Cultural Tourism and Ancient Inspiration for Modern Achievements

Culture has terrific power. We stand in awe of what our fellow men have done, and can do. It inspires us to do things ourselves, things that we might otherwise never have thought of doing or felt capable of attempting. We ‘feed’ off other people’s culture for our own ends. We hope our culture does the same for them. A visit to a cultural site, if it goes ‘right’, can be a very strengthening experience. It has the capacity to disturb us, and if it does this it is not necessarily a bad thing. Tourism is now integral to modern life: not merely in financial terms, such as the assessment of the WTTC that by 1990 tourism accounted for 5.5 per cent of the world gross national product,1 but in much deeper, more radical ways as well. As Deyan Sudjic has unequivocally pronounced in his book The 100 Mile City,2 ‘As a force for social change, tourism has had an impact of the same order as the industrial revolution. In less than three decades, tourism has transformed the way the world looks and works.’The first and only basis for consideration of the most appropropriate way to conduct cultural tourism is a recognition that the agenda must be determined, and then implemented, globally, on the basis of an acceptance of our complete interdependence. To the question ‘Western vs Non-Western: Whose Culture will Save the Environment?’ which UNESCO posed for its International Symposium on Culture and Environment in Indonesia, the answer would be that there can only be one answer and that is ‘both, together’. This is, of course, much easier said than done but the existence, and their concern in this area, of supraorganizations such as UNESCO, ICOMOS, ICOM, WTO and the WTTC, and the staging of such events as the global Earth Summit in Rio, are indicative that, whether in theory or not, at least acceptance of the principle is widespread. Putting noble thoughts and aims into action, however, perhaps because of other consequences regarded as more immediately dire at the local level, may militate against the necessary ‘follow through’ (Source: Managing Quality Cultural Tourism).