Shaping the Relation Between Heritage and Tourism: Taxonomies of Sustainable Cultural Tourism for Local Development

The fields of cultural tourism and heritage management are gaining attention for their potential to be better linked, particularly in terms of practical applications. This paper proposes a taxonomy of heritage resources and related heritage-based tourism types and their linkages for specific case study areas, building on the established product class approach in cultural tourism studies. The research uses a mixed method, including a structured literature review to pre-define the linkages between heritage and tourism types, interviews with local stakeholders from nine case study areas, and a workshop with heritage and cultural tourism experts to discuss heritage resources, tourism types and their linkages for further adaptation. Based on this, the research proposes a taxonomy of 14 heritage resources and 11 related heritage-based tourism types for the case study areas, along with the linkages between the two, and recommends additional categories based on the results of the expert workshop. These results can serve as a basis for participatory local development workshops and contribute to a better understanding of the relationship between heritage and cultural tourism in practice.