International Conference on Cultural Tourism Advances

KU Leuven, Belgium

While exact estimates are difficult to make, it has repeatedly been mentioned that approximately 40% of all European tourists make a destination choice based on the cultural offerings. This leads to significant economic effects and has further strengthened the view of cultural heritage as a strategic resource for its economic impact, but also for its role in creating and enhancing social capital and achieving the goals of smart, sustainable and inclusive growth. At the same time, economic effects have been distributed unequally – often being more prevalent in urbanized areas – and the exponential growth of tourism (notwithstanding the dip during the Covid-19 pandemic) created issues of both over-and underexploitation.

The goal of this Conference is to further understanding of the sustainable development potential of cultural tourism by focusing on successful policy interventions, new cultural tourism trends, advances in visitor management systems, and new business and/or governance models.

Expected contributions include technical papers (presenting recent advances on Cultural Tourism) and project papers (describing their major outcomes in the Cultural Tourism domain).

Topics (not restricted to):

  • cultural tourism policy
  • cultural tourism management and governance
  • dynamic visitor management systems
  • contribution to regional development and resilience
  •  transformative tourism
  • sustainable development indicators
  • forecasting; virtual museums
  • augmented reality and other digital visitor-centric tools
  •  digitization for preservation
  • public accessibility

Selected and presented papers are expected to be published by a Springer book reflecting the breakthroughs and future perspectives of Cultural Tourism.

A little bit of history

A European Heritage Summit was first organized in London on 26–28 April 2006 by Dr. Simon Thurley, former Chief Executive Officer of English Heritage. The mission of the Summit was to gather for the first time the European cultural heritage leaders who had the opportunity to exchange their experience and initiate common actions. It was attended by 23 European states which agreed in the Final Statement to continue to meet annually as a forum of European heritage heads, known as the “European Heritage Heads Forum”. Future hosting countries are chosen by general agreement at the annual meeting.

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Permanent Secretariat - secretariat@ehhf.eu
Place Saint-Géry 23, 1000 Brussels

Cookie policy - Privacy policy
Copyright © European Heritage Heads Forum
All rights reserved.