About partners for livable

The coordinated and 
mutually supportive 
application of cultural, 
heritage and tourist 
resources for the 
improvement of the overall 
quality of community life.” 

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Cultural Heritage Tourism
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SUMMARY
The features, significance, and economic potential of cultural heritage tourists have been widely 
recognized, and they form a standard part of the thinking and approach of numerous municipal and 
state development organizations across the country. At the national level, a coalition of agencies and 
organizations called Partners in Tourism provides information on cultural heritage tourism. More 
commercially, members of the tourism industry formed the Cultural & Heritage Tourism Alliance to 
promote this type of travel. 
As the market for cultural heritage tourism activities expanded, differences in perspective emerged 
between some nonprofit and for-profit practitioners. Most often, tourism professionals tend to focus 
on developing tourism resources in ways that enhance the tourists’ experience. Given that the tourism 
industry is in the business of selling tourism to tourists, this focus makes obvious sense. But from 
Partners’ perspective, cultural heritage tourism is “too important to be left to tourism professionals.”
Partners defines cultural heritage tourism as “the coordinated and mutually supportive application of 
cultural, heritage and tourist resources for the improvement of the overall quality of community life.” 
This definition puts the interests of the community at the center of cultural heritage tourism. Partners 
recognizes the importance of high-quality tourist amenities, and it views cultural heritage tourism as an 
important way to bring economic resources into the community. But unlike many other practitioners, 
Partners emphasizes the interplay between building community and developing resources to attract 
cultural heritage tourists.

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Cultural Heritage Tourism