Cultural Tourism and Knowledge Management: The Importance of Epistemological Awareness in Cultural Tourism Destination Management

Abstract

<p class="Abstract">Tourism is an industrial sector that is proliferating and
 promises benefits to large groups of people. This growth encourages the
 formation of tourist destinations consisting of infrastructure, supporting
 communities, and tourist attractions in many places. Some tourist destinations
 highlight the culture of the people as part of a tourist attraction. Using
 local culture as a tourist attraction will inevitably lead to a shift in the
 values and meanings of the culture. Culture consists of three dimensions;
 artifacts, behaviors, and ideas. Dimensions of ideas from culture include,
 among others, beliefs and knowledge that are owned and passed down from
 generation to generation through formal and non-formal education processes. In
 the context of culture as a tourist attraction, the dimensions of local
 cultural ideas will adapt to the tourism paradigm. Local beliefs will become a
 part of an economic system that emphasizes uniqueness in its interactions with
 other beliefs. Local knowledge, which includes factual, conceptual, procedural,
 and metacognitive knowledge, initially a process of adaptation of local
 communities to their environment, is now part of the tourism paradigm. Because
 of its global nature, the tourism paradigm is a paradigm that has universal
 standards. Therefore, epistemological awareness is needed to meet the
 dimensions of local cultural ideas and the global tourism paradigm. This
 epistemological awareness can be stimulated through knowledge management of the
 supporting community in the tourist destination by utilizing existing
 educational institutions and local organizations.<b><o:p></o:p></b></p>