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Sculpted by the elements and inhabited by an established corpus of local families, Kandovan Village is a rare example of functioning cultural heritage largely overlooked by international tourists. Within this context, this chapter demonstrates how heritage sites can use their inherent sociocultural characteristics to stimulate tourism. Leveraging this encourages site managers to draw upon less tangible elements, such as the sincerity of local inhabitants and the potential for their site to serve as a platform for social interaction, in order to engage tourists, stimulate memorable experiences, and encourage repeated visits and recommendations to others. In doing so, this chapter highlights the importance of prior knowledge, word of mouth, and co-creation in crafting cultural heritage tourism experiences.

This study explores the potential of cultural heritage product in the promotion of Kenya's tourism. The Ministry of Tourism Strategic Plan 2008–2012 identified the untapped tourism potential in the areas of eco-tourism, culture, conference and cruise as an opportunity for the future of Kenya's tourism. The report isolated inadequate development of the cultural product as a major weakness in Kenya's tourism. Invention in the cultural heritage tourism product (CHTP) would ease overdependence on beach and wildlife tourism for sustainability and leverage Tourist Destination Kenya's (TDK) competitiveness. This can only be achieved if a blueprint for heritage conservation and tourism is developed and implemented. To achieve its objective, this study employed observation, in-depth interviews and a review of secondary data to investigate current CHTP practices. The research was extended to cultural and heritage site visits. The sites were selected in a non-probabilistic manner based on their cultural significance. The study established that Kenya has a rich CHTP which has not been fully exploited for the purpose of tourism. It observed that the promotion of cultural heritage tourism in Kenya is weakened by lack of proper policies and poor perception of culture as a tourism product. It concluded that cultural tourism has the potential to withstand the ravages of COVID-19 due to its structure and nostalgic characteristics. This study recommends a policy framework heralding effective CHTP management and a post-COVID-19 recovery program marked by new protocols. The study is novel in its methodology, choice of sites and COVID-19 reality.

Sustainable development in support of cultural heritage has become one of the major issues on UNESCO’s agenda. As policy documents are issued, heritage environmental sustainability, local stakeholders’ development and participation and heritage in cases of interregional conflict are the situations they analyze. As such, policy documents will be employed as guidelines for past and future UNESCO World Heritage site registrations. They have been used for the present study of sustainable development within mostly Thai cultural heritage context, with a few cases relating to Cambodia due the lack of research on this topic in the region. Employing qualitative method analysis, most of the heritage sites studied here suffer from a lack of protection against encroachment, natural elements and, more rarely, overuse. Furthermore, the implementation of heritage management plans sees local stakeholders excluded from any participation in the heritage they live in, which may cause conflicts in Southeast Asia.

Cultural heritage destruction, acts that are carried out by both state and non-state actors, have accompanied violence towards people in all types of wars throughout human history. Used as a means to cause terror and to directly perpetuate harm on a particular group of people, heritage destruction ultimately erases the history of the people and denies them a future at the same time. Heritage destruction, as such, is a topic that is directly relevant for conflict and peace economics. Yet, economics literature on heritage destruction, especially during epochs of violence is scant at best. Presenting some examples of heritage destruction during mass atrocities, this chapter discusses how heritage destruction is related to causes, conduct, and consequences of violence. Doing so illustrates how heritage destruction could be incorporated in extant conflict and peace economics studies and their relevance for post-conflict reconstruction and violence prevention.

Purpose: In March 2020, due to the global emergency ensuing from the COVID-19 pandemic, the Italian government closed all national museums, institutes and places of culture heritage and landscape. The shutdown highlighted the need to develop and implement digital solutions, especially through ICTs, to enhance the cultural heritage worldwide by allowing people to go on admiring it, albeit remotely. Numerous initiatives were promoted, such as virtual experiential tours, online collections and ad hoc social and digital programs, all of which contributed to the rich dialogue between people and culture. Although digital initiatives for using and enjoying the cultural heritage have been successfully developed and implemented, in Italy the process of digitalisation of cultural heritage and the services provided are still far from being completed. This chapter investigates the development and implementation of digital technologies in the museums located in the Campania Region in Southern Italy throughout the COVID-19 outbreak to identify and analyse the experiential strategies and initiatives developed through information communication technologies (ICTs) to face the emergency.

Design/Methodology/Approach: By adopting a qualitative methodology, using primary and secondary data sources through a manual content analysis, experiential strategies and initiatives employed by the Campania regional museums when using digital solutions have been identified and categorised.

Findings: Despite the effectiveness of digital initiatives, and the experiences investigated appear both significant and interesting, there is still a need to develop and implement new experiential strategies in this field.

Research Limitations: This study presents several limitations, mostly related to its qualitative explorative nature, but also because its results cannot be generalised.

Practical Implications: These first results outline the need to further develop innovative strategies and initiatives within the museums. The process of digitalisation of cultural heritage and the services provided are still far from completion, potentially providing wide margins of further evolution by means of further investments in technology innovation, to rethink and redesign the traditional management models for enhancing the cultural heritage through digital technology.

Originality: This study provides a portrait of museum experiences supported by digital technologies in a country which plays a crucial role in the field of international cultural heritage. The analysis can also usefully contribute to the existing literature due to the qualitative technique employed for carrying out the multiple case study.

