Heritage Tourism in a Historic Town in China: Opportunities and Challenges

ABSTRACT

Heritage tourism is a driver of economic growth in many historic towns. However, these places often experience many problems and current planning usually does not address all the difficulties adequately. Small towns in peripheral areas often lack economic opportunities and rely heavily on cultural heritage to develop tourism. A conceptual framework was applied to examine the challenges and opportunities of heritage tourism development in a small historic town in Guangxi, China, based upon semi-structured interviews with decision makers, business operators and residents, supplemented by on-site observations and review of secondary data. Findings reveal that tourism provides incomes, fuels local economic development and increases awareness and knowledge of cultural heritage, but also brings changes to the town, presenting challenges to the community and heritage perpetuation. Stakeholders differ in the power that they bring to bear, and also in the positions that they hold on tourism development and heritage conservation. Insufficient financial resources and lack of adequate planning and effective management are impediments to heritage tourism. Adaptive planning, with broader community participation and greater collaboration among stakeholders, is proposed to achieve more equitable development.

摘要

遗产旅游是许多历史古镇经济增长的驱动力。然而, 这些地方发展中经常会遇到许多问题, 目前的城镇规划通常无法充分解决所有的困难。偏远地区的小城镇往往缺乏经济发展机会, 而严重依赖文化遗产发展旅游业。本文基于对决策者, 旅游从业者和当地居民的访谈, 以及现场观察和历史数据分析, 并应用一个概念模型来分析遗产旅游在中国广西一个历史小镇发展的挑战和机遇。研究结果显示旅游业提高了居民收入, 推动了当地经济的发展, 并提高了对文化遗产的认识和了解, 但也给古镇带来了影响和变化, 并给社区和遗产保护带来了挑战。利益相关者不但拥有不同的权力, 而且在旅游发展和遗产保护方面具有不同的观点和立场。财政资源不足, 缺乏合理规划和有效管理是阻碍遗产旅游发展的障碍。本文建议适应性规划和更广泛的社区参与以及利益相关者更大的合作将有助于实现更公平的发展。

KEYWORDS:

• Heritage
• stakeholders
• planning
• impacts
• china

关键词:

• 遗产
• 利益相关者
• 规划
• 影响
• 中国

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the the Scherer Endowment Fund (Department of Geography, Western Michigan University) [Grant SEF 2017-2].

Notes on contributors

Li Yang

Li Yang is Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at Western Michigan University, Kalamazoo, USA. She has interests in tourism planning, cultural tourism, ethnic/indigenous tourism, and tourism analysis and forecasting (E-mail: [email protected]).

Geoffrey Wall is Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Department of Geography and Environmental Management, University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. His major research fields are the impacts of tourism, leisure holiday and climate change on society and economy (E-mail: [email protected]).