Cultural Tourism and Sustainable Development

• Autor(a) principal: Lopes, Eunice Ramos
• Data de Publicação: 2018
• Outros Autores: Almeida, Rodrigo Nicolau, Almeida, Paula, Marques, Célio Gonçalo
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.5/29271
• topic: Tourism; Cultural Tourism; Heritage; Sustainability.

Cultural tourism has continuously shown its growing importance inside the touristic sector, with visible economic implications. It has contributed to the safeguard of cultural heritage, in a context of local sustainable development. Through a symbolic image mark and “lost and unrepeatable” past objects, more cultural touristic destinies are sought after. In this context, the cultural tourism future tendency seems to steer into more touristic activities, planning and development forms that ensure the socioeconomic integrity of local populations, as well as the sustainability of heritage resources. The present study aims to: 1) analyse a touristic destiny that includes heritage visiting; 2) understand if destinies with touristic potential, heavily linked to cultural heritage, satisfy most of tourist motivations; 3) identify if there is an acknowledgement of the importance of culture on the attractiveness and valorisation of “touristic-heritage places on the territory” from a sustainable point of view. The strategy adopted was quantitative, focusing on data gathered from a survey applied to tourists that visit the city of Tomar, with evident heritage references, as well as with growing dynamics of cultural valorisation. The results point to the importance of heritage resources’ ticket prices, safety, cleaning and hygiene, signage, and preservation state of the cultural heritage as the attributes that most influence the satisfaction level of a given touristic-cultural destiny.