A World Heritage Site (WHS) since 2013, Coimbra, in the centre of Portugal, is already struggling with excess of tourists and with difficult management challenges. A possible solution for this overtourism problem can be the creation of alternative differentiated tourism products in neighbouring, peripheral small towns capable of diverting tourists and visitors from the sites in overload. Cultural routes inspired by landscapes and historical places and personalities can contribute to the affirmation of a collective memory, combining natural and cultural heritage and adding value to existent heritage resources while providing intercultural dialogues and interaction with the visited community and its distinctive values. This research in cultural tourism and education is about a proposal of a walking route for cultural interpretation intended for young visitors. The theoretical framework draws on the importance of designing tourism products that will engage families in quality time and that heritage interpretation products for young visitors can also create an awareness of the importance of cultural heritage and its conservation. Literature review regarding issues of interpretation in tourism as well as on family and educational tourism preceded an inventory which covers natural and cultural resources used as materials in the route manual and activity guide. An important piece of information was collected through a survey aimed at understanding the socio-economical, cultural and attitudinal impacts that were caused by the UNESCO listing of the University of Coimbra, Alta and Sofia as a WHS. The route project demonstrates how cultural tourism can be a driver of local development through adequately designed non-formal educational tourist programmes to foster an in-depth knowledge of destinations. The results point to the importance of destination managers and marketers to focus on providing informal educational activities which can increase the tourist offer and satisfaction of young and family tourism and thereby strengthen a destination competitiveness and value creation. The tourist route challenges young visitors and their families to know the most relevant cultural aspects of the region, allowing them to effectively contribute to local development, as it invites visitors' interaction with the local community.

The conceptualization of smart emerged by technological advancements penetrated the tourism industry with the pace of globalization transformed the destinations providing digitalized products. Even though smart tourism destinations are initiated by advanced technologies, the notion evolved in embracing Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) project economic, social, and environmental proliferation. A tourism destination is counted as “smart” which provides advanced technologies to improve the quality of tourists' experiences and enhance the residents' quality of life. The structure of a smart tourism destination is established on four basic pillars that cover technology, innovation, accessibility, and sustainability issues. Designating the notion of smart into tourism destinations is extremely vital since the shifting paradigm of tourists’ demands concern sustainability. The development of smart in a tourism destination is a crucial concern for destination management organizations (DMOs) integrating key destination components with the dimensions of a smart city to enhance the tourists' satisfaction and competitiveness of the destination. Therefore, one aim of this chapter is to elucidate the association between key destination components with the dimensions of a smart city to reveal the related smart tourism destination applications. Moreover, cultural heritage in smart tourism destinations forms an important part of tourism both with its tangible and intangible resources which have been involved in the emergent era of digitalization inevitably with all parties and processes. Hence, another aim of this chapter is to examine the dimensional shift in cultural heritage tourism within the framework of digitalization. Sharing cases of digitization of cultural heritage from different parts of the world, this chapter also reflects that it is inevitable to benefit from digitization and ICTs in order to reach the SDGs on the scale of smart tourism destinations. Analysis of academic publications and the national and international reports of the related authorities sums the methodology used to conclude the study with suggestions of future research paths to develop the field.

Iranian history, with roots in the oldest civilizations in western Asia, has provided significant heritage, both tangible and intangible, allowing the country to be considered as a major cultural tourism destination for both nationals and foreigners. The focus on Iranian history and heritage aims to confirm the country’s potential for attracting international tourists, while a negative image prevails abroad of a radical theocratic regime with a hostile internal political environment, alongside the instable geopolitical situation of the region. However, the changing political situation, now more secure and safe, allows an attempt to remove these prejudices, which may be achieved through the promotion of heritage and cultural tourism.

Cultural and creative industries (CCIs) have been argued to play an important role in achieving the sustainable development goals (SDGs). However, the mechanisms through which CCIs contribute to the attainment of SDGs remain underexplored. In this study, the authors adopt a network perspective to examine how the structure of a local CCI network relates to its local sustainability performance. By examining a database of 210,182 networked firms out of 1.34 million CCI firms across 294 cities in China, the authors conclude that both the scale and the density of a local CCI network improve the city’s performance in terms of attaining SDGs 8–12. The authors discuss the implications of these findings and propose future research avenues in international business.

The increased use of, and reliance upon, technology and digitalisation, especially in the galleries, libraries, archives and museums [GLAM] sector, has motivated innovative approaches to the curation of cultural material. These changes are especially evident when collaborating with Indigenous partners. Indigenous Data Governance [IDG] and Indigenous Data Sovereignty [IDS], with an emphasis on self-determination of Indigenous peoples, have called for an emerging focus on ethical and culturally sensitive approaches to data collection and management across a range of disciplines and sectors.

This chapter reports on broader discussions, specifically with mid-North South Australia, Indigenous community members around the appropriate and ethical collection, representation and curation of cultural material on Country applying digital formats. It investigates ways to create a ‘future identity’ through built form as well as providing a ‘safe’ place for preservation of their oral histories.

It highlights the many questions raised around the ethically and culturally sensitive aspects of the collection, curation and archiving of Indigenous cultural material. It documents the preliminary outcomes of these conversations in the context of current research on IDS best practices in the field. The non-Aboriginal authors acknowledge our supporting position in the realisation of effective IDS and self-determination of our Aboriginal partners.