Introduction
Cultural heritage tourism entails travelling to experience the activities that genuinely symbolize the people and stories of both the past and present at a specific place. It entails irreplaceable cultural, natural, and historic resources. Heritage tourism is a new addition to the broader tourism industry that is slowly gaining popularity in the world. A survey conducted by Mandela Research in 2004 revealed that heritage and cultural visitors spend approximately $ 994 on each trip, in companion with $ 611 spent by the general tourist. One of the main benefits of cultural tourism is the preservation of the unique character of a community as well as the diversification of local economies. The current paper shall endeavor to identify the key factors influencing the supply and demand for heritage tourism. Specifically, the paper shall dwell on the Vatican Museums as a heritage destination. Consequently the writer shall endevor to examine the primary factors affecting the supply and demand for heritage tourism at the Vatican Museums. In addition, the paper shall also attempt to review and evalu8ate the extent to which heritage site managers can manage these factors effectively.
The Vatican Museum
The Vatican museum entails a rich collection of art work by various popes as far back as the 14th century. There are also archaeological finds that were discovered when conducting excavations in southern Etruria from 1828 onwards. Other artifacts housed by the Museum include Egyptian ancient artifacts, mosaics and bas-relief sculpture from the Roman era, as well as inscriptions of ancient Christian content. The Gallery of Tapestries is also part of the museums. This is a collection consisting of different tapestries from the 15th and 17th centuries(UNESCO World Heritage Centre 2012).The Vatican Museums are among the 50 most frequented tourist destinations across the globe, receiving an average of 4.2 million tourists annually. In 1984, UNESCO listed the Vatican Museums as a World Heritage Site (UNESCO World Heritage Centre 2012).
Demand on heritage Tourism
Through heritage tourism, tourists get the opportunity to showcase past events in the present (Nuryanti, 1997: 115) via the many kinds of interpretation. This interpretative tool enables tourists to create their individual sense of historic places. Over the past few decades, heritage tourism has been gaining increased popularity, but at the same time, this growth has elicited confrontation between conservation of heritage sites and tourism because both have divergent management requirements(Leask and Yeoman, 1999).
The WTO considers heritage tourism as a vital component of the total tourism demand and as Richards (2000) has noted, it represents approximately 37% of international tourism. At the same time, estimates show that heritage tourism is growing at an annual rate of 15%. On the other hand, the importance of heritage tourism only gained popularity recently, seeing that studies on the motivation of cultural tourism only appeared in the 1980s (Richards, 2000). In recent years, increased education level, coupled with improved recognition of special interest holidays have seen tourists churn beach package as a tourism option in favor of cultural attraction sites(Thorburn, 1986: 42).
Poria and colleagues (2001) have defined heritage tourism as “a subgroup of tourism, in which the main motivation for visiting a site is based on the place’s heritage characteristics according to the tourists’ perception of their own heritage”(p. 1048). The definition of heritage tourism as provided by Poria et al. (2001) is linked to the aspects of the site, and this may act as a motivating factor in driving tourism to a definite heritage destination.
Tourism demand is a wide phrase that encompasses factors determining the level of demand, various forms of demand as well as the motives behind this demand. According to Cooper (2004), demand can be defined as “a schedule of the amount of any product or service that people are willing and able to buy at each specific price in a set of possible prices during some specific period of time” (p. 76). Tourism demand is often generated by tourists when they visit a tourist destination. The magnitude and scale of demand varies with seasons and sometimes with time. Buhalis (2004) has identified three forms of demand. These are suppressed, latent, and actual demand. Actual demand is as a result of tourists who are directly involved in tourism.
On the other hand, suppressed demand is created by two sets of individuals who are usually unable to travel as a result of circumstances beyond their control. Latent demand entails the temporal and spatial expression of demand at a certain site, for instance, the demand for a tourist service or tourist accommodation at a specific destination.
The primary factors affecting the supply and demand for heritage tourism at the Vatican Museums
The key factors affecting the demand and supply of heritage tourism include the growth of specialty travel, overall tourism growth, as well as increasing concern for and enhanced awareness of the environment. There are also additional factors that impacts on each of the three individual factors. For example, overall tourism is projected to grow at a faster pace in comparison with the world economic output owing to such factors as rising employment and incomes, population growth, shorter work weeks, and enhanced integration of the world’s societies and economies (Williams & Shaw 2009). A number of the same factors have also played a crucial role in fueling specialty travel, although there are also several other explanations, such as the renewed interest in fitness and health, as well as the boom in outdoor recreation (Murphy 2005).
Another aspect that has changed our attitudes regarding how we ought to spend our vacation is environmentalism. This has been fueled by the increased level of education, exposure and experience amongtravelers (World Tourism Organization 2006).
Societies have greatlyembraced the concept of environmentalism and this has really altered people’s attitudes regarding the way that they ought to spend their vacations. There is also a growing need among tourists for “real” experiences with foreign lifestyles and cultures and this too has impacted on the supply and demand for tourists at the VaticanMuseums.
The significance of location: individuals with high incomes to warrant foreign travel are to be found concentrated in few nations. The Vatican Museums are home to the greatest art collections in the world. This, coupled with its historical roots in Christianity, has seen art lovers and Christians going on pilgrimages. The Vatican Museums enable tourists to connect past events with the current by sampling large collections of artwork from various parts of the world, and which represents different eras in history, such as the Renaissance, Early Christian, as well as modern periods. Income elasticity: on average, the national incomes of people from various countries have been on the increase, in recent years. Consequently, this has seen the amount of money spent by tourists on in the form of travel expenditure rise significantly, owing to increased disposable income. Consequently, the host countries of heritage sites have witnessed a dramatic increase in the number of specialty tourists and by extension, the amount of money spent by such travelers. The Vatican Museums continues to record an increase in the number of visitor annually. For example, in 2010, the Museums recorded 4.7 million visitors and in 2011, the figure rose to 5.1 million visitors (Wooden 2012).
