design is to ensure that tourists can realize communication pleasure through the navigation system. In addition, the intelligent navigation system needs to establish the interaction between tourists and information to realize the intrinsic meaning of intangible cultural heritage projects. The meaning of information is not an inherent part of the product, nor can it be determined by the design process. The framework of the model should reconstruct the content through the attributes of tourists, which is similar to the “montage” method, to create a possibility. Then, the tourists can interpret the internal meaning of the intangible cultural heritage project through interaction with the information. This is the most popular type of experience.

Suggestions for Future Research

In reviewing the literature, it is found that previous research on intangible cultural heritage theme tourism mainly focuses on the related knowledge, inheritors, and development context of intangible cultural heritage projects, and most of these studies are based on the relevant theories and methods of sociology. Theories and methods of psychology such as TPB are rare in the field of intangible cultural heritage communication. The theoretical contribution of this study lies in the use of interdisciplinary research methods, such as design, psychology, and communication, and it proposes a reference design strategy for display content elements in the field of intangible cultural heritage protection and communication.

Regarding future research, it is worth noting that the influence of the intrinsic meaning of display information on tourists’ emotional attitude and behavioral intention does not show a significant difference in motivation of consumption significance after being included in the TPB model. This result might imply that the factors influencing tourists’ participation in cultural tourism are more extensive. Therefore, it is suggested that further investigation should be carried out, particularly the modernity aspects involved in intangible cultural heritage theme tourism projects. Intangible cultural heritage is a representative of traditional culture deeply recognized by a place. Cultural tourism’s appeal for leisure and entertainment and emotional pleasure needs to explore the contemporary value of traditional culture, explore the strategy of meaning innovation and communication experience path, and realize the new strategy of intangible cultural heritage display and communication from the perspective of cultural tourism.

Data Availability Statement

Ethics statement.

Ethical review and approval was not required for the study on human participants in accordance with the local legislation and institutional requirements. The patients/participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study.

Author Contributions

LM conceived the idea, participated in all steps of the research process, and wrote the first setup and draft of the article. YL made a substantial, direct, and intellectual contribution to this work, edited the article, participated in the interpretation of the results, participated in the compilation of supplementary material, and approved it for publication. Both authors approved the article and agreed to be accountable for all aspects of the work.

Conflict of Interest

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Professor Ruimin Lv for excellent technical support and for critically reviewing the article.

Funding. This research was supported by the Postgraduate Research & Practice Innovation Program of Jiangsu Province (Grant No. KYCX20_1887), Jiangsu Provincial Cultural Research Fund Project (Grant No. 19YB48), the key research topics of Jiangnan culture and Grand Canal cultural belt construction (Grant No. JUSRP12089), Wuxi Social Science Research Fund Project (Grant No. WXSK20-B-30), and the project of philosophy and Social Sciences in Jiangsu Province (Grant No. 2020-SJZDA-138).

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In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Sociology of Tourism

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Sociology of Tourism by Erdinç Çakmak LAST MODIFIED: 23 August 2022 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199756384-0263

The sociology of tourism studies tourists’ relationships, roles, and motivations and the ongoing exchange among tourists, institutions, and host communities. Tourism cannot be treated in isolation since it embodies all tourism practices in a system they operate in. Thus, tourism is a complex sociocultural, economic, and political phenomenon and touches all levels of society. The investigation of tourism’s role in society, the tourism system’s effects on nature, tourism spaces, objects, practices, relationships, and the tourist typologies demand systematic sociological investigations. A researcher needs to consider the whole macro system through its members’ social, political, cultural, and economic interactions. In such a social context, both human and nonhuman actors continuously shape and reshape the tourism system, and the tourism system reshapes these actors’ values, attitudes, and behaviors. Researchers examining the sociology of tourism departed from several theoretical Perspectives , blended theory and method, and focused on sociological concepts to understand and explain the different aspects of tourism. This group of scholars has been working within the several cores of sociology (e.g., education, family, economy, development, religion, gender, language, migration, social inequalities, labor, art) and at the margins of emerging interdisciplinary formations, including those crossing many disciplines such as geography, anthropology, economics, political science, psychology, marketing, communication, women’s studies, history, and cultural studies. The sociology of tourism studies engendered transdisciplinary conversations both in academia and in practice, and the results of these studies have created pragmatic changes in tourism practices, habits, and governance.

Five scholars, judging from the Google Scholar citation counts of their critical works on the sociology of tourism, have contributed to the field in an original and pioneering way. These leading scholars’ abundant and consistent publications have provided the foundation for a sociological approach to tourism. They can be called the established leaders of the sociology of tourism, and are listed here alphabetically: Erik Cohen, Graham Dann, Marie-Françoise Lanfant, Dean MacCannell, and John Urry. Cohen 1972 opposed treating tourists as a homogenous mass and provided a heuristic tourist typology ranging from familiarity to strangeness. Later, Cohen 1984 classified tourism’s sociology into four main areas: tourist as a traveler, tourists’ relationships with hosts, the tourism system, and tourism impacts. MacCannell’s 1973 seminal article on staged authenticity spotlighted the relationship between tourism and (Western) modernity, which became an essential research agenda for the sociology of tourism in the last quarter of the twentieth century. MacCannell 1976 argued that alienated modern tourists are motivated by a quest for authenticity in their travels, but this quest is thwarted through a “staged authenticity” offered by host communities. Dann 1977 sought to answer the question “what makes tourists travel?” and employed the themes of anomie and collective representations in the sociology of tourism research. He combined anomie with status enhancement in a motivational study of tourists and provided the first empirical results of the presentation and profiles of anomic tourists. Besides this approach, Dann 1996 took a sociolinguistic approach and examined the promotional counterpart of tourist motivations in “the language of tourism” using semiotic analyses. Lanfant 1980 emphasized the international dimension of tourism. She argued that tourism is a “total social phenomenon” which challenges identity formation. Lanfant, et al. 1995 transcended the dichotomy between seeing tourism as either business or not business and suggested a novel approach reflecting the fundamental level of reality in tourism practice. Urry 1990 introduced Foucault’s concept of “gaze” into tourism discourse. Urry prioritized the visual sense of gaze and distinguished the tourist gaze as “romantic” and “collective” without concerning other Foucauldian issues of power and authority. By introducing the concept “gaze” into tourism, Urry made a crucial theoretical opening in the sociology of tourism, and other scholars followed him by focusing further on the body and other senses. Later in the decade, Urry 1999 proposed studying journeys, connections, and flows (both physical and virtual movements) as mobile theories and mobile methods and that this be placed at the top of the research agenda.

