Cultural routes and associated cultural tourism are innovative, broadly networked, and designed tourism systems that serve multiple purposes. Cultural routes had become a tool for maintaining destinations and promoting tourism simultaneously. This study assesses the potential of cultural routes in rebuilding Syria's dire tourism infrastructure situation after the war. The aim is to examine whether the "Spiritual Route" proposed by the Syrian Ministry of Tourism has the potential to attract tourists and reinstate itself as a sustainable route generating benefits for all stakeholders. The purpose is to determine the potential the "Spiritual Route" has for tourism and how it may attract people. Data has been obtained from a literature review and reconstructed from interviews and information from tourism databases and concerned personnel on its history, geography, and potential as a sustainable culture. The results from a SWOT analysis and the literature review revealed that the "Spiritual Route" has the potential to become a primary tourism attraction for a wide audience. This can be achieved by linking the tangible heritages of different geographical areas if planning and development are appropriate; however, the current internal situation of the war is a substantial hindrance. These principal findings can contribute as a valuable review in highlighting key limitations to be dealt with by decision-makers of Syria's "Spiritual Route" and others working on similar cultural routes in postwar Syria.
This paper is an analytical study of tourism plans of China's Hainan Province and the Syrian coastal region before the Syrian war commenced in 2011. It compares the two types of tourism (in the Mediterranean and the Asia Pacific) and concludes with an integrated model of successful regional tourism. The focus is on strategic plans of the last two decades and how they facilitate tourism, specifically, how strategic plans can be translated into sustainable tourism development projects in both regions. The strategic plan in the Chinese case considers environmental, economic, institutional, and social characteristics of tourism development, which determines the necessary infrastructure and environment for the further development of tourism. This is contrasted with the absence of such a strategy in the case of Syria. Data were drawn from in-depth interviews, field observations, and document analysis. Qualitative research techniques were used to analyze the available data and to form a detailed description of the past, present, and future potential for tourism in the two regions. The study measures transportation, land use/land cover patterns, tourism and tourism development, urban development, and strategic plans. It applied the lessons learned from Chinese tourism innovations in Hainan to propose an executive plan for sustainable tourism development in the Syrian coastal region once the present war has ended. This requires the active participation of all relevant stakeholders from almost every domain despite differing interests. It further requires improving the integration of three separate developmental factors (social, environmental, and economic) as complementary rather than conflicting elements.
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