ABSTRACT
Heritage tourism has received much attention in the past few decades. The literature has tackled basic questions such as the nature of heritage and heritage tourism, what prompts nations to create heritage attractions, the increased interest among visitors in heritage tourism, and the factors that motivate people to visit such sites (see for example Graham et al. 2000; Dicks 2003; Timothy and Boyd 2003; Lumley 2005; Pearce 2005; Smith 2006; Richards 2007). With respect to the growth in heritage tourism, it is assumed that several top-down and bottom-up factors account for the increased number of such sites. For example, governments of developing countries have found heritage useful for nation building particularly in new post-colonial states (Anderson 1991; AlSayyad 2001; Mitchell 2001; Robbins 2008). In addition, ‘looking back’ has become an effective mode of resistance against the presumed homogenizing effects of globalization (Dahles 2001). From the point of view of visitors, heritage sites that feature social history often connote a simpler, slower time. Chambers (2006: 1) calls heritage ‘a major industry of the mind as well as the pocketbook’ anchoring us ‘against the fast-pace and uncertainty of our time, to shielding us from the seemingly rootless and transient effects of modernity and globalization’.
