Integrating Intangible Cultural Heritage into Cultural Heritage Tourism: An Applied Methodological Framework
Year: 2026
Type: book-chapter
Abstract: Intangible cultural heritage (ICH) remains underutilized in cultural heritage tourism (CHT), which often prioritizes tangible assets because of their visibility and ease of interpretation. This chapter presents an applied methodological framework that supports destination teams and heritage stakeholders in moving from awareness of ICH to responsible implementation in tourism contexts. Adapted from the Intangible Heritage Playbook, the framework offers a structured yet flexible process progressing through shared understanding, stakeholder alignment, co-design, prototyping, and monitored delivery. It embeds safeguarding principles as explicit decision checkpoints, ensuring that community agency, consent, and limits of acceptable change guide development throughout. Rather than proposing prescriptive product formats, the chapter operationalises tourism development as a collaborative learning process grounded in meaning-making and ethical boundary-setting. Key tools include a stakeholder Power Grid to clarify roles and influence, a participation protocol to document non-negotiables and acceptable adaptations, and a monitoring logic applicable from early prototypes through seasonal delivery. Case-based reflections from Flanders and the Netherlands illustrate how prioritising meaning and boundaries before formats supports coherent visitor experiences while reducing risks of decontextualisation and tokenism. By translating safeguarding commitments into practical steps, the chapter advances the implementation of the 2003 UNESCO Convention within tourism practice. The framework is designed for destination management organisations, heritage communities, cultural institutions, and tourism operators seeking to integrate living heritage into tourism in ways that strengthen transmission, place attachment, and sustainable destination development over time, across diverse contexts and governance arrangements.
Source: IntechOpen eBooks
Institution: Thomas More Kempen
Language: English
Subfield: Archeology (arts and humanities)
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
OpenAlex ID: W7129003266