Cohen, E. 1972. Toward a sociology of international tourism. Social Research 39:64–82.

This article stresses the travel dimension of tourism and devises tourist typologies along a continuum from familiarity to strangeness. It emphasizes the differences among tourists and calls for further examination of their travel types’ attitudes, motivations, and behavior.

Cohen, E. 1984. The sociology of tourism: Approaches, issues, and findings. Annual Review of Sociology 10.1: 373–392.

DOI: 10.1146/annurev.so.10.080184.002105

This is a crucial academic text for understanding the classification of the sociology of tourism. Cohen classifies tourism into four main areas: tourists, their interaction with hosts, the tourism system, and tourism impacts. Following this article, scholars have given more attention to systematic empirical research in the field.

Dann, G. M. 1977. Anomie, ego-enhancement and tourism. Annals of Tourism Research 4.4: 184–194.

DOI: 10.1016/0160-7383(77)90037-8

This paper maintains that tourists’ anomie (i.e., absence of the general societal and ethical standards) needs to be investigated at the pre-travel level. This sociopsychological research is the first empirical research of tourists’ attitudes and behavior and it provides a firmer theoretical and empirical footing to the literature on tourist profiles.

Dann, G. M. 1996. The language of tourism: A sociolinguistic perspective . Wallingford, UK: CAB International.

This book analyzes the verbal framing of tourists’ experiences. Paradigms on social control, the tourist as a child, and the tourism media from the printed word to television screen have been brought together with semiotic analyses at a quality level.

Lanfant, M. F. 1980. Introduction: Tourism in the process of internationalisation. International Social Science Journal 32.1: 14–43.

This article captures the multipolarity of tourism as a particular form of consumption. The author provides insights into world tourism organizations and the role of international bodies and tour operators by using the methodological principles of systems analysis.

Lanfant, M. F., J. B. Allcock, and E. M. Bruner, eds. 1995. International tourism: Identity and change . London: SAGE.

This book offers a novel approach in examining how tourism transcends individual societies and has become an international fact. It emphasizes the necessity of understanding the local and global developments simultaneously. The volume argues that local social practices cannot be understood independently of the global, and that the global practices are never independent of the local setting in which they operate.

MacCannell, D. 1973. Staged authenticity: Arrangements of social space in tourist settings. American Journal of Sociology 79.3: 589–603.

DOI: 10.1086/225585

This academic article and the ensuing book have dominated the discussions in the sociology of tourism in the last quarter of the twentieth century. This study describes the alienation of Western tourists and their search for authentic experiences in other times and places while hosts modify a cultural practice for tourism.

MacCannell, D. 1976. The tourist: A new theory of the leisure class . New York: Schocken.

This is the most influential book in the sociology of tourism and it portrays the role of tourists in postindustrial society. Tourists seek meanings to their deepest longings and travel as pilgrims to the secular world, paying homage to various attractions that are symbols of modernity.

Urry, J. 1990. The tourist gaze: Leisure and travel in contemporary societies . London: SAGE.

This book takes a postmodernist perspective and describes the foundation of tourist behavior in the form of a tourist gaze. Here tourism becomes a performance and acts as a central element in the broad cultural changes in contemporary society.

Urry, J. 1999. Sociology beyond societies: Mobilities for the twenty-first century . London: Routledge.

In this book, Urry suggests the necessity of replacing the examination of society as the traditional basis of sociology from bounded clusters and objects of a region to networks and fluids in the borderless world. The book studies the physical and virtual movements of people, ideas, messages, money, and waste products across international borders.

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Building Cross-Cultural Relationships in a Global Workplace

  • Andy Molinsky
  • Melissa Hahn

meaning culture tourism

Six elements to keep in mind as you’re trying to forge bonds.

Most of us never consider how culture shapes our expectations and assumptions about relationship building. But research shows that our cultural upbringing influences how we form and maintain connections with others — often quite significantly. This article identifies six core elements of the relationship code: where relationship building takes place, who can initiate relationships with whom, what kinds of relationships people attempt to form, what types of personal information people share, how people present themselves in the early stages of getting acquainted, and how quickly we expect to establish a working sense of trust and rapport. These elements are at the root of the confusion and misunderstanding that can occur when people attempt to build relationships across cultures. By paying attention to these six elements, global workers will gain insight into why things may “feel different” when getting to know their colleagues. They may even discover they have more in common with their colleagues than they thought.

As he refreshed his email for what felt like the hundredth time, Partha Shah still couldn’t believe what he was seeing: a job offer from one of the Fortune 100 global technology companies he had dreamed about since starting business school. His application had been a longshot — he didn’t have the quantitative chops the company was looking for. But Partha did bring many other things to the table, like his marketing internships, a keen sense of strategy and design, and the ability to seamlessly interact across cultures. This last talent came naturally: He had easily made friends with students from nearly every continent, he followed creators from around the world to stay up on global trends, and he leapt at any chance to travel abroad. Given his deep interest in cultures near and far, the part of his new job that he was least worried about was the multicultural aspect.

meaning culture tourism

  • Andy Molinsky is a professor of Organizational Behavior and International Management at Brandeis University and the author of Global Dexterity , Reach , and Forging Bonds in a Global Workforce . Connect with him on LinkedIn and download his free e-booklet of 7 myths about working effectively across cultures .
  • Melissa Hahn teaches intercultural communication at American University’s School of International Service. Her new book, Forging Bonds in a Global Workforce (McGraw Hill), helps global professionals build effective relationships across cultures.

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Opinion Fact or ‘American Fiction’? 3 columnists on the best picture nominee.

“ American Fiction ” is up for five Oscars on Sunday, including best picture, best adapted screenplay (by the movie’s director, Cord Jefferson, from Percival Everett’s novel “ Erasure ”) and best actor, for the performance by D.C. native Jeffrey Wright . Post Opinions asked three columnists to watch the movie and then email each other about it — and the issues it raises. An edited transcript of their conversation is below. And if you’re wondering, yes, there are spoilers.

Who decides what is a Black book?

