Creative Tourism and Cultural Heritage

Abstract

This chapter analyses how cultural heritage destinations should evolve to keep pace with changes in the demand for cultural tourism. The empirical evidence shows that the most important heritage destinations suffer from a misalignment of their value propositions with respect to the new needs of cultural tourists. These types of gaps can be filled only by understanding the features and evolution of these needs and by identifying sustainable strategic paths to enrich the typical offering of these heritage destinations. This chapter proposes a theoretical framework that combines the most relevant trends in cultural tourism from a demand and an offering perspective. The Pompeii case is subsequently analyzed through the lens of the proposed theoretical framework.