Tourism is one of the fastest-growing industries in the world. People travel for various reasons, including leisure, business, education, and cultural exploration.
Cultural tourism is a popular type of tourism that involves traveling to experience the culture of a particular destination. Cultural tourism can be defined as travel that emphasizes experiencing the history, customs, and lifestyle of a particular area.
There are two main cultural motives for tourism travel – heritage and curiosity. Let’s take a closer look at each motive:
Heritage Tourism:
Heritage tourism involves traveling to explore the history and heritage of a destination. It is about understanding and experiencing the tangible and intangible cultural assets of a destination. These assets include historic sites, monuments, artifacts, museums, festivals, rituals, traditions, food, music, dance forms, languages or dialects.
For instance, people visit places like Rome or Athens to explore their ancient architecture and learn about their rich history dating back to thousands of years ago. Similarly in India people visit historical cities like Delhi or Agra to witness the breath-taking monuments such as The Taj Mahal or Qutub Minar which are listed as UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
Curiosity Tourism:
Curiosity tourism involves traveling to explore something new and different from one’s own culture. It is about experiencing new ways of life by immersing oneself in unfamiliar environments. This type of travel can involve exploring local culture by visiting markets or restaurants that sell traditional foods; participating in local festivals or ceremonies; attending concerts or theatre performances.
For instance, people visit Japan to experience its unique culture which includes tea ceremonies (Chado), arranging flowers (Ikebana), calligraphy (Shodo) etc., which are very different from western cultures.
In summary,
Heritage Tourism
involves exploring history & heritage whereas
Curiosity Tourism
involves experiencing new cultures.
Both heritage and curiosity tourism are important cultural motives for tourism travel. They provide an opportunity to learn about different cultures and ways of life, which can lead to greater understanding and appreciation of diversity.
Moreover, cultural tourism can help preserve the local culture by providing economic benefits to the community. Therefore, it is important to promote and support cultural tourism as a means of fostering cross-cultural understanding and sustainable development.