Perry Bacon: What does it mean to do public work (art, film, music, book writing, journalism) as a Black person in “woke America”? That’s a question I think about a lot. “American Fiction” is very explicitly about that question.

I should define my terms, because they are important. In my view, a lot of the racial discourse in the 1980s and 1990s was about “multiculturalism.” The 2000s were about “diversity.” Post-Black Lives Matter, the discourse became more explicitly about Black people, as opposed to “people of color.” And there is more focus on racism, as opposed to “race relations” or “race” broadly. Those are good shifts. (We should also talk about women, Muslims, Jewish Americans and other groups. What’s good is more specificity, as opposed to lumping everyone into a category of “minorities.”)

The complicated part is that powerful White people run America. They are the funders, the donors, the bosses in most cases. So by “woke,” I mean that powerful White people have become more awakened and willing to discuss anti-blackness/Black-White racial disparities than before, but still often are not ready to actually address these issues through policies and actions.

meaning culture tourism

America is also capitalist, of course. So art, music, journalism, etc., must usually connect with (or at least appease) the market and White managers/bosses. When Monk, the main character played by Jeffrey Wright in “American Fiction,” says something along the lines of, “My book is a Black book because I’m Black and I wrote it,” he’s getting at a really important issue. I would like to live in a world where Black people decide what counts as a Black book. I think most White power brokers would say they agree.

But in reality, if you want your book/article/play/movie to be heavily promoted by your company (usually run by White people), it will need to fit their definition of what counts as a Black book and one they want to promote. (Your company might agree, for example, that a documentary about reparations is a Black product and also feel it is too radical for them to promote heavily.)

We all work at an institution where most of the bosses and the owner (Jeff Bezos) are White. So sometimes, when I get praise for my work by our managers, I have two questions. Am I producing work that an institution dominated by Black people would also appreciate? Second, does a Black person doing good work at The Washington Post mean they are kowtowing to the institution’s definition of Blackness? (I suspect the answer to both questions is yes. They are not totally contradictory.)

What did you guys think of the movie? Did it raise similar questions for you — or different ones?

Ted Johnson: You’re right, Perry — what it’s like to be Black in a woke America is the central question of the movie. Being able to get a third-party perspective on something you’ve been through makes for a good movie.

Yet I kept waiting for the moment when all the talent on the screen would hit me with an insight or different view about being Black in today’s America that I hadn’t yet seen. That may be too big of an ask, but the promise was there.

A new book and the literary world’s reaction to it drive the movie’s plotline, which plays with the complicated business of profiting from performative racial stereotypes. The folks with the most power get an outsize voice in which stories and frameworks get a platform. The most prevalent ones can become the defining ones. And many times, the decisions in this regard are made without consideration of the people who, in this instance, are Black.

What’s it like to be one of them? A writer who’s so disgusted with literary blackface that he’s going to mock them all by wearing it, just to show them how ridiculous it all is? But then they love it. And it’s profitable. And he needs the money. Now what?

Again, that’s a good movie. But I wanted the cultural commentary to poke me in the chest a little more with Monk’s personal dilemma as a Black writer.

It’s a particular experience to balance wisdom about how the world works — and needing to make a way in it — with a responsibility to guard your culture from undue external influence. It can be a real quandary. Monk, and the movie, kind of tap dance around that question, unfortunately.

But the cast and the look and feel of the film made that small letdown better. I love how Black and Gen X it is, too, tackling issues lots of us are facing for the first time: making a way in a professional world different from the one that raised us, aging parents and their well-being and care, financial pressures to help family or friends outside your household, loved ones and classmates passing away.

The absurdities of White “woke liberals”

Karen Attiah: I agree that this movie is brilliant and multilayered. It hits a little close to home on many levels, both professionally in journalism and publishing and also personally, navigating changing family relationships as age sets in with my elders.

This movie is about the absurdities of White “woke liberals,” for whom the language of inclusion and allyship masks patronizing behavior, stereotyping, etc., which maintains White power over the types of Blackness that get platformed.

Ten or 20 years ago, we heard a lot about Black people having to “code-switch” in White spaces — be relatable and non-threatening to White people.

Monk represents a new and extreme form of code-switching according to the sensibilities of “woke” White people, who represent a certain type of racial capitalism that is only interested in Black trauma, violence and broken homes.

Part of what makes this movie so compelling and so uncomfortable to watch are the contradictions and tensions that Monk exposes and experiences, but also embodies as a flawed character himself. In more ways than one, we see that Monk is judgmental of others, including his own family, girlfriend and, of course, successful black author Sintara Golden (played by Issa Rae). He believes Golden doesn’t deserve her success because of her education and her privilege — meanwhile he doesn’t even bother to read her book. He claims that White America isn’t interested in the nuances of Black experiences that don’t have to do with trauma, but we see that he is distant from his family, doesn’t know what is going on with them and looks down on his gay, plastic surgeon brother who is struggling after a divorce.

Perry Bacon: Two scenes from the movie will stick with me. The first is when there are five judges (three White, two Black) who are deciding which book will win an award. The three White judges choose the Black-authored book full of cringy stereotypes about Black people, over the objections of the two Black judges. One of the White judges, justifying her decision, says, “It’s time to listen to Black voices,” as the two Black judges look down.

That perfectly captured the dynamics of today. “Listen to Black voices,” “Trust Black women,” all of these mantras that became popular in 2020 are, of course, overly simplistic. But even if an organization decides to listen more to its Black staffers, the obvious question is, “Which Black voices are we listening to?” After the 2020 protests, it became clear that Democratic Party leadership (mostly White) was going to listen to some Black voices (Rep. James E. Clyburn of South Carolina and other Black folk in the political establishment) and not others (the activists who called for defunding the police).

There is a second scene that I will remember — because it fell flat. The two Black authors, played by Rae and Wright, are debating the merits of the book written by Rae’s character.

I was hoping for a really forceful debate about Black art and how much it should try to appease the market and White power brokers. But the film seemed unwilling to go there. The scene implies that Wright’s character might just be depressed or snobby or envious of Rae’s character’s success. I agree that people’s motives are often complicated. But I wanted the film to lean more into “Black art is suffering from wokeness,” or “Black art is not really suffering from wokeness” or an alternative position. I wanted the film to say something, and it felt like punches were pulled there.

How do we talk of the Black elite?

