Proceedings of International Business and Social Sciences and Research Conference
16 - 17 December 2013, Hotel Mariiott Casamagna, Cancun, Mexico, ISBN: 978-1-922069-38-2
The Role of Tourism, Heritage, and Globalization in the Growth of a
Developing Country
Pia Anderson
Tourism is a huge and growing business, with more than $1 trillion spent globally in
the last year. Developing countries are finding that tourism is one of the ways to
grow economically and the tourist infrastructure can be not only lucrative but can
also have a modernizing effect on local environments. The growth of tourism,
together with expanding globalization, plays a definitive role in transforming local
heritage.
The role of heritage in developing nations has also changed, with heritage playing
the dual role of both promoting identity and increasing a nation’s economic growth.
Heritage, both cultural and natural, is one of the major attractions in the business of
tourism. Developing nations, especially those with colonial pasts, have used
heritage as an integrating mechanism, at times pulling together diverse sub-cultures
to form a national consciousness. Because of this, heritage has necessarily been
orchestrated, constructed, mythologized, romanticized and sold in ways both positive
and negative. Positive effects include national pride, identity, cohesion and strength.
Negative effects can however arise from the heritage narrative fostering popular
memories that can leave out minority groups, and the creation of national myths that
can be simplistic and even, in the long term, damaging.
Increasing globalization, while bringing technology and prosperity, also tends to bring
about a simplification or flattening of local cultures, with indigenous identities, mores
and rights becoming subsumed by the dominant lore. Likewise, local heritage can be
similarly submerged when it conflicts with the national notion of heritage.
In this paper, I look specifically at the Republic of the Philippines in order to examine
how tourism and heritage are being used to develop the county’s economy. I look at
how cultural heritage is portrayed simultaneously as exotic yet familiar and
welcoming in order to promote the country’s tourist industry. I also examine how
natural heritage is being sold to tourists and how this portrayal of both the natural
and cultural heritage is affecting specific indigenous groups and the identity of the
nation as a whole.
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Dr. Pia Anderson, Department of International Studies, American University of Sharjah, United Arab Emirates.