Why this Project is needed

When the World Heritage Convention was conceived in the early 1970s, the impact of tourism was not fully addressed. The annual international arrivals at the time totalled about 180 million, in comparison to the 1 billion international arrivals surpassed in 2012. Cultural tourism is growing at an unprecedented rate and now accounts for around 40% of global tourism.

When managed responsibly, tourism can be a driver for preservation and conservation of cultural and natural heritage and a vehicle for sustainable development. Tourism to World Heritage Sites stimulates employment, promotes local activity through arts and crafts and generates revenues. However, if not planned or managed effectively, tourism can be socially, culturally and economically disruptive, harming hereby fragile environments and local communities.

There are significant opportunities for destinations along the Silk Road corridors to join efforts for building transnational tourism initiatives to promote and develop shared heritage under the Silk Road brand. By taking a collaborative approach to developing tourism for the Silk Road corridors, it is planned that:

• sustainable approaches to destination management will be applied across the region
• dispersal of visitation across the region will improve
• length of stay and yield will increase
• new opportunities for investment will open up
• international relations will be strengthened
• new opportunities for public private sector partnerships will be realised

Project Priorities

A number of priorities have been identified to ensure that the tourism strategy developed for the Silk Road Heritage Corridors optimises the opportunities that tourism presents while safeguarding the outstanding heritage along the Silk Road

• Provide quality visitor experiences that do not degrade or damage the property’s natural or cultural values
• Deliver holistic planning, with well integrated stakeholder participation for long-term sustainability
• Identify nodes (large cities) along the Silk Road, the segments of routes connecting them and the corridors as Silk Road tourism lends itself to attracting travellers along integrated routes and corridors rather than to individual sites or destinations.
• Collaborate on trans-national approaches that are key to strengthening Silk Road tourism.
• Share skills, expertise and knowledge to avoid duplication, build on strengths and implement coordinated management frameworks along the Silk Road with regard to sustainable tourism, conservation, education, research development and interpretation.
• Develop appropriate standards and protocols to face key issues for heritage sites, such as boundaries and buffer zones, site selection, etc.
• Implement monitoring systems at local, national and transnational levels to measure change, impacts of actions and changes to the values of the sites.
• Provide high quality, consistent and informative heritage communication and interpretation, delivered throughout the tourism experience, to build tourist expectations and deliver high quality visitor experiences.
• Invest in Intangible Cultural Heritage such as traditional handicrafts, gastronomy, rituals, music and other cultural expressions to enhance the visitor experience and contribute to intercultural understanding and exchange. This can be achieved through developing community centres for capacity building, organising cultural festivals and implementing marketing and promotional campaigns.
• Embrace technology and innovation such as 3D digital scanning and modelling, digital preservation and archiving. These methods can provide a publicly accessible archive enabling people to visit and learn about cultural heritage sites from around the world. These technologies can also help ensure that heritage sites are effectively managed today as well as protected for tomorrow.