Tourism Essay Example

Cultural Tourism Impact

Cultural tourism embraces the experiences of visitors to a destination as they experience the heritage, lifestyle, art, and the people on a first hand basis. Different tourist destinations have different, authentic products such as their heritage, lifestyle, and industrial activities that reflect their cultures thus attract visitors to them (McKercher and DuCros, 2002). Cultural tourism in China and the UK occurs on significant levels, and this paper intents to look at the impact of cultural tourism on the local society as well as the countries as a whole.

There has been an increase in the promotion of cultural tourism to enhance its growth, thus generating income for the destination countries and local communities. This research aims at investigating and critically analyzing both negative and positive impacts of cultural tourism to the local society of destination countries, which in this case, are China and the UK. In addition, it will also look at the motivation of tourism with regards to cultural perspectives, and how key stakeholders perceive cultural tourism.

A critical review of the impacts of cultural tourism could enable a researcher to come up with recommendations to enhance the state of cultural tourism in local society and destination countries. The recommendations will mainly focus on the key players in society such as policy makers, government authorities, and society and educational institutions. In this way, they will be able to devise ways that can boost the performance of cultural tourism in their respective areas.

China and the UK have varying foundations of cultural tourism. China has authentic cultural destinations that have been in existence for a while. One of the key contributors the cultural tourism is ethnic minorities of the local communities (Cross, 2010). On the other hand, the UK has a developmental approach to cultural tourism. This is because most tourist destinations in the UK have adopted a cultural incline so as to increase tourist attraction in the country. The success Liverpool as the European Capital of Culture since 2008 was an enormous boost to the development of Cultural Tourism in the UK (Williams, 2010).

The best way to identify the differences in cultural tourism between China and the UK is by the use of mixed methods research. This will involve using both qualitative and quantitative means of data collection and analysis. These methods include the grounded theory approach of qualitative approach and the descriptive-correlation approach of quantitative analysis.

Most of the data for this research can be extracted from secondary data sources which include reviews of previous research done by other researchers. Such sources can provide useful information about the state of cultural tourism in both China and UK, and a comprehensive compilation of such sources can lead to significant deductions about the differences between the two countries.

Cultural tourism entails a combination of various factors found in the tourist destinations that determine the inflow of visitors. Most of these determinants in China and the UK include architecture, art, heritage sites, and even the lifestyle of the ethnic populations. Once the policy makers and planners become aware of these determinants, they can develop way conserve the cultural heritage in order to attract many tourists. Consequently, they will increase income generation via the tourist industry thus improve the economic status of the local communities and the destination countries (Kolas, 2008).

References

Cross, B. (2010) For Chinese Ethnic Minorities: Opportunity or Threat? Cultural Tourism in      China, 2, p5-9

Kolas, A. (2008) Tourism and Tibetan Culture in Transition. London: Routledge.

McKercher, B. and DuCros, H. (2002) Cultural Tourism: The Partnership Between Tourism and Cultural Heritage Management. New York: Haworth Press.

Williams, P. (2010) Cultural Tourism and the UK City of Culture. Tourism Insights.

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