ABSTRACT
The relationship between World Heritage and tourism is a long standing and complex one. Despite tourism being mentioned only once amongst the 38 articles of the 1972 “Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage” 1 (UNESCO 1972) it has been a constant reality in the day-to-day practices of site management and has long underpinned how World Heritage Sites are perceived, encountered and experienced in the wider social and political realm. Over 40 years and more since the Convention, consideration of tourism as an active variable in the production and consumption of World Heritage has shifted from being implicit, to being ever-more explicit in both policy and practice.
