Introduction to the Manifesto
of Life Beyond Tourism® for Intercultural Dialogue – with a Tourism Based on Values, not just on Consumer Services
Life Beyond Tourism®
- contributes to the dissemination and recognition of such universal values as respect and harmony among peoples, turning the tourist experience into a unique opportunity for knowledge and for the promotion of intercultural dialogue
- promotes familiarization with the spirit of a place, its past, its present and its future prospects
- offers a new vision of tourism, including mass tourism, designed to highlight
its strategic nature rather than its consumer-driven aspect:
. to promote intercultural dialogue
. to foster awareness of and familiarity with cultural diversity and traditional knowledge
. to safeguard spirit of place
. to communicate spirit of place, imbuing it with new life
- hopes to see the ethos of commitment to fostering intercultural dialogue become part and parcel of our intangible cultural heritage
- we aim to enhance the concept of the use and enjoyment of heritage for the purpose of promoting intercultural dialogue, transcending the mere concepts of the safeguarding and enhancement of cultural heritage;
- we present the nature of a region through its major cultural expressions, institutions and businesses, including those with a potentially lower profile, yet whose origins and current activities both embody and evince the “spirit of place”;
- we offer an opportunity to present and interpret an intangible heritage made up of the kind of motivations and aspirations that breathe life and eloquence into the tangible heritage of a place;
- we also aim to boost people’s awareness of the need to safeguard intangible heritage at least as much as tangible works of art and monuments.
With Life Beyond Tourism®, tourist destinations, especially those included in the UNESCO World Heritage List, can play a role as workshops contributing to intercultural dialogue, cooperation and shared cultural growth and enrichment.
Life Beyond Tourism® will turn that very tourism that is helping today to standardize the world, threatening our tangible and intangible world heritage, into a tool for enhancing individual experience in a context based on the rediscovery of values, not just on consumer-driven services.
| Manifesto 1. Tourism is a crucial source of prosperity2.Tourism provides an opportunity for getting to know . spirit of place 3. Tourism, in its various forms goes way beyond the mere satisfying of personal needs 4. People working in the tourist industry foster awareness of spirit of place and of intercultural dialogue 5. The tourist is a potential harbinger of knowledge and of intercultural dialogue 7. The community of the visited tourist destination considers the traveller to be first and foremost a guest of the city, then a guest of the business providing the services and facilities, and only lastly, their customer.
8. Workshops for knowledge trigger a demand for increasingly high-quality tourist products not only in terms of consumer services but also, and above all, in value-related terms 9. Architectural, urban and environmental planning and management need to foster ‘knowledge’ and ‘intercultural dialogue’ 10. ‘Cultural heritage’, both tangible and intangible, prompts people to travel, providing them with an opportunity to increase their knowledge; thus not only must that heritage be ‘protected’ and ‘enhanced’, it must also be used to fuel intercultural dialogue. |
