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Home > World Heritage Sites as Premium Tourist Destinations - Updated: 08-01-2003 2:42 pm
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The World Heritage List (presently comprising 721 exceptional cultural and natural sites in 124 countries) includes some of the world’s greatest tourism destinations, ranging from the Taj Mahal to Machu Picchu and the banks of the Seine in Paris, from the Great Barrier Reef to Sagamartha and Kilimanjaro.
Promoting best practices at World Heritage sites sets standards and examples for others to follow. In this vein, the World Heritage Centre (WHC) is engaged in a number of tourism-related activities, including the effects of tourism development projects on the inscribed values of individual sites, such as the impact of tourism on the wildlife of the Galapagos Islands.
Another initiative of UNEP, the United Nations Foundation, UNESCO-WHC and the RARE Center for Tropical Conservation links conservationand tourism at six World Heritage sites in the humid tropics: Tikal (Guatamala), Rio Platano (Honduras) , Komodo and Ujong Kulon (Indonesia) and Sian Ka’an and El Vizcaino (Mexico). And in September 2001, an international seminar on cultural tourism held in Damascus (Syrian Arab Republic) focused on the sustainable development and management of World Heritage sites.
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