Cultural tourism and sustainable local development

I believe that this book makes a contribution in two areas. First, it enhances our understanding of various aspects of cultural tourism in urban areas. In terms of cultural tourism, I have come across several books that describe and present case studies on particular destinations but do not actually advance our knowledge beyond a certain level; nor are they strongly linked to academic debates or research dimensions. Though some chapters in this book do analyse case studies, this book covers the policy aspects linked with cultural tourism very well. It also meaningfully addresses the heritage aspects, integrated management approaches and e-tourism challenges related to the cases. Secondly, the book helps to further shape our understanding of cultural sustainability, which several books have attempted in the past, although unfortunately none has succeeded. Even though this is an edited book, I conclude that it makes a worthy contribution in terms of cultural tourism and sustainability. There is still a diversity of views about sustainable tourism among academicians, experts, planners and policy-makers: economic sustainability is more important for economists while environmental sustainability is vital for environmentalists. There has been less debate about cultural sustainability, even though the sociocultural impacts of tourism on particular destinations have often been documented in the past (Lea, 1988; Mathieson & Wall, 1989). Many books are flawed because they give prominence to economic or environmental sustainability aspects and then only very briefly address the socio-cultural aspects of tourism. Moreover, some experts argue that tourism sustainability is one concept and it has to be approached in a holistic way, rather than focusing on economic, environmental and cultural sustainability separately. Indeed, the generic application of the sustainability concept in tourism is well advanced in the literature. What is now needed is in-depth investigation of all the aspects of sustainable tourism as destinations undergo a wide range of changes as a result of advancements in the tourism industry. The chapters in the book are presented in four sections, based around the themes of ‘tourism development as a sustainable strategy’, ‘policies on sustainable tourism and cultural resources’, ‘case studies’ and ‘new departures for evaluation’. The title of the last section does not clearly fit the chapters it includes. Perhaps it might better have been titled ‘research dimensions and challenges’. The four chapters in the first section are intended to establish the link between cultural attractions, cultural heritage and sustainability. Among these, the chapter by Throsby advocates three ‘golden rules’ of cultural heritage tourism: get the values right (which means associating with the various cultural values, including symbolic value and spiritual values), get the sustainability principles right (which means linking with inter-generational and intra-generational equity, as well as cultural and natural systems) and finally get the analytical methods right (which means applying social accounting matrices, computable general equilibrium models and input–output