Culture and Tourism

This course explores the history of natural and cultural heritage and methods of promoting and conserving the World Heritage sites. It is offered by Nankai University through Future Learn, an online education platform.

The participants will discover the legal frameworks, processes, and practices used to identify and manage world heritage sites. As they work through case studies from Asia and around the world, they'll critically examine contemporary issues in cultural and heritage site tourism management.

The course is designed to build interdisciplinary knowledge on concepts that affect cultural heritage and tourism such as power, globalisation, authenticity, commodification, and representation. It also provides an introduction to the current debates within heritage and tourism studies that explore how and why tourists engage with heritage.

Some of the topics covered in the course are:

• Definitions and concepts of cultural tourism
• Managing and safeguarding World Heritage Sites
• Sustainable indigenous tourism