The Role of UNESCO Cultural Heritage and Cultural Sector in Tourism Development: The Case of EU Countries

Abstract

Culture and tourism have always been related, but with blurred interpretations of the empirical relationship between those phenomena. This paper estimates the impact of different cultural indicators on tourism development in 27 EU member states for the period 2008–2018, by using dynamic panel data. The results indicate that the number of UNESCO Heritage Sites do not have a significant influence on the number of tourism overnights, whereas there are significant positive effects on international tourism receipts and tourism employment. Moreover, the additional cultural sector specifics considered in the analysis; government expenditure on culture and employment in culture, showed to have a significant positive influence on all three tourism indicators used in the research. In addition, the research results indicate that the real GDP per capita and the level of human capital are significant drivers of tourism development.

Creating Tourism Destinations of Underground Built Heritage—The Cases of Salt Mines in Poland, Portugal, and Romania

“…Similar phenomena apply to many different UBH sites of similar importance-it is a common process assessed as a positive change, which is discussed in many publications. The sites themselves are perceived as more attractive than before being listed [108,109]. Visits to salt mines listed by UNESCO influence direct the perception of tourists to their main values, namely their features and history.…”

“…Visits to salt mines listed by UNESCO influence direct the perception of tourists to their main values, namely their features and history. The results of studies addressing this approach have often been discussed based on experiences from different European countries with a number of sites on the UNESCO list [109][110][111][112][113]. However, to increase the understanding of the impact on the local community is a relevant issue to make both cities and the salt mines more safe, inclusive, resilient, and sustainable.…”

Assessment of the Cultural Heritage Potential in Poland

“…They demonstrated the cultural heritage potential of Nitra to be sufficient for the city to become an important cultural tourism hub in the region. Research by Škrabić Perić [58] showed that the number of UNESCO heritage sites does not significantly affect the growth of accommodation facilities' capacity but significantly contributes to the size of the tourism job market and income from international tourism. Moreover, other characteristics of the culture sector that were investigated, i.e., government spendings on culture and employment in culture, turned out to have a significant positive influence on the growth of cultural tourism.…”

Heritage Engagement and Subjective Well-Being in the European Union

“…Rather, it seems that living near tangible or intangible heritage, thus the value associated to heritage existence, could indirectly contribute to quality of life by means of improving material conditions or enhancing mutual understanding, for instance through tourism [8]. Alternatively, it could be that the existence of heritage has both positive and negative effects, for example when benefits such as the creation of economic activity [41] or the possibility of enjoying a historic city or landscape cancel out with the inconveniences generated by cultural tourism due to overcrowding or gentrification, as in [26,27].…”