Karen Attiah: The scene with Monk and Golden did stick out to me. What I find interesting about it is its ambiguity. Monk assumes Golden’s book is bad and pandering without having even read it. She tells him that her book is based on actual research and interviews with Black people. Meanwhile, he just made up characters out of thin air. Both Monk and Golden are highly educated, privileged Black people, also themselves gatekeepers in a way. How do we talk of the “Black elite,” the “ Talented Tenth ” who are chosen to speak for and about the Black experience? Did Golden handle that task more responsibly by basing her work on interviews? I wish we got more insight into her. She knows how the system works, and instead of fighting it, she uses it to her advantage.

Ted Johnson: I love that we’re lingering on this moment in the movie. The Monk-Golden exchange was one of the film’s flashes of brilliance. It uses a little story twist to shock the audience out of its preconceived notions. When Golden tells Monk her characters are based in pavement-pounding qualitative research, my jaw slipped just like Monk’s. And Issa Rae as Golden perfectly delivered the blow in her eyes and tone, never having to say it: Of course I did the work — what serious person doesn’t ?

It’s meant to hit the audience in the gut, asking, “Oh, you thought she was doing racist vaudeville when she was really just sharing her findings?” Dialect is culture. If something about it bothers you, there’s a judgment in there about how you see the people who use it. This gets to the intraracial phenomena that Karen raised: The “ Talented Tenth ”. Respectability politics. Which Black is beautiful — the Evans family in the sitcom “ Good Times ,” or the Huxtables of “ The Cosby Show ”? Isn’t the 1970s’ Blaxploitation film genre a distinct art form because it does social commentary and parable and parody all in one?

How important is this cultural conflict?

Perry Bacon: To bridge a bit away from the movie itself, I think it’s worth asking two questions.

How big and important of a problem is the issue that the movie is grappling with — the challenge of being a Black “creative” in a time when there is an appetite for more content produced by Black people but deep disagreement about what that content should be? This is obviously less important than police shootings of unarmed Black people. Does this conflict matter?

And how do you personally grapple with this issue?

Let me start with the first question. Culture matters. Policy matters more, but culture matters. I want more people watching “ The 1619 Project ” documentary series on Hulu and perhaps fewer watching Tyler Perry movies. The Republicans who are trying to ban books and classes that center systemic racism understand this. I think it’s critical in mainstream and left-wing media and cultural spaces to move beyond “diversity” (we have a movie starring a Black woman) and “wokeness” (the characters in our movie say “Black Lives Matter”) to “anti-racism” (our documentary series explains how police departments reject reforms that will make their policies less discriminatory).

Black creators need to be willing to fight for products that challenge the power structure of the country. Managers (usually White) need to stop blocking or softening content created by Black people that challenges power structures.

To put this very directly, I love that Karen’s s columns often challenge the beliefs of both major parties. Her pieces are not, “Here is my life, as a Black woman,” but, “Here is why America should change, informed by my perspective, which includes being a Black woman.”

I reached out to Karen early in my tenure as a columnist. I was complaining about the feedback I had gotten from a piece I had written, from someone I knew from my days in political reporting. Karen said something to the effect of, “You’re free now.” I don’t want to overstate this. I was never not free — I was born in 1980. The Black people in my generation and those who have followed are the freest ever.

But I took Karen’s comment to mean that you can write what you think without the hypothetical political operative/moderate voter/elected official/editor (read: centrist White man) in your head, shadow-editing your columns.

The movie reminded me how obsessed I was with appeasing White power brokers for most of my career, before I became a columnist. Because those power brokers could make or break your career. And I was sad thinking about how I assume most Black people in journalism and other creative fields still have to appease them.

Ted Johnson: Similar to y’all, my background is in a profession where objectivity was a watchword. In my previous military life, opinions about the world around you were best kept out of your work. But as a writer, a moment arrives when you have to give yourself permission to say what you think and how you feel. Out loud and in public. This means letting the world into your thoughts and ideas, giving the audience access to your beliefs and values. There’s a vulnerability required that’s hard to prepare for; you kind of have to experience it.

And then there’s the big question of where your work can do the most public good. For example, if, because of my résumé, White conservatives are willing to hear me out on structural racism or Blackness — do I have a responsibility to lean into a space that isn’t as accessible to lots of Black writers? If I just do me instead, have I become a free rider by refusing to do my part, so to speak, in the pursuit of pro-democracy reforms or modeling dialogue across differences?

There may be financial or professional incentives for choosing a different path, but I do think we have a responsibility — especially as Black opinion writers at The Post — to say what the younger versions of us could not, and what Black folks in lots of places cannot. Not as race representatives, but to exercise rights long denied to folks like us.

Karen Attiah: *Smiles mischievously*

Is this the point where we can grapple with the fact that our White editor wants us, among the few Black WaPo columnists, in a virtual room so that we can be observed and studied in how we think and navigate this world? Are we the subject of a Black Studies inquiry? Haha.

For me, my whole raison d'être of doing this type of work stems from knowing from a pretty early age that Black and African issues, perspectives and, well, humanity were erased and distorted in the West more generally. I have heard trepidation from White colleagues and bosses who say I shouldn’t feel pressure to cover only race or Black things. But frankly, I don’t feel pressured. No one says people who cover, say, politics or economics or foreign policy are being “boxed in” in some negative way. I do have varied interests, yes, but I find it a privilege and an honorable responsibility to dive into the Black world’s past, present and future.

If other audiences find these topics interesting, then that is nice. But it is not my main goal to educate or center non-Black people on Black people. Nor do I think the main goal is to champion every single thing a Black person does (see: my critical pieces on Beyoncé and Kamala Harris ). I think a lot about interviews with novelist Toni Morrison , or Senegalese filmmaker Ousmane Sembène , when they were asked whether they worried about appearing to marginalize Whites or Europe in their work. Morrison rebuts, saying basically, Black people and our stories are the mainstream. Sembène says, “Europe is not my center. … Why be a sunflower and turn toward the sun? I myself am the sun.”

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Movie Interviews

She missed out on 'mean girls' 20 years ago — but busy philipps got a second chance.

Ann Marie Baldonado

Ann Marie Baldonado

meaning culture tourism

Busy Philipps attends the Mean Girls premiere in New York City on Jan. 8, 2024. Arturo Holmes/Getty Images hide caption

Busy Philipps attends the Mean Girls premiere in New York City on Jan. 8, 2024.

