World Heritage Sites through the Eyes of New Tourists – Who Cares about World Heritage Brand in Budapest?

Ivett Sziva; Lia Bassa

doi:10.6092/issn.2036-5195/6773

Authors

Ivett Sziva Budapest Metropolitan University
She is a researcher consultant and senior Professor in Tourism at the Budapest Metropolitan University and Corvinus University of Budapest. Ivett takes part in academic researches, and is mostly committed to qualitative methods. She lectures and has a great number of publications in the various topics of destination and attraction management, competitiveness, health- and clinical-tourism, and e-tourism. At present, she focuses her research work on the newest trends of destination management and cultural tourism.
Lia Bassa Budapest Metropolitan University

She was awarded a Ph.D. in English literature 1982. She has been senior consultant of the Hungarian National Committee of UNESCO World Heritage (2000-2004) and assistant professor at Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Department of Information and Knowledge Management (2004-2007). Since 2005 she is the managing Director of the Foundation for Information Society, and researcher of its UNESCO World Heritage Information Management Research Centre. Since 2010 she is also the organiser of and responsible for UNITWIN membership of World Heritage MA education at the Budapest Metropolitan University.

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.2036-5195/6773

Keywords:

Transformation of Cultural tourism, Budapest World heritage Site, Heritage Tourism

Abstract

Budapest is one the most emerging tourism destinations in Central-Eastern Europe, and besides the popularity of the regenerated “multicultural and design” district, its cultural heritage, particularly those on the list of the UNESCO World Heritage, assure its growing attractiveness. However the cultural sites are the most visited sightseeing attractions, our proposition was that the tourists are not aware of the fact, that they are visiting UNESCO World Heritage Site (WHS). The main aim of the paper is to highlight the importance of the WHS in cultural tourism, and to introduce the significance of place branding in it. A structured content analysis were taken out to analyse the reviews of the Tripadvisor considering the attractions of Budapest, with the objective of crystallizing the main motivations and awareness of the tourists visiting the world heritage site of Budapest. Further on our objective was to analyse their satisfaction with interpretation, attraction, and visitor management issues. Then their overall experiences, development needs and ideas for the world heritage sites attracting cultural tourism were taken into consideration. Our presupposition was that new technologies can improve a site’s popularity by pulling the attention on its real values that can be experienced by the visitors.

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World Heritage Sites through the Eyes of New Tourists – Who Cares about World Heritage Brand in Budapest?

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