The Impact of Tourist Expectations on Cultural Authenticity in Urban Tourism

Abstract

Urban tourism has become an important economic activity that many cities depend on today in a globalized world. With the rise of tourist expectations and in the interest of cultural authenticity preservation, the interaction between tourist expectations and the cultural authenticity preservation have emerged as an important area of study. The topic of this article is the complicated relationship between the expectations of the tourist and the real manifestation of the local culture in the urban settings, dealing with the idea that the tourist and the host community receive in the results of the influence of both factors on the landscape of the tourism.The topic of authenticity in tourism has been a debate amongst scholars and the tourism industry professionals over the years. At the same time, urban destinations attempt to attract the visitors while keeping their cultural integrity, it is important to know the role of tourist expectations. In this comprehensive, yet textual analysis, the relationship between the different components and ways of cultural authenticity, the shaped expectations of the tourists and their development in urban tourism contexts are studied.