The Discourse of Authenticity and Revitalization in Heritage Tourism

Abstract

Heritage Tourism is one of the fastest growing aspects of tourism wherein the tourist wants to have an experience which authentically represents a people’s heritage such as their architectural design, folklores, festivals etc. However the underlying question is how this authenticity determined which the heritage tourist is looking for, since a lot of cultures and traditions are on the verge of extinction both in form and practice? Also most of the generation of people that originated these cultures is no longer alive. This article has looked at this trend in this article and has come up with ideas in which authenticity and revitalization in heritage tourism will be properly incorporated in heritage tourism. The reason for this is because in heritage tourism issues of authenticity and revitalization are continuously discussed and re-discussed in order to reappropriate tourism consumption. However, a lot scholars argue that the experience of most tourist are far from authentic, even though tourism is fundamentally a search for authenticity but in our modern world as argued by most scholars the experience is far from authentic due to the nature in which tourism is strategically contrived to meet the demands of modern tourists. It is argued that what these tourists have is “staged authenticity”.