Teaching Cultural Tourism - Some Comments From The Classroom

What is it about?

This paper offers some comments about the relationship between cultural heritage management and the tourism industry based on our experiences of teaching a subject called 'Environmental and Cultural Tourism' at Charles Sturt University (CSU). This is a third-year subject offered to students taking a tourism major as part of a Bachelor of Business degree course. Two authors (LS and AC) are archaeologists who have taught archaeology and cultural resource management to applied science students at CSU, and one (AA) has taught recreation and tourism at the same institution. All three authors have been involved with other staff at CSU in developing and teaching this subject over the last two years. The overall aim of this paper is to describe how the tourism industry, as represented by our students, perceive cultural resources and to explore some of the ideological differences between tourism practitioners, on the one hand, and archaeologists and managers on the other. Our discussion contains two closely related themes. Firstly, we would like to outline the issues concerning environmental and cultural tourism that we aimed to raise for the business students, and secondly we will discuss some of the more general issues for cultural heritage management that have been highlighted in the process of developing this course.

Featured Image