SECTION A: Setting the context -- Defining cultural tourism -- Challenges in achieving sustainable cultural tourism -- Issues, benefits, risks and costs -- SECTION B: Cultural assets. Cultural heritage management principles and practice (with special reference to World Heritage) -- Tangible cultural heritage -- Intangible cultural heritage and creative arts -- SECTION C: Tourism, the tourist and stakeholders. How tourism works -- The cultural tourism market: a cultural tourism typology -- Tourism attraction system, markers and gatekeepers -- SECTION D: Products. Cultural tourism products -- Assessing product potential -- Market appeal/Robusticity matrix: a site specific auditing tool -- SECTION E: Operationalization. Framework for understanding what is necessary for a successful attraction -- Applying planning and management frameworks -- Experience creation
Cultural tourism is gaining a great importance in the modern tourism industry, and it also represents an important and attractive power for local and international tourists. This allows destinations and regions to expand their customer basis, winning in this way new clients interested in different types of attractions and diversifying their offer, especially in cases of destinations which have no tourism typology (such as coastal and lake tourism), and cases which are required out of the tourism season, reducing in this way seasonality and having all year round tourism. In this paper our study refers to the valuable assets of Gjirokastra city, as part of the World Heritage Tourism, which are rich, diverse and scattered throughout the prefecture. In the recent years there has been a rapid growth in the foreign and local tourists visiting this country and playing an important role in the development of tourism and the incomes of this prefecture. According to the official data of Gjirokastra Municipality in 2009 the number of visitors was 15894 while in 2014 it reached 35000. The main purpose of this paper is to analyze the characteristics of cultural tourism, of heritage and events, and the theoretical background of the relationships between the concepts of tourism, culture, heritage, and events by analyzing their impact in these destinations closely related to the management, marketing, and the economic impact, of the involved and interested parties and their relationship with the local development. The methodology is based on a descriptive analysis based on the data obtained from a survey conducted to 300 tourists who visited Gjirokastra in 2013-2014 through a self-administered questionnaire. We are also referring to a study which was done by Gjirokastra Municipality in 2011. This study has identified the origins of the tourists visiting this place, the reasons for the visit and their touristic expenses. It also treats a number of problems, determining in this way the necessary conditions to introduce these cultural destinations to the tourism market. Finally the paper is concluded with some recommendations and conclusions for tourism stakeholders in the country. It is important to identify relevant strategies for cultural tourism through cooperation between government bodies and the private sector as an important factor for the promotion of Gjirokastra city as a tourist destination for local and foreign tourists.
Cultural Tourism in Southern Africa : The Role of Local Cultures and Ethnicity in Tourism Development / Jarkko Saarinen -- Integrating Indigenous Knowledge in the Development of Cultural Tourism in Lesotho / Tsitso Monaheng -- Narrative and Emotions : Interpreting Tourists' Experiences of Cultural Heritage Sites in Kwazulu Natal / Joram Ndlovu -- Cultural Heritage Tourism Development in Post-Apartheid South Africa : Critical Issues and Challenges / Gareth Butler and Milena Ivanovic -- Cultural tourism and the Arts Festivals / Corn¿ Pretorius -- Reflections on International Carnivals as a Destination Recovery Strategy : The Case of Zimbabwe / Cleophas Njerekai -- The Commodification of World Heritage Sites : The Case Study of the Tsodilo Hills in Botswana / Joseph E. Mbaiwa -- Tourism and the Social Construction of Otherness through Traditional Music and Dance in Zimbabwe / Patrick Walter Mamimine and Enes Madzikatire -- Rural Cultural Tourism Development and Agriculture : Evidence from Residents of Mmatshumu Village in Boteti region of Botswana / Monkgogi Lenao -- From hunting-gathering to hospitality? : Livelihoods and tourism use of Bushmen paintings in the Brandberg Mountain, Namibia / Renaud Lapeyre -- Emergence of cultural tourism in southern Africa : Case studies of two communities in Botswana / Masego Monare, Naomi Moswete, Jeremy Perkins and Jarkko Saarinen -- Cultural tourism in southern Africa : Progress, Opportunities and Challenges / Naomi Moswete, Jarkko Saarinen and Haretsebe Manwa
