Significance of Heritage Tourism in the UK

Seitova Nazym Certificate in Hotel and Tourism Management Operations HTMi: Switzerland

Introduction
The definition and concept of heritage Deeper exploration of the heritage concept is a tiring and long-lasting process. Since, it is hard to define the meaning, as heritage does not have a certain form of appearance. It can be as tangible as intangible (Poria et al., 2001,2003; Christou, 2005; Garrod and Fyall, 2001); it covers a full range of inherited traditions, monuments, objects, environment and culture (Timothy and Boyd, 2003) transmitted from the past (Nurick, 2000).

Current situation and background information about Heritage Tourism in the UK Over the last 10 years, heritage tourism in the UK is experiencing a constant number of tourists yearly, accounting for nearly 6 million people (Beyrouty and Tessler, 2013). Thus, heritage tourism is a source of considerable income contributing to countrys economy. Moreover, heritage represents the history of the past, it shows the culture and lifestyle of the previous generations, but many people forget about its' initial purpose and act negatively towards the preserved areas (Bonarou, 2012). Based on primary research, this paper examines tourism in heritage sites of United Kingdom and how it influences lives of local people.

Economical impact of Heritage Tourism

According to Beyrouty and Tessler report sponsored by Oxford Economics (2013), heritage tourism is worth 26.4 billions to the UK economy, which is nearly 20% of total UKs tourism income.

Moreover, nowadays heritage becomes more important in peoples holiday choices. For example, for UK residents on the UK holiday, 28% of total activities were connected to a heritage site or attraction, such as visiting museum, historic house, palace, cathedral, church, art gallery, country park and nature reserve or wildlife attraction (Beyrouty and Tessler, 2013). Thus, heritage is one of the biggest sources of income of the UKs economy, growing every year. Nevertheless, such situation draws the country into economic dependence on certain type of tourism (Timothy and Boyd, 2003). In respect that heritage is non- durable attraction, in the future when heritage tourism can loose its growing popularity, it will create additional costs for the UK on financial support of non- profitable subjects of historical significance (Rahman, 2012). In addition, heritage tourism creates a considerable amount of jobs for local people.

Table 1: Employment in tourism related industries (UK, 2009) As provided on the table above (Table 1), the amount of jobs directly related to the heritage tourism accounted as 272,000 in 2009, according to UK Satellite Account (2012).

Secondary heritage tourism related industries like food and beverage serving services and other consumption products, which include restaurants, souvenir shops, and entertainment activities, produced 874,000 jobs in 2009 (UK Tourism Satellite Account, 2012). However, as majority of jobs are seasonal and do not have high career promotion levels, a number of people are constantly unemployed and/or do not have enough money for their living (Ashworth and Thomas, 1999).

Environmental damage caused by tourists

In response to increasing popularity of heritage sites in the UK, there are numbers of problems emerged related to a physical state of reserved areas. English Heritage reports that 17% of scheduled to reconstruction monuments are at risk of disappearance and 103 of them are parks and gardens, which is respectively 6.4% (Brightman, 2012). There are different reasons, which a built heritage of the UK is suffering from: vandalism, littering, pollution and vapours damaging sensitive construction materials (Timothy and Boyd, 2003). The example of a prominent vandalism could be clearly seen on the appearance of Scarborough Castle. The 2500 years old English Heritage tourist attraction was attacked by two 18 year old teenagers: the ancient walls were crushed and the medieval relic was thrown down a well. The whole sum of damage caused is estimated as 5000 (Brooke, 2013). The violators were punished, but it is impossible now to return back the original state of the castle. Likewise English Heritage attractions are suffering from pollution and littering, due to transportation systems used and international visitors behaviour relatively (Swarbrooke, 2002).

