CULTURAL TOURISM

CULTURAL TOURISM

A type of individual and group tourism aimed at encountering a different culture and its contemporary and historical manifestations, both material and non-material.

The aim of cultural tourism is learning about the culture, cultural heritage, customs and lifestyles, by way of visiting monuments, museums, galleries, participating in cultural events, as well as in the everyday life of the inhabitants of the visited places. Cultural tourism is the subject of reflection of specialists in various fields (tourism, anthropology, geography, cultural studies), which means that there is no single, well-established definition of the term. The very phenomenon of cultural tourism should be considered heterogeneous and not conforming to a single model, which reflects the diversity of the contemporary culture and the unequal degree of participation of different social groups in it.

In 1999, in Mexico, the International Council on Monuments and Sites signed the Cultural Tourism Charter, where the definition was adopted: “Cultural tourism is a form of tourism that focuses on culture and cultural environment, including local landscapes, values, lifestyles, heritage, visual and performing arts, industries, traditions and leisure activities of the local, indigenous communities. It may include participation in cultural events, visiting museums and heritage sites, communing with the natives”.

A broad definition makes it possible to assume that almost every tourist trip has the characteristics of cultural tourism. Tourism as such is an element and function of culture, it becomes its expression, thanks to which every tourist trip is a form of meeting of cultures and exchange of values between cultures. However, a distinction should be made between elite cultural tourism and its mass version, i.e. one whose main purpose is cultural (e.g. to see the Venice Biennale), and one for which getting to know culture or its aspects in the visited place is just one of the tourist’s activities.

Cultural tourism is also a form of promotion of places visited by tourists and a tourist offer addressed to a diverse audience. It stimulates the development of local culture focused on tourism, the development of local institutions, centres and cultural organisations, but also the activation of the community and the strengthening of local identity (e.g. festivals, historical stagings or a “living museum”). Cultural tourism is also developing at a higher institutional level, thanks to the support of central institutions, such as the Council of Europe, which promotes the so-called European cultural routes (e.g. the Way of St James as a Pilgrimage Route to Santiago de Compostela). In the post-industrial era, cultural tourism is becoming an important factor in the revitalisation of cities or their fragments (e.g. Kazimierz in Kraków) and post-industrial areas.

[B. F.]

Literature:

https://www.nid.pl/pl/Dla_specjalistow/Standardy/Dokumenty_doktrynalne/

http://www.turystykakulturowa.eu

Kazimierczak, Marek (ed.) W kręgu humanistycznej refleksji nad turystyką kulturową. Poznań: Akademia Wychowania Fizycznego im. E. Piaseckiego: 2008.

Mikos v. Rohrscheidt, Armin. Turystyka kulturowa. Fenomen, potencjał, perspektywy. Gniezno: Wyd. GWSHM Milenium, 2008.

Jędrysiak, Tadeusz. Turystka kulturowa. Warszawa: Polskie Wydawnictwo Ekonomiczne, 2008.