Silk Road Heritage Branding and Polycentric Tourism Development

Abstract

Cultural heritage, considered as a tool for sustainable tourism development and place branding, makes a destination appealing to visitors; hence, cultural heritage tourism can be a driving force for economic growth in cities and regions. Polycentricity is a useful multi-scalar concept in spatial theory that describes how adjacent urban centers can interact with each other, creating synergies and generating broader spatial networks. Cultural heritage and tourism, perceived as important factors of integration in a polycentric spatial structure, can further promote regional branding strategies. In this paper, a polycentricity index is introduced as a methodological tool for networking cultural heritage destinations, with an application to the Silk Road heritage. Silk Road cultural assets traced on the historical Silk Road routes linking East and West, can serve as tourist attraction poles and as an essential component for branding destinations through networking at various spatial scales. The Region of Eastern Macedonia and Thrace in Northern Greece, endowed with a plethora of Silk Road cultural assets, most of which are still untapped, is used to highlight the proposed methodology. The ultimate objective is the designation of polycentric destination networks based on Silk Road assets, in order to build regional branding opportunities over the Region.

World Heritage Site Tourism and Destination Loyalty along the Silk Road: A Study of U.S. Travelers in Uzbekistan

“…Previous research has been conducted on Silk Road tourism in different countries, including those in Europe, East Asia, and Central Asia [39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47]. This research sheds light on the importance of the ancient Silk Road, conservation, and sustainability, and cooperation to establish new Silk Road initiatives.…”

“…Previous research on Silk Road tourism [54] emphasized the potential of cultural and heritage sites for increasing the prosperity in relatively rural areas and improving the infrastructure and quality of life in communities. Furthermore, Silk Road tourism can not only promote a positive destination image and create a destination brand, but can also encourage the sustainable management of cultural and heritage sites [43]. Figures 1-3 present Silk Road sites and WHS sites in Uzbekistan.…”

“…The significance of the Silk Road has increased due to its potential economic, sociocultural, political, and environmental impacts across the West and the East [47]. Moreover, the ancient Silk Road sites are located in ancient cities that have been declared WHSs in many countries [41,43,49]. WHSs ensure a globally standardized conservation system, and their UNESCO classification symbolizes their outstanding cultural and heritage assets [55,56].…”

Destination branding through social media: juxtaposition of foreign influencer’s narratives and state’s presentation on the event of Pakistan Tourism Summit 2019

“…The global competition attracting potential tourists has intensified, necessitating marketing agencies to revamp their branding and rebranding campaigns (Güzel et al , 2021; Kostopoulou et al , 2021; Otay Demir et al , 2022). Notably, social media usage amid these campaigns provided additional coverage and publicity to targeted destinations (Wang and Feng, 2021), exponentially elevating expectations of potential tourists.…”

Entropy Change of Historical and Cultural Heritage in Traditional Tibetan Area of China Based on Spatial-Temporal Distribution Pattern

“…In 1984, the United States established its first national heritage area, considering interconnected historical and cultural heritage as special linear cultural landscape resources [3]. In recent years, cross-regional historical and cultural heritage resources such as canal waterways [4], railway roads [5], and commercial and cultural routes [6] have received widespread attention from academia.…”