With every new novel published, with every film depicting scenes of vampires taking their rest in above ground crypts, with every image captured and article penned, this cemetery is brought into the foreground as a primary tourist attraction in a city that thrives on tourist interest. Managed correctly, tourism can be a valuable tool for the preservation of the site as a cultural landscape.

Tourism

Anthropological studies often focus on the negative consequences that local, or host, communities experience from tourism, and tourism has been long criticized by the preservation community. "The tourist, many claim, erodes cultural sites, trivializes their significance, fosters theatrical reconstructions, perverts local culture and treats heritage as a consumer good."1 These claims can be true, but the blame is not well placed. Tourism, per se, should not be considered the culprit. Poor management, or worse, the complete lack of management of the tourism component of an important cultural site, is the real problem.

"Good management of cultural tourism is central to the mission of the conservation community."2 Sites that present mankind's cultural heritage, whether at the very small local level or at the World Heritage Site level, should be available to the public for both learning and enjoyment. Our responsibility is to manage that public interaction so that the site is preserved and can continue to provide learning and enjoyment for many generations. We should also strive to manage the interpretations of such sites so that the local community's past and present use of the site is respected and truthfully represented.

Converting an unknown cultural resource into a heritage tourism site is often the single most effective way to save the resource from destruction. "Heritage organizations ensure that places and practices in danger of disappearing, because they are no longer occupied or functioning or valued, will survive. It does this by adding the value of pastness, exhibition, difference, and where possible, indigeneity."3 The tourism industry then makes the attraction economically viable as an exhibit of itself.

Growth in cultural tourism and the heritage industry can open up a variety of opportunities for conservation. "From small town arts councils to state economic development agencies to the National Trust for Historic Preservation and the National Park Service, one finds optimism that heritage tourism can stimulate economic growth and enhance quality of life to help moribund communities attract new business and industry."4 Heritage sites can be exported to the world through tourism. Unlike other export industries, tourism does not export goods for consumption elsewhere, but imports visitors to consume the goods and services locally, with the ability to provide economic and development benefits to the greater community beyond the heritage site.5

Cultural tourism should be a powerful tool for the conservation community, and yet there exists serious concern that this tool cannot be controlled. The tourism process at a heritage site often does not occur with the guiding hand and input of the history and preservation professionals. It should be remembered that commercializing the local culture does not require the consent of the participants; it can be done by anyone. If there are obvious aspects about a site or location that can be profitably marketed to outsiders, enterprising members of the tourism industry will do so, as will others involved in the publication of books, movies, and information on the Internet. "Once set in motion, the process seems irreversible and its very subtlety prevents the affected people from taking any clear-cut action to stop it."6 This is a key concept for the conservation community to understand, as it becomes most difficult to gain control of the tourism component of a site after the process has spread out into multiple directions.

Text adapted from Lauren Meyer and Judy Peters, "Tourism - A Conservation Tool for St. Louis Cemetery No. 1" unpublished paper, 2001.

1. ICOMOS, "Letter from the Executive Director," The ICOMOS International Committee on Cultural Tourism Newsletter, Special Edition (November/December, 1996), p. 3.

2. Ibid, p. 3.

3. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, "Theorizing Heritage," from Ethnomusicology: Journal of the Society for Ethnomusicology, Vol. 39, No. 1, Winter 1995, p. 370.

4. Benita J Howell, "Weighing the Risks and Rewards of Involvement in Cultural Conservation and Heritage Tourism," Human Organization, Vol. 53, No. 2, 1994, p. 150.

5. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, "Theorizing Heritage," Ethnomusicology: Journal of the Society for Ethnomusicology, Vol. 39, No. 1, Winter 1995, p. 373.

6. D. J. Greenwood, "Culture by the Pound: An Anthropological Perspective on Tourism as Cultural Commoditization," Host and Guest, V. L. Smith, ed. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1989), p. 180.