MARKETING CULTURAL TOURISM

Cultural tourism puts the emphasis upon the content of what people do when they are traveling, rather than how they actually get there or where they stay while they are there. 

Cultural tourism is a sophisticated ‘product’ that aims to: 

• Build upon and market the cultural realities and strengths inherent in, and invested in, a place; 
• Emphasise the quality and authenticity of the visitor’s experience; and
• Not to simply describe, but to convey meanings and understandings attached to a place and the stories that belong to it. 

Likewise, cultural tourism needs, and depends upon, personal contact and specialist knowledge in order that communities and their venues/destinations can:

1. Meet their visitors’ need/quest for knowledge; 
2. Convey the richness and diversity of a place, its histories, its heritage and the cultural realities to be found within them; 
3. Be active, rather than passive, in the strategies used to engage both visitors and ‘home’ communities with each other; 
4. Create new tourism products by engaging with people - it does not depend on high levels of new capital investment;
5. Recognise and celebrate the dynamic and changing nature of the cultures linked to places; 
6. Develop dynamic visitor and site management programs; 
7. Enable the development of interpretation programs designed to engage with, inform, educate and interest visitors;
8. Minimise the environmental degradation and cultural exploitation which all too often accompany some forms of tourism; 
9. Identify, target and market to particular interest groups.