World heritage sites, international tourism demand and tourist specialization in Latin America and the Caribbean 1995-2019

TORTUL, MARINA; ELÍAS, SILVINA; LEONARDI, VIVIANA

Journal of Tourism Analysis: Revista de Análisis Turístico

Secretaría de Redacción Consejo Editorial, Asociación Española de Expertos Científicos en Turismo, Spain

Lugar: Illes Balears; Año: 2022 vol. 29 p. 72 - 100

2254-0644

The relationship between international tourism and the registration of a place as World Heritage, both tangible and intangible, has been newly studied. Since little progress has been made with regard to Latin American and the Caribbean (LAC) countries, this paper aimed to approach this problem. Furthermore, the analysis was differentiated according to the type of destination. To do so, an specialization index was introduced indicating whether a country is specialized in tourism or not. The study was based on a panel data of 32 LAC countries for the period 1995-2019. Results show that there is a marked direct effect of the number of World Heritage Sites on international tourism demand and that this relationship is much stronger for those countries that are specialized in tourism. However, when differentiating between tangible and intangible heritages, the former have a highly significant effect on international tourism demand in countries not specialized in tourism, but this is not the case for the latter. Conversely, cultural intangible heritage is only relevant for countries specialized in tourism.