TOURISM AND HERITAGE

TOURISM

Tourism, the act and process of spending time away from home in pursuit of recreation, relaxation, and pleasure, while making use of the commercial provision of services. As such, tourism is a product of modern social arrangements, beginning in western Europe in the 17th century, although it has antecedents in Classical antiquity.

Tourism is distinguished from exploration in that tourists follow a “beaten path,” benefit from established systems of provision, and, as befits pleasure-seekers, are generally insulated from difficulty, danger, and embarrassment. Tourism, however, overlaps with other activities, interests, and processes, including, for example, pilgrimage. This gives rise to shared categories, such as “business tourism,” “sports tourism,” and “medical tourism” (international travel undertaken for the purpose of receiving medical care).

HERITAGE

The ‘heritage’ as ‘property that is or may be inherited; an inheritance’, ‘valued things such as historic buildings that have been passed down from previous generations’, and ‘relating to things of historic or cultural value that are worthy of preservation’. The emphasis on inheritance and conservation is important here, as is the focus on ‘property’, ‘things’ or ‘buildings’. So heritage is something that can be passed from one generation to the next, something that can be conserved or inherited, and something that has historic or cultural value. Heritage might be understood to be a physical ‘object’: a piece of property, a building or a place that is able to be ‘owned’ and ‘passed on’ to someone else.

TOURISM AND HERITAGE

Historical or heritage tourism means traveling with the primary purpose of exploring the history and heritage of a place. It may mean simple sightseeing of renowned historical architecture, visiting local museums that document the past through artifacts, art, and literary remains, or even something as quaint as sampling authentic historical recipes in their place of origin.

People often combine their love of history with other tourist delights like shopping, amusement park visits, and luxurious resort stays. So places that have a rich heritage and have, at the same time, designed a fine tourist infrastructure to cater to all categories of tourists get rated the highest in terms of popularity as tourist destinations.