When the 2004 blockbuster Mean Girls came out, Busy Philipps was irked. "I was jealous that I wasn't in it, to be honest," she says. "I couldn't even audition for it because I was filming White Chicks ."

Twenty years later, Philipps is making up for that missed opportunity, playing Mrs. George, mother of queen bee Regina George, in the new musical film version of Mean Girls . A mother of two, Philipps says she found Mrs. George's quest for her daughter's approval particularly relatable.

"I am famous. People think I'm cool. But you [are] just never cool to your kids. Ever," she jokes.

Philipps says she feels especially lucky for the chance to work with Mean Girls writer and actor Tina Fey . In the comedy series Girls5eva , which Fey also co-produced, Philipps plays a member of a girl group trying to make it decades after their one hit.

Is the musical 'Mean Girls' fetch, or is it never going to happen?

Pop Culture Happy Hour

Is the musical 'mean girls' fetch, or is it never going to happen.

Philipps got her start in Hollywood when she was 19, playing tough girl Kim Kelly on the critically acclaimed — but short-lived — series Freaks and Geeks. She says Fey and Freaks and Geeks creator Paul Feig are among the few producers who never asked her to change her body for a role.

'Girls5eva' Is Just Catchy Enough

'Girls5eva' Is Just Catchy Enough

"God, so many things were asked of me," she says of her previous Hollywood roles. "I've been asked to lose weight like a billion times. I was told at one point to consider having all my moles removed from my neck and face and my body."

Philipps reflected on her career and the sexism she faced in Hollywood in the 2018 memoir, This Will Only Hurt a Little.

Interview Highlight

On playing Mrs. George in the 2024 musical movie Mean Girls

I'm in the Mean Girls movie for, I don't know, 10 minutes? I have no idea, not that long, but I love figuring out what makes that character kind of heartbreaking too. ... How can I show the full range of personhood [for] these characters that [are] kind of two dimensional on the page? ...

I tried the best I could to sort of imbue the character with that thing of, like, she's been waiting her whole life to have girlfriends who love her, and she has these girls around her, and she's still on the outside looking in, and she's like, even as a mom, what's wrong with me? I just think it's so deeply relatable and sad and just kind of breaks your heart. So that was how I approached this comedic role.

On working with Tina Fey on the new Mean Girls and Girls5eva

I don't know how I got so lucky, except that I'll take it and I'm so glad. I'm so grateful for it, because I did spend so much of my early career wanting to be in the boys' club of comedy, and always feeling like I don't understand why I'm not. I just don't get it. Why am I not in this club? ...

I was such a huge, huge fan of hers. Of course her career meant everything to me. Like there was nothing better than 30 Rock . It made me laugh so hard. And I didn't understand how there were so many jokes. It's so dense. I mean, that's what sometimes on Girls5eva , I'm like, I don't even know what this is, but I'm going to say it because I assume it's a joke. ...

Tina Fey Reveals All (And Then Some) In 'Bossypants'

Author Interviews

Tina fey reveals all (and then some) in 'bossypants'.

I've gotten to work with her in so many different capacities, both as a producer who's pitching me jokes for my show, helping us break it and figure out what it is, and then handing me these amazing roles: Summer on Girls5Eva and now Mrs. George.

On how her lisp as a child led her to performing

I had a lisp when I was little. I was like Cindy Brady. ... I couldn't say my R's or my Th's or my S's, in first grade and second grade. And then I got a speech therapist. ... But my mom kind of convinced me to do this poem in the talent show, which had a lot of the aforementioned letters that were hard for me. But I worked so hard on it because I wanted to do really well, and I wanted to make people laugh. It was like a silly poem. And I did it and it felt so good. And then I was like, "Oh, this is the thing. Everybody has to look at me. And if I do it right, they're gonna laugh and they're gonna clap and everybody's gonna be looking at me."

On the collaborative environment on the Freaks and Geeks set

From 'Freaks and Geeks' to 'Barbie,' this casting director decides who gets on-screen

From 'Freaks and Geeks' to 'Barbie,' this casting director decides who gets on-screen

I was 19 when I did the pilot of Freaks and Geeks . The set was incredible. Everyone was really young. Judd Apatow and Paul Feig and Jake Kasdan were at the helm, and they were so respectful of all of us kids as being valid and having a voice in what we were doing. I didn't understand that that's not how television worked, or movies or entertainment for that matter, because it felt so collaborative. ... The way that they made that show was with such heart and such love for the characters, and they really extended that to us in a way that was so I know now rare and and so generous.

Heidi Saman and Susan Nyakundi produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Beth Novey adapted it for the web.

A single orca killed a great white shark in a shocking 2 minutes. This hunting behavior could mean problems for the fishing industry and tourism.

  • A killer whale was observed hunting and eating the liver of a great white shark alone.
  • Scientists said the event revealed new insights about the hunting proficiency of orcas.
  • The ecosystem impacts of shark-hunting killer whales could affect commercial fishing and tourism.

Insider Today

Researchers observed a single killer whale slaying a great white shark and eating its liver , providing new insights about the hunting practice that could foreshadow potential problems for the fishing industry.

A paper published Friday in the African Journal of Marine Science detailed the event, which occurred in June 2023 off the coast of South Africa.

The research team watched as a male killer whale known as Starboard approached the juvenile white shark and "gripped the left pectoral fin of the shark and thrust forward with the shark several times before eventually eviscerating it," the study said, adding: "Remarkably, the period from seizing the shark by the pectoral fin to eviscerating it lasted less than 2 minutes."

Shortly after the attack, researchers on another boat captured photos of Starboard with "a bloody piece of peach-colored liver in its mouth," according to the paper.

Starboard has been observed killing white sharks in the past however, he usually hunts with a male companion named Port. The study said Port was present during the attack, but he kept his distance, and Starboard acted alone.

The orcas have been hunting white sharks and eating their livers off the coast of South Africa for years. Rare drone footage captured for Discovery Channel's Shark Week in 2022 showed killer whales preying on a white shark .

But the lone orca attack was a rarer phenomenon.

"This sighting revealed evidence of solitary hunting by at least one killer whale, challenging conventional cooperative hunting behaviors known in the region," Alison Towner, lead author on the study and a doctoral researcher at Rhodes University, told CNN .

In a video post of the incident shared by the Earth Legacy Foundation , Towner said the predation "represents unprecedented behavior underscoring the exceptional proficiency of the killer whale."

