Cultural Tourism - A Briefing Paper

culture@swo.org.uk

The purpose of this paper is to provide the reader with an introduction to the concepts of ‘cultural tourism’ and ‘cultural heritage’ and present an overview of the state of cultural tourism. The focus of the paper is on South West England but briefly extends to the UK and Europe.

Given the many different ways in which ‘cultural tourism’ is understood by academics, policy-makers and those working in the tourist industry, the paper is more of an overview than a comprehensive discussion
of the subject, and the reader is sign-posted to further reading material.