Significance of Heritage Tourism in the UK

Seitova Nazym

Certificate in Hotel and Tourism Management Operations

HTMi: Switzerland

Introduction

The definition and concept of heritage

Deeper exploration of the heritage concept is a tiring and long-lasting process. Since, it

is hard to define the meaning, as heritage does not have a certain form of appearance. It

can be as tangible as intangible (Poria et al., 2001,2003; Christou, 2005; Garrod and

Fyall, 2001); it covers a full range of inherited traditions, monuments, objects,

environment and culture (Timothy and Boyd, 2003) transmitted from the past (Nurick,

2000).

Current situation and background information about Heritage Tourism in

the UK

Over the last 10 years, heritage tourism in the UK is experiencing a constant

number of tourists yearly, accounting for nearly 6 million people (Beyrouty and

Tessler, 2013). Thus, heritage tourism is a source of considerable income

contributing to country’s economy. Moreover, heritage represents the history of

the past, it shows the culture and lifestyle of the previous generations, but many

people forget about its' initial purpose and act negatively towards the preserved

areas (Bonarou, 2012). Based on primary research, this paper examines tourism

in heritage sites of United Kingdom and how it influences lives of local people.

Economical impact of Heritage Tourism

According to Beyrouty and Tessler report sponsored by Oxford Economics

(2013), heritage tourism is worth £26.4 billions to the UK economy, which is

nearly 20% of total UK’s tourism income.

Moreover, nowadays heritage becomes more important in people’s holiday

choices. For example, for UK residents on the UK holiday, 28% of total activities

were connected to a heritage site or attraction, such as visiting museum, historic

house, palace, cathedral, church, art gallery, country park and nature reserve or

wildlife attraction (Beyrouty and Tessler, 2013). Thus, heritage is one of the

biggest sources of income of the UK’s economy, growing every year.

Nevertheless, such situation draws the country into economic dependence on

certain type of tourism (Timothy and Boyd, 2003). In respect that heritage is

non- durable attraction, in the future when heritage tourism can loose it’s

growing popularity, it will create additional costs for the UK on financial support

of non- profitable subjects of historical significance (Rahman, 2012). In addition,

heritage tourism creates a considerable amount of jobs for local people.

Table 1: Employment in tourism related industries (UK, 2009)

As provided on the table above (Table 1), the amount of jobs directly related to

the heritage tourism accounted as 272,000 in 2009, according to UK Satellite

Account (2012).

Secondary heritage tourism related industries like food and beverage serving

services and other consumption products, which include restaurants, souvenir

shops, and entertainment activities, produced 874,000 jobs in 2009 (UK Tourism

Satellite Account, 2012). However, as majority of jobs are seasonal and do not

have high career promotion levels, a number of people are constantly

unemployed and/or do not have enough money for their living (Ashworth and

Thomas, 1999).

Environmental damage caused by tourists

In response to increasing popularity of heritage sites in the UK, there are

numbers of problems emerged related to a physical state of reserved areas.

English Heritage reports that 17% of scheduled to reconstruction monuments

are at risk of disappearance and 103 of them are parks and gardens, which is

respectively 6.4% (Brightman, 2012). There are different reasons, which a built

heritage of the UK is suffering from: vandalism, littering, pollution and vapours

damaging sensitive construction materials (Timothy and Boyd, 2003). The

example of a prominent vandalism could be clearly seen on the appearance of

Scarborough Castle. The 2500 years old English Heritage tourist attraction was

attacked by two 18 – year old teenagers: the ancient walls were crushed and the

medieval relic was thrown down a well. The whole sum of damage caused is

estimated as £5000 (Brooke, 2013). The violators were punished, but it is

impossible now to return back the original state of the castle. Likewise English

Heritage attractions are suffering from pollution and littering, due to

transportation systems used and international visitors behaviour relatively

(Swarbrooke, 2002).