Researchers say much is still unknown about the larger ecosystem implications of shark-hunting killer whales.

In 2022, another study published by the African Journal of Marine Science , for which Towner was also the lead author, suggested white sharks were fleeing a common aggregation site off South Africa because of the killer whales.

But scientists still don't know exactly where those white sharks are going.

"As they relocate, they might end up overlapping with heavy commercial fisheries," Towner told CNN.

A study published in October in the journal Ecological Indicators suggested that some of the white sharks migrated east of the area where they were being hunted by orcas.

The loss of white sharks in South Africa's waters could also impact tourism, as visitors from all over the world travel to the area to observe the predators.

"Over two decades of annual visits to South Africa, I've observed the profound impact these killer whales have on the local white shark population," Primo Micarelli, a marine biologist and an author on the paper, told CNN.

"Despite my awe for these predators, I'm increasingly concerned about the coastal marine ecology balance," he added.

Watch: Scientists reveal the truth about shark attacks

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Is This Hollywood’s #MeanToo Moment?

#metoo forced a reckoning with sexual misconduct. now a different sort of behavior is getting a turn in the hot seat..

Monster. Nightmare. Demeaning. Abusive. Rage issues.

These are the words that production members of Netflix’s Queer Eye recently provided Rolling Stone to describe Jonathan Van Ness , the hit reality show’s nonbinary grooming expert. Published on Tuesday, the magazine’s exposé painted an ugly picture of behind-the-scenes culture on the feel-good series, as well as the off-screen behavior of Van Ness, whose public image had been, until this point, far rosier. Van Ness, arguably the breakout personality from the contemporary reboot of the 2003 series, reportedly had a habit of yelling repeatedly at others on set—so much so that, per Rolling Stone, Netflix executives met with them about their behavior, to no avail.

“[There’s] a real emotion of fear around them when they get angry,” one person told the magazine. “It’s almost like a cartoon where it oozes out of them.” (Netflix representatives did not respond to a request for comment about the Rolling Stone story, and no cast members from the show gave a statement to the magazine.)

The Van Ness allegations—described as the star’s “ mean too moment ” by podcaster Angel Money on X, adopting a phrase that appeared in a 2021 New York Times piece about bullying in the media—are just the latest in a series of stories about abusive behavior by Hollywood figures. In recent years, production members have spoken out about the “toxic” work culture of The Ellen DeGeneres Show and The Kelly Clarkson Show , shocking fans of the cheery chat programs. Power producers like Oscar winner Scott Rudin and Buffy the Vampire Slayer creator Joss Whedon have effectively become personae non gratae in the entertainment industry due to their alleged abusive treatment of others, while actors like Lea Michele and Bill Murray have also each been accused by co-stars of being bullies. And just last week, Dune star Rebecca Ferguson shocked fans when she revealed that an unnamed former co-star had once screamed at her so intensely on set that she subsequently refused to work with them.

“Because this person was No. 1 on the call sheet, there was no safety net … so no one had my back. And I would cry walking off set,” Ferguson said in an interview on the Reign With Josh Smith podcast. “I remember thinking, that time I was so scared—I feel it now when I’m saying it, but I thought, It shouldn’t have to be that way .”

Following the public reckoning with sexual misconduct sparked by #MeToo in 2017, a so-called second-wave movement has been slowly building steam —this time centered primarily on workplace bullying and general asshole comportment. This movement has exposed abusive behavior across a number of fields, including politics and sport s, in countries including the U.S. , the U.K. , and South Korea . But it’s the entertainment industry that has come under particular attention, perhaps simply because of the public and media fascination with it. In a trade that has long been synonymous with dictatorial studio bosses or demanding diva actors of all genders, expectations are changing about what behavior is and is not acceptable.

“I think people are noticing there isn’t any reason to behave that way,” Maikiko James, senior director of programs at the advocacy group Women in Film, said. “We know there are plenty of bosses who can treat their reports kindly and with compassion, even if they’re under pressure and on a timeline. I think people understand the culture can change. It doesn’t have to stay this way, even in a highly pressurized industry like Hollywood.”

In January, the Hollywood Commission on Eliminating Sexual Harassment and Advancing Equality, an organization founded in the wake of the #MeToo movement, released the findings of its 2022–23 industry survey of more than 5,000 entertainment professionals. The commission, which is headed by Anita Hill , found that overall rates of bullying behaviors were largely unchanged from its previous report, in 2020. Nearly 1 in 10 respondents reported being insulted, humiliated, or yelled at by a colleague, with rates highest among women and younger people.

Malia Arrington, executive director of the Hollywood Commission, said the increased attention to bullying in Hollywood can be linked to #MeToo. Although the two movements have different goals, Arrington said, she views them as “interrelated.”

“What we know is that the more you allow bullying, the more you allow a toxic culture, the more likely you are to see every other kind of harassment,” she said.

Three top Hollywood producers who spoke with Slate on condition of anonymity, in order to speak without fear of repercussion, said they too had noticed a broader cultural change in their industry following #MeToo. “When people started looking at bad behavior, they started looking at other kinds of bad behavior and saying, ‘Wait. Why do we have to tolerate this?’ ” said an award-winning film producer.

In addition to #MeToo, part of this change has been generational. In the past, there was a widely held expectation in Hollywood that low-ranking workers would put up with abuse from top figures in order to climb the ladder. James with Women in Film said many of her members have shared stories with her about this onetime norm. “Especially if you were a woman or someone from an underrepresented community, there were expectations that you would grin and bear it,” she said.

One television producer and showrunner said that enduring this kind of experience functioned as a “shadow résumé” of sorts. “People could look at places you’d worked, bosses you’d had, and the fact that you came out unscathed meant that you were a real trouper and a professional who can take what happens next,” this producer said.

But younger people have shown themselves to be less likely to accept behaviors that had previously been considered normal and have instead been more willing to push for change, according to Arrington at the Hollywood Commission. “This next generation of creatives and workers who are coming up through the industry have a very different idea and a very different set of expectations about how they want to be treated in the workplace,” she said.

Social media has given workers an additional platform to find others who have experienced similar behavior or to speak out about abuse, in turn drawing media attention that might not have previously been there. “There are more outlets for people to speak and more safety in numbers,” said a second television showrunner.

