Tourism & World Heritage Sites: Better Synergies PART 2
DEBATE ON TOURISM AND ITS CONTRIBUTION TO HERITAGE CONSERVATION AND LOCAL DEVELOPMENT. Part 2
Monday, February 8, 2021, 2:00 – 4:00 (CET) on ZOOM
followed by session #3 February 15th 2:00-4:00 pm (CET)
Full announcement text here.
Tourism is often perceived as a threat to conservation of World Heritage. In fact, tourism is a platform and a vehicle for presenting heritage to the public, conserving it and guaranteeing its economic and social viability. Hence, tourism is in most cases a balancing mechanism that keeps and protects the heritage itself.
The main premise of the TOURISM theme within the OurWorldHeritage initiative is that defining the key principles of Heritage-Tourism reciprocal relations is imperative. Both tourism and heritage sites are exposed nowadays to critical exogenic and endogenic changes. Among these challenges are the ramifications of COVID-19, and the consequent global economic and social crises. Hence, we argue that it is imperative to conceptually and practically pave a way for a major review of these interrelationships. In so doing, we hope to deconstruct old concepts and reconstruct a new collaborative paradigm based on present challenges and on constructive and complementing synergies, which will assure the continuity and resilience and sustainability of heritage and tourism alike.