Research Information System
ITW2013 International Tourism Week Conference Series V, Turkey, 1 - 04 April 2013, pp.47-66, (Full Text)
Tourism is a human activity for a specific destination for recreational, leisure, cultural or business purposes. Cultural tourism is defined as “visits that motivated wholly or in part by interest in the historical, artistic, scientific or lifestyle/heritage offerings of a community, region, group or institution.” Cultural tourism is based on essentially cultural motivations such as study tours, performing arts and other cultural tours, travel to festivals and other cultural events, visit to sites and monuments, travel to study nature, folklore or art or pilgrimages (World Tourism Organization, 1985). The term “cultural tourism” has been used interchangeably with “heritage tourism”. Heritage tourism is a phenomenon based on tourists’ motivations and perceptions rather than on specific site attributes. The fundamental assumption is that heritage is an industry, in the sense of modern activity with the purpose of producing a marketable product. Marketing is an integral part of the overall management process used to develop facilities and services as tourism products, identify potential travellers and their demands and desires for natural and cultural tourism product to communicate their appeal to target markets.
Authenticity is defined as originality, genuineness or entity which refers to the quality or condition of being authentic, trustworthy or genuine which help as to identify and understand the value inherited within the cultural landscapes. Character of the landscape is seen as an embodiment of traditions, customs and aesthetic qualities of historical and cultural heritage. Authenticity in cultural heritage is an essential factor in tourism product and tourism marketing in compliance with the promotion costumer satisfaction and to support heritage conservation
Marketing is the process of communicating the value of a product or service to customers. Tourism marketing can be defined as “marketing of life” with tourist concept and its point of view which aims to have some benefits from life and from cultural and natural assets. At one side, approaching to producers, consumers and intermediaries with a strong interest on the other side focusing on the base of the marketing and tourism field very closely. At this point, to determine authenticity bin cultural heritage is an important tool in terms of an accurate understanding and evaluating of cultural heritage and value them in tourism markets. Although tangible and intangible heritage values of an area, considering it as authentic living heritage is difficult if it is not sustainable without government intervention or tourist revenue which should be remembered.
The authenticity criteria have an active role for explaining, understanding, protecting and gaining to tourism activity in cultural heritage sites. In this study, the role of authenticity of heritage sites in tourism marketing with 3 heritage examples from Antalya namely Side ancient city, Kaleiçi and Alanya castle. Tourism activity heavily depend on the quality of natural and cultural features of tourism sites, accordingly understanding authenticity in tourism would provided added-value to tourism marketing and protection of cultural heritage.