Amid a year marked by long-running strikes by both actors and writers , the growing power of labor unions has also been felt in recent years as they push for broader workplace protections.

The media’s increasing willingness to now report out this workplace bullying is fueling much of the fear and culture change in Hollywood. Krystie Lee Yandoli, a Rolling Stone reporter who in 2020 broke the news about the culture at The Ellen DeGeneres Show while she was working for BuzzFeed News (where I served as her editor, although not on that story), said the #MeToo movement emboldened her sources to feel confident speaking with her. But ultimately, she said, the public’s interest in these stories is what will continue to push journalists to expose bad behavior.

“I think readers will always be interested in learning about what goes on behind the scenes with their favorite celebrities and public figures in entertainment,” Lee Yandoli said. “There’s also a lot of interest in uncovering unknown truths and learning something new about something they previously didn’t realize was happening.”

The producers who spoke with Slate said there were several factors baked into the industry that contribute to why bad behavior by top talent had been tolerated for so long. First and foremost is the financial pressure people are under to produce a finished product. Tens of millions of dollars may be invested in some projects, meaning that once actors—especially big-name ones—have signed contracts, their power effectively multiplies.

“Talent owns you. Once you sign on the dotted line and they are fitting costumes, the actors are in charge. They can do almost anything,” said the first showrunner. “We sort of go through this charade with HR and propriety and standards about what’s allowed and not allowable, but once you have millions of dollars on the table, the talent can really pull the leash, and it is your job to jog at their pace.”

Financial imperatives also play into the willingness of others to endure bad behavior from on-set bullies, perhaps out of fear that by speaking up they will be pushed out of a show or that it might end entirely. “I’ve seen cast members put up with abuse because they don’t want to rock the boat and be told that they’re difficult and lose out on the next job,” this first showrunner said. “They don’t want the show to get canceled and lose out on a badly needed second season. People just learn.”

Second, top talent might lash out because they can be under enormous pressure as the faces of a production whose fate may depend on them. Crew members aren’t likely to have trouble finding work if a project flops, but actors, as the public face of a film or series, might. “Its fate rises and falls on whether an audience falls in love with them or is interested in them or not, and that’s a lot of weight to put on people,” said the second showrunner.

Combined with the stress of long hours on set and strict deadlines, this can result in what this showrunner described as a pressure-cooker situation in which tempers flare easily. “By no means do I think that it’s the right thing to do to let off steam publicly,” this showrunner said. “I’m just saying, when it happens I’m not surprised.”

Lastly, while angry outbursts can occur in any industry, there are several factors that are unique to Hollywood, especially the celebrity factor. Top stars might snap at fans who request autographs or selfies at inappropriate moments or feel pressure to constantly maintain a public image that’s at odds with their true selves.

Additionally, James at Women in Film said many newcomers, drawn to fame and glamor, are desperate to break into the notoriously tough industry, making them ripe for all kinds of abuse. “Something that was mentioned in #MeToo, especially for young actresses, was the capacity to take advantage of them because they were ‘willing to do anything’ just to get a role in a film,” James said. “I do think that that mentality is also changing. People realize they don’t need to be exploited to get ahead. They don’t have to endure bullying or bad behavior from a boss in order to have work.”

Although the stories that have emerged about abusive behavior by Hollywood figures continue to grow, the three producers said these reports are just the tip of the iceberg, meaning there are many more left for the media to expose. They described an underground network of sorts in the industry whereby, prior to signing a star for a project, producers will call others to get honest feedback on what their experience was really like working with that person. “There are certain people where what you hear is a ‘life’s too short’ conversation,” said the movie producer.

The first showrunner recalled texting an actor who had worked with a star they were interested in signing for a show. When a message came back reading “Call me,” the showrunner said they knew that this would be “spicy.”

“I picked up the phone and he goes, ‘Absolutely fucking not. Don’t do it. Don’t do it. Don’t do it.’ And he told me stories that took the paint off that you’ve never heard about this person,” the showrunner said. “Because where are you going to hear them?”

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  1. An Insight Into The World Of Cultural Tourism

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  3. WHAT IS TOURISM?

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  5. STRANGE CITY OF MADAGASCAR

  6. Beyond Sustainability

COMMENTS

  1. Cultural tourism

    Cultural tourism is a type of tourism activity in which the visitor's essential motivation is to learn, discover, experience and consume the tangible and intangible cultural attractions/products in a tourism destination. These attractions/products relate to a set of distinctive material, intellectual, spiritual, and emotional features of a ...

  2. What is cultural tourism and why is it growing?

    The World Tourism Organisation (WTO) (1985) broadly define cultural tourism as the movements of persons who satisfy the human need for diversity, tending to raise the cultural level of the individual and giving rise to new knowledge, experience and encounters. Cultural tourism is commonly associated with education in this way, some describing ...

  3. Tourism and Culture

    This webpage provides UN Tourism resources aimed at strengthening the dialogue between tourism and culture and an informed decision-making in the sphere of cultural tourism. It also promotes the exchange of good practices showcasing inclusive management systems and innovative cultural tourism experiences.. About Cultural Tourism. According to the definition adopted by the UN Tourism General ...

  4. What is Cultural Tourism?

    We expand this definition to encompass the participation of visitors in cultural activities whether those activities are the primary purpose of their travel or not. Why should my organization take action on cultural tourism? Cultural tourism is big business in Florida. Our state attracts more than 100 million visitors per year, and 65% of those ...

  5. What is Cultural Tourism?

    What is Cultural Tourism? Cultural tourism is a type of tourism that allows the tourist to participate in local cultural activities, like festivals and rituals. As a result, the tourist can enjoy a genuine cultural exchange with the locals. It also enables local communities to accept their culture as cultural tourism is a major driver for growth.

  6. What is Cultural Tourism and Why is It Important?

    Cultural tourism is a travel and tourism trend that is here to stay. With more and more accessibility to the world and the people in it, there is peak interest in being able to immersively travel. Peaks an interest to immerse yourself in a particular culture. Creates meanings, stories and understanding between host and guest.

  7. (PDF) What is Cultural Tourism?

    Several authors have defined cultural tourism in various ways (Richards, 2003; Silberberg, 1995), but they all agree in defining it as the displacement of people for cultural purposes. As the OECD ...

