ABSTRACT
Cultural tourism has become a particular focus of research in recent decades as the growing links between culture and tourism have been recognized (OECD, 2009). The cultural tourism market is frequently seen as a particularly rapid growth area, even though empirical evidence suggests that the growth of cultural tourism is linked to the general expansion of tourism consumption (de Haan, 1997). What has probably increased the visibility of cultural tourism is the growing diversity of forms of cultural consumption by tourists, which in turn can be linked to the increase in cultural supply and the widening denition of ‘culture’ (Richards 2007). Arguably, cultural tourism now accounts for around 40 per cent of international tourism (UNWTO 2004), although those travelling for specic cultural motives probably account for only 5-10 per cent of global tourism ows (Richards, 2001).
