ABSTRACT
Tourism and culture both play a decisive role in the creation of images and the aestheticisation of landscapes to meet what are supposed to be the needs of tourists (Richards and Wilson 2006). The use of cultural heritage for tourism and development purposes has increased in the last decades, becoming a complementary expansion strategy of this economic activity. The contemporary massive promotion of images and symbols from different cultures in countless tourist destinations around the globe provides sufficient evidence of the implementation of this strategy. It should not be hard for anyone to formulate mental associations of cultural manifestations—tangible and intangible—with their countries of origin (e.g., the Eiffel tower and France, the pyramids of Giza and Egypt, Machu Picchu and Peru, the Great Wall and China, the geisha dance and Japan, flamenco and Spain, Oktoberfest and Germany, mariachis and Mexico and so on).
