| Tourism is often criticized for undermining both the intangible and tangible values of cultural heritage. While cultural heritage site managers work hard to conserve these assets, tourism operators and marketers keep bringing in coach loads of tourists every day, placing immense pressure on such sites from tourists' misbehaviour.;This study explores the underlying causes for unsustainable cultural tourism products and aims to verify if sustainable cultural tourism products can be achieved through the adoption of a marketing approach. The major challenge for successful cultural tourism products was found to be the transformation between a heritage asset with no intention to serve the tourist market and a heritage asset developed and marketed as a tourism product. While a heritage asset is managed primarily for its intrinsic value and from a supply-side approach, cultural tourist attractions are operated and marketed with tourists in mind, necessitating a more market-oriented approach.;Based upon the under-use, over-use and misuse of heritage assets, the researcher proposed a framework for sustainable development of cultural tourism products. The framework consists of three sequential stages, namely, assessing assets; transforming and developing assets; and managing experiences. The framework was applied to a total of 14 cultural heritage sites in Hong Kong selected from four different types of cultural attractions, viz., original unmodified assets, modified assets, purpose-built assets, and adaptive reused assets. An indicator set has been further developed to ensure the study is undertaken with rigour and also to ensure the validity of the study. The framework not only allows the researcher to answer the research question, but also helps to serve as a framework for developing sustainable cultural tourism products.;A major contribution of this research lies in answering the question of why cultural tourism products are used unsustainably and its ability to provide a platform and solution to achieve sustainable development when tourism and cultural heritage management find it hard to co-operate and understand the underlying causes of conflict between them. The study confirmed the possibility of satisfying various stakeholders, namely tourism, cultural heritage management, asset owners and local community, in developing heritage sites as sustainable cultural tourist attractions. |
