Culture, heritage looting, and tourism: A text mining review approach

Abstract

Tourism scholars have been devoted to exploring the significance of cultural heritage in generating economic, environmental, and social values. However, limited efforts were found to verify potential threats that demolish these values such as looting issue in the global heritage tourism industry. Therefore, this study has reviewed extant publications to demonstrate the potential emerged textual clusters discussed by previous studies. It also summarized the network distribution of articles journals and authors’ affiliations to capture the mobility and diversity with a focus on the business and tourism management field. Hence, the core clusters discovered were related to heritage destruction, public access, world heritage, human rights, cultural heritage preservation, and protection of cultural heritage in the event. The results have established theoretical insights and research agendas for future tourism studies, while it determined critical drawbacks in employing technology tools including virtual reality, augmented reality, and artificial intelligence for cultural heritage preservation/protection.

Exploring the Impact of Smart Technologies on the Tourism Industry

“…Scholars argue [32,37,39] that modern technology can optimize the allocation of resources, improve the management of waste, contribute to energy consumption, reduce the industry's ecological footprint, improve health measures, generate corporate social responsibility, and promote sustainable tourism. The evolution of smart modern technologies anticipates the destruction of cultural heritage sites [29,40].…”

Artificial Intelligence in the Tourism Industry: An Overview of Reviews

“…For example, AI-powered virtual tours of popular tourist destinations can provide users with an immersive experience that closely resembles an actual visit. It enhances visitor experiences at cultural heritage sites by providing immersive and interactive experiences too (Loureiro et al 2022). These technologies offer the possibility of a "contactless journey" in the future, with facial recognition technology (Das et al 2021).…”

Do intangible factors enhance sociocultural productivity and economy in world heritage sites?

“…Heritage sites, renowned for their cultural, historical, architectural and natural significance, attract visitors from all areas of the world (Sites, 2008;Loureiro et al, 2022). They not only contribute to local economies through tourism and cultural exchange (Cochrane and Tapper, 2006), but also define part of the productivity of urban spaces (Rypkema, 2008;Campoy-Muñoz et al, 2017).…”

“…This new approach to productivity in historic sites brings with it an added difficulty of balancing conservation and urban development (Puren and Jordaan, 2014;Loureiro et al, 2022;. This balance is put at risk by the constant tourism challenges to which traditional sites are subjected (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, 2020;United Nations World Tourism Organization, 2020).…”