People just coming for 2-3 days, on the average, and do not want to take the

responsibility of their actions towards the surrounding environment. For

example: plastic bottles lying on the grass near famous Stonehenge (English

Heritage, 2013), which can ruin the ambience of an attraction and also are

expensive to clean up. According to English Heritage, only 13% of registered

entries to protected national legacy are economic to repair by received on the

place income. Moreover, Brightman reports: “only 20% of properties funding

their own preservation” (2012). On the contrary, in some way tourists are posing

the threat unconsciously. The wear and tear from a large number of visitors

coming at once can cause the demolition of sensitive construction material layer,

as on the experience of Headfort House in Kells (World Monument Funds, 2013).

Tourists’ behaviour and relationship with locals

On the one hand, attention paid by tourists to national heritage increases its role

among local people and changes their attitude towards it, making them to be

more concerned about their legacy. As a result, organizations like English

Heritage (1983) and National Trust (1895), for preservation of the historical

monuments and buildings of England, have appeared. Constantly, these

organizations are actively encouraging enthusiastic tourists in philanthropy. For

instance, National Trust is funded by more than £40 millions a year spent on

support of physical state of cultural and environmental treasures in the UK

(Brightman, 2012). Thus, tourists motivate locals for taking more active

participation in conservation of their national heritage.

On the other hand, huge tourist masses at small historic and heritage places are

reason for tense relationship with local people, as they are the origins of “discord

and anxiety among them leading to blatant animosity in some cases” (Timothy

and Boyd, 2003). To illustrate, a heritage town of 23,000 residents, which

attracts 2.5 million tourists each year and often crowded at summer season –

Stratford-upon-Avon, England. As a result, some obstacles appear in working

process of local people during the week, as some of them need to come up earlier

to avoid tourists. Furthermore, locals are in experience of being pushed out by

tourists who create pressures on local facilities and services (Peak District,

2009).

Future generations and heritage reconstruction measurements

Among all the benefits and costs of conserving English heritage the main

question rises: why do we need to conserve the shadows of the past? As

according to Timothy and Boyd (2003), the heritage can bring different

meanings to people. For some, especially indigenous nations, it represents an

evidence of cultural traditions and history of the past, for others it can be seen as

a place or subject of nostalgia, symbolizing something important for certain

period generation (Timothy and Boyd, 2003). It is not necessary always to be

huge awesome events or famous sacred places, but simply some insignificant

cartoon characters or any other creations of media. For instance, Mickey Mouse,

who is recognized as a symbol of American pop - culture overseas starting from

1928, the years of technological rise (“Mickey Mouse Monopoly”, 2001).

Furthermore, only few are aware of valuable scientific and educative information

heritage bears behind (Swarbrooke, 2002; Timothy and Boyd, 2003).

Scientific side information is provided on unexplored research areas and unique

attractions, as a sample, to mention - heritage of archaeological sites (Pearson

and Sullivan, 1995), while educative ones introduces to future generations the

steps of how to prevent malevolent events of the past to repeat in the future.

Nevertheless, as it has been mentioned before majority of heritage sites cannot

compensate costs spent on their preservation (Brightman, 2012 and English

Heritage, 2013). Therefore, there is no point in restorative measurements, which

leads to the solution of replacing the heritage building by a new structure

(Timothy and Boyd, 2003). However, presently people are aware of another idea

how to make the historic object look much interesting and be more profitable,

but with absence of its original objective. For example, no one could imagine

hundred years ago that old factories can become buildings for office use or

prisons being transformed into restaurants (Timothy and Boyd, 2003). Thus,

heritage brings one more additional value to those described above – functional.

Conclusion and Recommendations

Heritage brings scientific and educational importance as to people coming to the

UK, as to the local ones. Moreover, it is a symbol of cultural identity, which future

generations are to receive. Heritage tourism is the biggest source of financial

support benefitting not only the national legacy itself but also the local people,

attracting international philanthropy investments and making profit from tourist

visits. However, due to the huge environmental damage caused by growing

tourist public, problems with conservation of the original state of heritage has

been solved by transforming objects of heritage into more profitable business.

Due to described above, author is keen to recommend heritage institutes, to use

a system created by herself: to divide tourists into groups by their motivations

for visits, give them special cards, so that staff could recognize each type of

tourist and help them to find the place they are allowed to see on their heritage

site travel map.

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