  8. Cultural tourism: A review of recent research and trends

    The dynamism of cultural tourism also makes it likely that many new research avenues will open up in future. One of the biggest challenges will be to chart the rapidly changing meanings and interpretations of the term 'culture', which in turn has significant implications for the definition of cultural tourism.

  9. PDF Cultural Tourism: A Review of Recent Research and Trends

    This new definition confirms the much broader nature of contemporary cultural tourism, which relates not just to sites and monuments, but to ways of life, creativity and everyday culture.

  10. Culture, tourism

    As early as the 1970s, tourism researchers claimed that culture is a determinant of the attractiveness of a tourism destination (Ritchie and Zins 1978 ). Unfortunately, the definition of culture is controversial even in cultural anthropology, the social science wherein it is the organizing concept. In an early attempt to explore the nature of ...

  11. Glossary of tourism terms

    Cultural tourism: Cultural tourism is a type of tourism activity in which the visitor's essential motivation is to learn, discover, ... Tourism consumption: Tourism consumption has the same formal definition as tourism expenditure. Nevertheless, the concept of tourism consumption used in the Tourism Satellite Account goes beyond that of tourism ...

  12. Full article: Culture and cultures in tourism

    About the papers. In more detail, the volume includes eight papers contributing to the general topic of "culture and cultures in tourism". The first paper on "the relationship between cultural tourist behaviour and destination sustainability" by Artal-Tur, Villena-Navarro and Alamá-Sabater wonders about how cultural tourism can help to foster the sustainability of destinations.

  13. Popular Culture Tourism: Conceptual Foundations and State of Play

    In sum, based on our definition of popular culture tourism, Figure 3 presents the foundational elements that distinguish the ontological base of this phenomenon from contiguous (and narrower) spheres of tourism activity. These elements include engagement with a broad range of popular expressive practices or everyday leisure pursuits, which are ...

  14. Ethics, Culture and Social Responsibility

    Tourism and Culture. Cultural tourism is a type of tourism activity in which the visitor's essential motivation is to learn, discover, experience and consume the tangible and intangible cultural attractions/products in a tourism destination. These attractions/products relate to a set of distinctive material, intellectual, spiritual and ...

  15. Tourism and Culture Synergies

    Defining and measuring cultural tourism 70. 3.2.1 . Problems of definition 70. 3.2.2 . The size of the global cultural tourism market 74. 3.2.3 . Cultural tourism typologies 77. 3.2.4 . Tourism and cultural synergies in space and time 79. 3.3 . Tourism and culture partnership 81. 3.3.1 . How do tourism and culture benefit each other? 81. 3.3.2

  16. Cultural Tourism from an Academic Perspective

    Cultural tourism is a rather new term that has been much discussed in recent years. Despitemany empirical surveys dealing with the notion of cultural tourism, its definition remains elusive. The ...

  17. PDF The Role and Importance of Cultural Tourism in Modern ...

    existing. In the absence of a uniformly accepted definition, cultural tourism can be characterised both from the perspective of supply and demand and also from the point of view of theoretical and practical approach. We can state that cultural tourism is a very complex segment of the tourism industry, its supply is diverse and versatile.

  18. Tourism

    tourism, the act and process of spending time away from home in pursuit of recreation, relaxation, and pleasure, while making use of the commercial provision of services.As such, tourism is a product of modern social arrangements, beginning in western Europe in the 17th century, although it has antecedents in Classical antiquity.. Tourism is distinguished from exploration in that tourists ...

  19. UNWTO Tourism Definitions

    A tourism destination is a physical space with or without administrative and/or analytical 14 boundaries in which a visitor can spend an. overnight. It is the cluster (co-location) of products and services, and of activities and experiences along the tourism value chain and a basic unit of analysis of tourism.

  20. A Comprehensive Evaluation: The Advantages and ...

    Cultural tourism provides an extraordinary window into different ways of life, but it also risks diluting the deeper meaning and significance of cultural expressions. This has sparked discussions on how to maintain authenticity while promoting cultural tourism.

  21. A Meaning-Aware Cultural Tourism Intelligent Navigation System Based on

    Cultural tourism's appeal for leisure and entertainment and emotional pleasure needs to explore the contemporary value of traditional culture, explore the strategy of meaning innovation and communication experience path, and realize the new strategy of intangible cultural heritage display and communication from the perspective of cultural ...

  22. Tourism culture: Nexus, characteristics, context and sustainability

    Tourism Culture: Tourism culture is relatively undeveloped due to the limited influence of guest culture and the relative distance between that of guests and hosts. ... Lastly, these limitations mean that tourism infrastructure is relatively underdeveloped and characterised by small independent businesses.-Niche tourism is targeted for ...

  23. Sociology of Tourism

    The investigation of tourism's role in society, the tourism system's effects on nature, tourism spaces, objects, practices, relationships, and the tourist typologies demand systematic sociological investigations. A researcher needs to consider the whole macro system through its members' social, political, cultural, and economic interactions.

  24. Building Cross-Cultural Relationships in a Global Workplace

    Most of us never consider how culture shapes our expectations and assumptions about relationship building. But research shows that our cultural upbringing influences how we form and maintain ...

  25. 'Office culture' as we know it is dead. Workers have other ideas

    Pre-2020, office culture was synonymous with the 'cool' office: think places to lounge, stocked pantries and in-office happy hours that went all out; or luxe retreats and team-building exercises ...

  26. Opinion

    The complicated part is that powerful White people run America. They are the funders, the donors, the bosses in most cases. So by "woke," I mean that powerful White people have become more ...

  27. 'Waves in an Impossible Sea' and 'The Blind Spot' Review: Physics and

    Cutting edge science often relies on theoretical models that seem more real than the things they mean to explain.

  28. From 'Freaks and Geeks' to 'Mean Girls': Busy Philipps gives ...

    Philipps plays Mrs. George, a "cool mom" seeking the approval of her teen daughter in the new movie musical version of the 2004 film. Philipps got her start as a teen on the series Freaks and Geeks.

  29. Watch: Scientists reveal the truth about shark attacks

    Scientists saw a single orca kill a great white shark and eat its liver in South Africa, revealing new insights about the hunting practice.

  30. Jonathan Van Ness, Ellen DeGeneres, Lea Michele: Hollywood's culture of

    Monster. Nightmare. Demeaning. Abusive. Rage issues. These are the words that production members of Netflix's Queer Eye recently provided Rolling Stone to describe Jonathan Van Ness, the hit ...