People just coming for 2-3 days, on the average, and do not want to take the responsibility of their actions towards the surrounding environment. For example: plastic bottles lying on the grass near famous Stonehenge (English Heritage, 2013), which can ruin the ambience of an attraction and also are expensive to clean up. According to English Heritage, only 13% of registered entries to protected national legacy are economic to repair by received on the place income. Moreover, Brightman reports: only 20% of properties funding their own preservation (2012). On the contrary, in some way tourists are posing the threat unconsciously. The wear and tear from a large number of visitors coming at once can cause the demolition of sensitive construction material layer, as on the experience of Headfort House in Kells (World Monument Funds, 2013).

Tourists behaviour and relationship with locals

On the one hand, attention paid by tourists to national heritage increases its role among local people and changes their attitude towards it, making them to be more concerned about their legacy. As a result, organizations like English Heritage (1983) and National Trust (1895), for preservation of the historical monuments and buildings of England, have appeared. Constantly, these organizations are actively encouraging enthusiastic tourists in philanthropy. For instance, National Trust is funded by more than 40 millions a year spent on support of physical state of cultural and environmental treasures in the UK (Brightman, 2012). Thus, tourists motivate locals for taking more active participation in conservation of their national heritage.

On the other hand, huge tourist masses at small historic and heritage places are reason for tense relationship with local people, as they are the origins of discord and anxiety among them leading to blatant animosity in some cases (Timothy and Boyd, 2003). To illustrate, a heritage town of 23,000 residents, which attracts 2.5 million tourists each year and often crowded at summer season Stratford-upon-Avon, England. As a result, some obstacles appear in working process of local people during the week, as some of them need to come up earlier to avoid tourists. Furthermore, locals are in experience of being pushed out by tourists who create pressures on local facilities and services (Peak District, 2009).

Future generations and heritage reconstruction measurements

Among all the benefits and costs of conserving English heritage the main question rises: why do we need to conserve the shadows of the past? As according to Timothy and Boyd (2003), the heritage can bring different meanings to people. For some, especially indigenous nations, it represents an evidence of cultural traditions and history of the past, for others it can be seen as a place or subject of nostalgia, symbolizing something important for certain period generation (Timothy and Boyd, 2003). It is not necessary always to be huge awesome events or famous sacred places, but simply some insignificant cartoon characters or any other creations of media. For instance, Mickey Mouse, who is recognized as a symbol of American pop - culture overseas starting from 1928, the years of technological rise (Mickey Mouse Monopoly, 2001). Furthermore, only few are aware of valuable scientific and educative information heritage bears behind (Swarbrooke, 2002; Timothy and Boyd, 2003).

Scientific side information is provided on unexplored research areas and unique attractions, as a sample, to mention - heritage of archaeological sites (Pearson and Sullivan, 1995), while educative ones introduces to future generations the steps of how to prevent malevolent events of the past to repeat in the future. Nevertheless, as it has been mentioned before majority of heritage sites cannot compensate costs spent on their preservation (Brightman, 2012 and English Heritage, 2013). Therefore, there is no point in restorative measurements, which leads to the solution of replacing the heritage building by a new structure (Timothy and Boyd, 2003). However, presently people are aware of another idea how to make the historic object look much interesting and be more profitable, but with absence of its original objective. For example, no one could imagine hundred years ago that old factories can become buildings for office use or prisons being transformed into restaurants (Timothy and Boyd, 2003). Thus, heritage brings one more additional value to those described above functional.

Conclusion and Recommendations

Heritage brings scientific and educational importance as to people coming to the UK, as to the local ones. Moreover, it is a symbol of cultural identity, which future generations are to receive. Heritage tourism is the biggest source of financial support benefitting not only the national legacy itself but also the local people, attracting international philanthropy investments and making profit from tourist visits. However, due to the huge environmental damage caused by growing tourist public, problems with conservation of the original state of heritage has been solved by transforming objects of heritage into more profitable business.

Due to described above, author is keen to recommend heritage institutes, to use a system created by herself: to divide tourists into groups by their motivations for visits, give them special cards, so that staff could recognize each type of tourist and help them to find the place they are allowed to see on their heritage site travel map.

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