An assessment of the potentials for cultural heritage tourism development in the central part of Vietnam – case study: Thua Thien Hue and Quang Nam Provinces

Abstract

Nowadays, the Cultural Heritage Tourism (CHT) has been remarkably developed and regarded as a very important component of tourism industry in many countries and regions in the world. The Cultural Heritage Tourism development will firstly contribute significantly to the creation of employments and sources of income for the people. Next, it also helps the people to better understand the authentic values of cultural heritages and therefore, they will feel to be much proud of such cultural heritage which they are inherited. Furthermore, in terms of planning management factor, the Cultural Heritage Tourism development keeps a critical element in conserving and rehabilitating a lot of valuable historical relics, old houses and buildings, architectural buildings, historic city centres and so forth. In terms of the research problem, the study tries to respond the research questions such as: What are the potential impacts of Cultural Heritage Tourism in changing the identity, branding and the life of community for the localities?; What are important economic effects of Cultural Heritage Tourism to economic growth as well as to the significant revitalization for historic city centres?; What are major roles of public and private sectors in making essential investment for the Cultural Heritage Tourism development?; What are necessary and sufficient policies, programs, strategies to maximize advantages and to minimize disadvantages for developing Cultural Heritage Tourism?; What are proper solutions to minimize negative effects of urbanization process, natural disasters and other similar problems for developing Cultural Heritage Tourism?. Theories of Cultural Heritage Tourism and its impacts in social and economic values and spatial planning factor are studied to conceptualize the researcher questions and to design the research and proper tools for data gathering. The research design is the case study. A combination of quantitative and qualitative research methods is used in this scope of study, of which qualitative methods plays a key role in the analysis. Qualitative methods such as observation, questionnaires and individual and focused groups interviews are utilized to gather primary data and a mixture of documents, aerial photos, maps, reports, charts which are regarded as the secondary data collection method are used in this study with an aim of adequately analyzing the Cultural Heritage Tourism and its significance in social, economic values and planning factors. Quantitative method is also used to quantify the data in numbers and to measure the Cultural Heritage Tourism’s impacts in economic ways. The research process unveiled the results of an adequate assessment about the potentials of Cultural Heritage Tourism and how it contributes to the process of socioeconomic development and spatial planning management. A comparative analysis between the two study areas of Thua Thien Hue and Quang Nam is done to measure the potential impacts of Cultural Heritage Tourism in promoting the identity and branding of the localities. In another aspect, it reflects a better insight of socio-economic factor through several important indicators such as employment creation, income generation, tax, GDP and revenues. More important, the Cultural Heritage Tourism development also essentially brings in the rehabilitation of traditional cultural values such as historical relics, monument, and old urban centres. Main causes for the hindrance of the Cultural Heritage Tourism development are finally identified and are converted into the proper strategies and action plans. According to that, a set of the long-term strategy principles and the short-term action plans with specific activities and the actors as well as the financial sources for activities and/or projects implementation is also discussed. Generally, the research questions are fully answered and the objectives of research are satisfied with a completed analysis of the Cultural Heritage Tourism and its impacts.