Tourism Sector Must Change if Heritage Tourism Niche is to Grow

EXTRACT from BGIS Article: "Mr. Diène proposed that, even before determining benefits, it was crucial for there to be an examination of what heritage denoted and how it was presented. He underlined that "the two dominant features of enslavement are silence and invisibility; the silence on the history of slavery and the invisibility of [the people]. One of the first challenges for modern tourism...is first to break the silence...the way tourism is practised, it wipes out the historical content and the meaning of the societies concerned; because the dominant factor is to promote [aesthetic]...

According to the former UNESCO Director, modern tourism "in many ways is an avatar of the old ideology of the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries, the time of slavery, because its basic values are competition, domination, exploitation, profit. Are we going to accept this practice of tourism which cut us from our identities our true heritage?...[or are we] going to promote another type of tourism which I call intercultural tourism," Read More at BGIS: Tourism Sector Must Change if Heritage Tourism Niche is to Grow