Cultural Tourism
Cultural tourism deals mainly with the relationship that cultural, social, and economic aspects of people have on the tourism aspects of a particular region. In chapter three, the author mainly emphasizes on the social life of people as a variable in tourism consumption. According to Greg (39), social aspects that influence tourism consumption fall in four that include class, education, income, occupation and age. Class mainly involves the competition among the people in society who consider their status above the rest and those who the society considers below in terms of economic prowess. The author argues that, as more people get into the upper class where more people access resources and are economically stable, the consumption of tourism increases. Research in the United Kingdom and Netherlands showed that the people visiting the museums mainly came from the economically stable families.
Education influences the cultural participation of the people largely. The author recognizes that the difference in cultural consumption due to education ranges far higher than the differences due to economic status of the people. The growth of cultural tourist consumption in Europe is mainly attributable to the development of the educational infrastructure in the region (Greg 42). Educated individuals value tourism since visiting important historical sites is of great relevance to them. The occupation of the people also determined their involvement in the cultural tourism in the area. The author states that most people who participated in the cultural tourism included individuals whose occupations related to culture in some way. The availability of time for leisure also determined participation of the people in the cultural tourism. However, the author recognizes that the continent is growing old hence people have to develop a new look towards the cultural tourism. He acknowledges that globalization is setting up, and tourism is likely to change the lives of the people considerably.
Chapter 4 mainly focuses on the economic aspects of the cultural tourism, especially funding tourism and the changing economic aspects. The author states that countries where most of the leisure activities receive some sought of funding from the authorities have more cultural tourism activities than the ones with little subsidies. According to Greg (57), the funding and sponsorship of the cultural events concerns the people so much, because people struggle to balance between investment and sponsoring the tourist activities. The author argues that such factors reduce the cultural tourism activities in Europe. The author further asserts that cultural tourism must be privatized as the public funding and subsidies diminish so that the industry does not collapse.
Privatization and commercialization result to cultural industries that present arts and events, produce cultural arts and distribute the art material across the region. Greg notes that the cultural tourists spent in patterns that the people must tap in order to get the most from the tourism and maybe finance the cultural activities fully in the future. Tourism earns the economy a lot of revenue and helps many people sustain their lives. The cultural tourists form a major part of the people in the museums and the parks hence the culture of the people makes the tourism sector thrive in Europe. More so, the cultural festivals dominate the tourist earnings for example, in Edinburgh three festivals, the Tattoo, International festival, and Fringe Festivals made up 84% of the expenditure by the tourists (Greg 64).
Chapter 5 concentrates on policy as an area of cultural tourism that makes it prosper. The improvement in cultural tourism in the United Kingdom widely arises from the fact that the culture and leisure policy dictate most of the activities in the sector. The period of economic realism in the UK focussed on tourism, leisure, and culture policies to help eradicate unemployment in the country. The adoption of relevant policies in Germany, Italy, and Netherlands have promptly moved to ease the pressure on privatization of the tourism sector as the people constantly adopt the right practices to replace public subsidies. As one of the major pillars in economic and social restructuring in Europe, the policies on culture must reflect the regional and national image in the areas where they are applied.
Greg (68) states that persuading the locals to develop and invest in cultural tourism has been the new role in the economic pressure for cultural tourism. He explains that application of proper policies creates constructive bonds among the participating regions. However, because the policies must attract tourists, the authorities have emphasized events and festivals as major parts of the policies. At the national level, the tourism goals mainly aim at two things that include generating revenue to the country and promoting the culture of the people. This means that tourism can easily surface as part of the legal decisions common among the authorities in Europe. The most rounded cultural policies are the transnational policies, which emphasize on all the aspects handled by the tourist activities. Some of the areas covered by the transnational policies are environmental conservation, cultural conservation, economic development, and social integration.
Works Cited
Greg, Richards. Cultural Tourism: Global and Local Perspectives. Binghamton: Routledge, 2007. Print.
