ABSTRACT
Culture and tourism were two of the major growth industries of the twentieth century, and in recent decades the combination of these two sectors into ‘cultural tourism’ has become one of the most desirable development options for countries and regions around the world. As the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) report on The Impact of Culture on Tourism (2009) noted, cultural tourism accounted for almost 360 million international tourism trips in 2007, or 40 per cent of global tourism. In value terms, the contribution of cultural tourism is even greater, since cultural tourists are estimated to spend as much as one-third more on average than other tourists (Richards 2007).
