Natural and cultural heritage represent key assets that deliver different kind of benefits to citizens in the Nordic countries. This report illustrates the economic values at stake and discusses the important and inevitable key trade-offs facing decision-makers charged with managing these assests. The report has three goals: to briefly describe existing conservation measures in the Nordic countries, to illustrate the type and magnitude of economic values generated by these measures, and to discuss key trade-offs and policy implications arising from the selection of measures, which lead to welfare impacts depending on the level of human use. The valuation studies reviewed in the report demonstrate real economic values associated with the experiences that natural and cultural heritage provides both in terms of increased welfare and regional economic impacts.

With the exponential rise in leisure mobility, tourism has increasingly become of great economic significance. Cultural heritage, such as museums, churches, historical landscapes, urban parks, and exhibitions attract many visitors and countries, regions and cities which house such historic-cultural amenities have seen increasingly large waves of tourists. While an avalanche of tourists has a positive impact on the local economy, such modern mass tourism also brings about negative externalities such as congestion, decline in quality of life, low access to cultural amenities and loss of local identity; to the extent that the sustainability conditions of a locality might be endangered. This tourism dilemma is particularly pronounced in cities with a rich cultural past, such as Venice, Naples and Amsterdam. Bringing together an interdisciplinary team of leading scholars from North America and Europe, this book examines the interface of local cultural resources and modern mass tourism from a sustainability perspective. It puts forward innovative methodologies and best case practice for future cultural conservation policies.

This book analyses the economic and financial profiles of heritage assets as tourist attractions. Offering both theoretical insights, methods, and global empirical examples, it considers how heritage assets can create economic and social value for a region. It offers an analysis of micro- and macroeconomic characteristics of heritage assets and their financial management. The importance of innovation in light of technological and market transformations is considered, as well as the sustainable management of heritage assets environmentally and in terms of sustainable tourism. The book delves into the financial assessment of heritage assets with a focus on evaluation models, the technique of project financing and wealth management in the art sector. These topics are illustrated with cases studies of heritage assets managed as tourist attractions to outline successful management strategies. The book draws on examples from a range of sites and locations across Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and the United States to show how heritage assets can be an economic stimulus for the development of local economies. The book will be of interest to academics and students at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels in the fields of tourism economics, cultural studies and environmental studies.

Today, tourism has become one of the largest and fastest growing industries accounting for nearly 700 million people travelling all over the world and spending more than 7.4 trillion US dollars. Besides promoting people-to-people contacts, ethnic and cultural understanding, mutual appreciation and co-operation and thereby promoting peace, tourism provides unlimited opportunities for employment generation, social and economic upliftment of the people and contributing to the economies of the nations. Cultural heritage tourism has a number of objectives that must be met within the context of sustainable development such as; the conservation of cultural resources, accurate interpretation of resources, authentic visitors experience, and the stimulation of the earned revenues of cultural resources. Tourism is an important issue at world heritage sites. Most managers at natural sites regard it as a key issue. Important features of world heritage tourism are local protection, conservation and restoration. Such a tourism also requires special training management skills. Different visitor management strategies, interpretation and site promotional activities have to be organised. Culture and heritage have also become major forces in economic and urban revitalisation. As cultural tourism becomes an increasingly important factor for tourist destinations involved in developing their cultural capital in order to attract more international visitors, there is value in assessing how cultural and heritage tourists can be better understood and serviced through marketing, planning and programming with local and regional communities. This book also provides readers with global charters developed for promoting cultural tourism and for preserving heritage sites. Focus lies on ICOSM and WHC. World Heritage Sites, identified and conserved around the world, have been listed and the initiatives to preserve cultural sites and conserve heritage sites.

The present paper investigates whether tourism specialization is a viable strategy for development. We estimate standard growth equations augmented with a variable measuring tourism specialization using instrumental variables techniques for a large cross-section of countries for the period 1980-2002. We introduce an instrument for tourism based on the UNESCO World Heritage List. We find that there is a positive relationship between the extent of tourism specialization and economic growth. An increase of one standard deviation in the share of tourism in exports leads to about 0.5 percentage point in additional annual growth, everything else being constant. Our result holds against a large array of robustness checks.

Global tourism is perhaps the largest scale movement of goods, services, and people in history. Consequently, it is a significant catalyst for economic development and sociopolitical change. While tourism increasingly accounts for ever greater segments of national economies, the consequences of this growth for intercultural interaction are diverse and uncertain. The proliferation of tourists also challenges classic theoretical descriptions of just what an economy is. What are the commodities being consumed? What is the division of labor between producers and clients in creating the value of tourist exchanges? How do culture, power, and history shape these interactions? What are the prospects for sustainable tourism? How is cultural heritage being shaped by tourists around the world? These critical questions inspired this volume in which the contributors explore the connections among economy, sustainability, heritage, and identity that tourism and related processes makes explicit. The volume moves beyond the limits of place-specific discussions, case studies, and best practice examples. Accordingly, it is organized according to three overarching themes: exploring dimensions of cultural heritage, the multi-faceted impacts of tourism on both hosts and guests, and the nature of touristic encounters. Based on ethnographic and archaeological research conducted in distinct locations, the contributors’ conclusions and theoretical arguments reach far beyond the limits of isolated case studies. Together, they contribute to a new synthesis for the anthropology of tourism while simultaneously demonstrating how emerging theories of the economics of tourism can lead to the rethinking of traditionally non-touristic enterprises—from farming to medical occupations.