Cultural tourism is a sub-set of tourism involving the traveler in the culture of a country or region, in particular the way of life of the people in those geographical areas, the history of those people, their art, architecture, religion (religions) and other elements that have helped shape their way of life.
The concept of cultural tourism is difficult to understand as a specific social practice in tourism practices and cultural practices. However, we see that all the mediatized images of a wide variety of tourist sites (Acapulco, the Azure Coast, Norway’s fjords, Kenya, the Pacific Islands, the Savoy …) feed the whole world with representations with a strong cultural dimension.
The World Tourism Organization defines it as “the movement of people with significant cultural motivations, such as study tours, art tours and cultural trips, trips to festivals or other cultural events, visits to places and monuments, nature discovery trips, folklore or art exploration, and pilgrimages.
The strength of the connection between culture and tourism can be found in the act of leisure (free time), away from the place of residence and driven by various motives (beach, discovery, countryside, sun, business, pilgrimage, cruise, stay in linguistics, etc.). “They are embodied in the choice of destination and form of travel and remain that both belong to the parameters of the order of identity, imagination and representation.”
To consider cultural tourism as a special category of the relationship between culture and tourism is to consider that it involves a conscious decision to “cultivate oneself through various means of tourism. In short, it is the means by which the traveler will seek to broaden his or her intellectual horizon. However, this awareness does not necessarily refer to cultural tourism, explicitly articulated by a person who will often adhere to simpler motives such as those above. Therefore, we are talking about cultural tourism as a category of social practice and an event after event.