Cultural Tourism: quick guide

What we do

ComMark and its development partners have identified the opportunities for M4P approaches in tourism utilisation of historical, proclaimed and contemporary cultural resources across the Southern African Development Community. Currently, ComMark and its partners are documenting and analysing utilisation structures around proclaimed cultural heritage sites to identify the most beneficial system that allows a meaningful participation by the poor and contribute to the reduction of rural and urban poverty. A small cultural tourism intervention aimed at determining the practical opportunities and challenges around such products will be initiated.

Why this intervention

As the nature tourism offering becomes increasingly developed and marketed, we  have the opportunity to use culture as a lever to diversify the tourism offering, build new destinations, create bridges between the private sector tourism industry and host communities, and distinguish countries on the continent from each other. Furthermore, cultural resources are often found in areas deprived of obvious natural attractions. In these contexts cultural tourism is able maximise urban settings and recurring events.

What we achieve

The objective of this project is to determine favourable conditions to ensure a meaningful participation by the poor in the tourism industry based on cultural resources. The project enables us to:

1. Encourage private sector operators to include cultural enterprises in fixed itineraries;
2. Create appropriate policy/regulation that enables local residents to benefit from cultural/heritage resources in their areas whilst at the same time taking responsibility for the conservation of the resource;
3. Determine the best management structure around cultural resources in order to transform malfunctioning markets and addressing the causes of market failure;
4. Strengthening effective culture resource markets (handicrafts) and strengthen linkages through route and destination area developments where cultural resources form an important component; and
5. Enhance the capacity of the poor to participate in tourism markets by assisting the creation of community based organizations as legal entities and conducting training and awareness creation.

Comparisons to management systems around protected areas and wildlife will be drawn to see if private sector involvement can be beneficial option around cultural attractions as well.

The project further aims to determine if quality cultural replicas and artifacts can be sold in markets to the benefit of local resource owners and producers for a fair price (fair trade in artifacts).

How is this sustainable

The intervention will create the appropriate enabling environment for an inclusion of sustainable cultural tourism ventures supported by the private sector tourism industry and included in individual and group itinerates of incoming operators. It will further provide public and private organisations mandated to develop, conserve and manage cultural heritage resources to find sustainable income generating opportunities across (southern) Africa.

Who we work with

The  current phase of the project is implemented jointly with the Development Bank  of Southern Africa (DBSA) and focuses on Namibia,  South Africa and Tanzania  case studies.