Foreign tour guides as mediators of Emirati heritage: interpretation, identity, and authenticity in cultural tourism

Abstract This study investigates how foreign tour guides mediate Emirati heritage within the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) cultural tourism sector and how their interpretations influence perceptions of authenticity and national identity. Employing a qualitative, interpretivist, multi-site case study across Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Sharjah, it integrates participant observation, semi-structured interviews, and document analysis to explore interactions among institutional narratives, guide performances, and tourist perceptions. Findings reveal that foreign guides function as key cultural mediators who perform and translate Emirati heritage across linguistic and cultural boundaries. Authenticity emerges as enacted and relational, co-constructed through performance, empathy, and visitor engagement. Institutional heritage discourses promoting unity, progress, and tolerance frame these interpretations, but guides exercise agency, generating hybrid narratives blending Emirati and global elements. The study advances performance theory by highlighting guided agency within institutional scripts, supports performative over objectivist authenticity, applies Bhabha’s ‘third space’ to hybrid mediation, and demonstrates national identity as performatively constructed through a multicultural workforce. It contributes empirically to understanding non-national interpreters in Gulf heritage contexts and recommends intercultural training and inclusive heritage frameworks.