The Asia Pacific region’s enormous diversity of living cultures and preserved heritage sites has significant appeal to many tourists. However tourism has grown so rapidly that many issues associated with the incorporation of cultural and heritage experiences in tourist itineraries (such as authenticity verses commodification, exploitation of national cultures, impacts on local communities, and the management of heritage resources) have not been adequately addressed and must be debated. This revealing book reviews recent developments in cultural and heritage tourism in the Asia Pacific region and provides a discussion on how communities have faced and overcome significant challenges to develop and market their culture and heritage resources. A range of models and case studies are used to deepen the reader’s understanding of heritage and cultural issues, to illustrate many of the more controversial issues, and to examine new evaluative, and planning tools. This book is a special issue of the Asia Pacific Journal of Tourism Research.

The expansion of international tourism is changing the relationship between ethnic groups and states around the globe. Yet tourism’s importance for the understanding of ethnicity in the modern world has been generally neglected within the field of ethnic studies. This pioneering volume investigates how international tourism development, state policies of ethnic management, and the active responses of local ethnic groups intersect to reshape ethnic identities and ethnic relations in Asian and Pacific societies. It analyzes the ways in which the very meaning of ethnicity and culture are being contested and reworked in the wake of tourism’s impact. Following an introduction that explores the close but often ambivalent relationship between tourism promotion and state ethnic policies, individual contributors examine tourism’s varied effects in China, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, and the island Pacific in rich ethnographic detail.

The Asia Pacific region’s enormous diversity of living cultures and preserved heritage sites has significant appeal to many tourists. However tourism has grown so rapidly that many issues associated with the incorporation of cultural and heritage experiences in tourist itineraries (such as authenticity verses commodification, exploitation of national cultures, impacts on local communities, and the management of heritage resources) have not been adequately addressed and must be debated. This revealing book reviews recent developments in cultural and heritage tourism in the Asia Pacific region and provides a discussion on how communities have faced and overcome significant challenges to develop and market their culture and heritage resources. A range of models and case studies are used to deepen the reader’s understanding of heritage and cultural issues, to illustrate many of the more controversial issues, and to examine new evaluative, and planning tools. This book is a special issue of the Asia Pacific Journal of Tourism Research.

This book covers multiple cultural tourism aspects including among others, nature and rural conservation policy and conflicts, reflected in case studies, and ethnic minority heritage and their folklore traditions and performances, as well as tourism activities in the city areas. It provides a distinguished quality and an innovative focus to the existing literature by highlighting the unique features and development experience in cultural tourism in the Asia Pacific in both the rural and urban setting. The book has a strong appeal to an international audience, including both tertiary institution academics and students, seeking a better understanding of public policy and cultural tourism practices in the contemporary world.

Cultural heritage attractions are, by their very nature, unique and fragile. It is therefore important that tourism authorities study how best to develop such sites, whilst at the same time preserving them for the long-term. The aim of this conference was to provide a forum for countries from all over the world to present case studies on successful policies, guidelines and strategies that would help the Asia-Pacific region take advantage of its cultural heritage in developing its tourism industry.

Cultural Heritage and Tourism in the Developing World is the first book of its kind to synthesize global and regional issues, challenges, and practices related to cultural heritage and tourism, specifically in less-developed nations. The importance of preservation and management of cultural heritage has been realized as an increasing number of tourists are visiting heritage attractions. Although many of the issues and challenges developing countries face in terms of heritage management are quite different from those in the developed world, there is a lack of consolidated research on this important subject. This seminal book tackles the issues through theoretical discourse, ideas and problems that underlay heritage tourism in terms of conservation, management, economics and underdevelopment, politics and power, resource utilization, colonialism, and various other antecedent notions that have shaped the development of heritage tourism in the less-developed regions of the world. The book is comprised of two sections. The first section highlights the broader conceptual underpinnings, debates, and paradigms in the realm of heritage tourism in developing regions. The chapters of this section examine heritage resources and the tourism product; protecting heritage relics, places and traditions; politics of heritage; and the impacts of heritage tourism. The second section examines heritage tourism issues in specific regions, including the Pacific Islands, South Asia, the Caribbean, China and Northeast Asia, South-East Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa, Central and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, and Latin America. Each region has unique histories, cultures, political traditions, heritages, issues and problems, and the way these issues are tackled vary from place to place. This volume develops frameworks that are useful tools for heritage managers, planners and policy-makers, researchers, and students in understanding the complexity of cultural heritage and tourism in the developing world. Unlike many other books written about developing regions, this book provides insiders’ perspectives, as most of the empirical chapters are authored by the individuals who live or have lived in the various regions and have a greater understanding of the region’s culture, history, and operational frameworks in the realm of cultural heritage. The richness of this ‘indigenous’ or expert knowledge comes through as each regional overview elucidates the primary challenges and opportunities facing heritage and tourism managers in the less affluent areas of the world.