TAL045-2 Cultural Tourism & Heritage: Equality, Diversity & Inclusion

This report explores the relationship between cultural tourism and equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI), particularly within local communities. It defines equality, diversity, and inclusion, explaining their relevance to the tourism industry and highlighting the positive and negative impacts of cultural tourism on EDI. The report uses examples, including Premier Inn hotels, to illustrate how tourism can promote tolerance and understanding between cultures, while also acknowledging potential negative impacts such as the commodification of culture and the risk of cultural insensitivity. The report also touches upon heritage management's role in protecting cultural heritage and the impact of events like the COVID-19 pandemic on the tourism industry. It concludes that maintaining equality, respecting cultural diversity, and fostering inclusion are essential for the sustainable growth of the tourism sector.

Cultural Tourism and
Heritage Management

Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Main Body.......................................................................................................................................3
What is equality, diversity and inclusion.....................................................................................3
How does Equality, Diversity and Inclusion relate to tourism?..................................................4
What impacts does cultural tourism have that would affect equality, diversity and inclusion?..5
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................6
References........................................................................................................................................7

Introduction
Travel and tourism industry is one of the fastest growing industries of UK. It is essential for the
companies in this industry to focus on effective cultural management both for their employees as
well as for their customers to gain high profit. It is essential for the hotels and restaurants to
satisfy their customers as well as their employees with their effective services to customers and
various benefits to employees (Richards, 2018). Diversity within the organisation is beneficial
for the hotels and restaurants to serve better quality of services to their customers. Diverse
workforce will work together and share their ideas and concepts of performing their task with
each other which will help organisation to enhance their productivity and profitability. Premier
Inn hotel is established in the year 1987 and the parent company of this hotel is Whitbread. The
chain of Premier inn hotels is presented across the world and they are focusing to maintain their
customer’s satisfaction through their effective services. The following report covers explanation
of equality, diversity and inclusion and how they are related to tourism industry. It also covers
impact of equality, diversity and inclusion upon cultural tourism with effective examples and
cases.
Main Body
What is equality, diversity and inclusion
Equality is a state of affairs where all social groups within the society are having equal rights
and liberties. There will be no discrimination on the basis of gender, caste, skin colour, religion
and many others. Same this takes place within a corporate world and especially in travel and
tourism industry (Gholitabar, Alipour and Costa, 2018). All employees are having equal rights to
raise their voice. In context of Premier Inn hotels, they hire employees on the basis of their skills
and knowledge and not on the basis of their looks, religion or any other factor. Equal benefits are
given to employees serving on similar job role.
Diversity refers to differences in various defining personal characteristics like gender, age, race,
religion, education and many others. It is considered that all kind of employees should work
within an organisation so that each employee can learn from another employee. For example,
Premier Inn hotel is having all age group of employees with different religions and status. This
will help them to work together and maintain a diversity culture of organisation.

Inclusion is a way of creating a work environment where all people are respected and valued
fairly for whatever they are in actual (Corsale and Krakover, 2019). It will help employees to
provide equal opportunities and resources within the organisation. An effective inclusive
working environment consists of mutual respect, clear communication, effective relationships
and many others.
How does Equality, Diversity and Inclusion relate to tourism?
Equality is related to tourism industry because when they hire any employee than they focus on
their skills and talents and avoid their caste, religion, skin colour and many other factors. Beside
this, most of the companies specify their few of the job roles especially for female candidate
such as front office department of most of the hotels are fulfilled by female workers because it is
believed that a female can handle every customer with politeness and first impression of a hotel
is gained by customers by communicating to front office department employees because they are
the first employee who comes in contact with customers when they enter the hotel (Tu, 2020). In
context of customers, every hotel welcomes their customers without judging them on the basis of
their religion or any other factor. All employees are allowed to communicate well with their
colleagues and the rules and regulations of the hotel are same for all employees.
Diversity is also related to tourism industry because most of the hotels are seen with different
variety of traits available in their employees like there are the mixture of male and female
employees, Christian and Muslim employees and many others. All of them work appropriately
with each other and they are mainly focused to achieve their organisational goal. Diversity of
employees are essential within the tourism industry because it not just recognize difference but it
also valuing their employees and understand how these differences in culture and attitude of
employees impacts the individual experience (Woyo and Woyo, 2018). Both employees and
customers come from unique background, they have their own culture and history. A hotel is
required to recognize this difference as soon as possible for their betterment. Analysing the
cultural and diversity within the hotel will help the employees to foster better teamwork so that
employees will effectively communicate with each other without any hesitation. It will also help
to gain better job satisfaction by employees which further reduces turnover and create productive
and loyal employees for the organisation.
Inclusive is also related to tourism industry where every employee is expecting respect and
continues professional growth for their good performance within the organisation. It is essential

for hotels to respect their customers as well as employees to maintain their high brand value
within the market (Chami, 2018). Respecting and valuing the employees will help the hotel to
retain their employees for longer period of time. Whereas respecting the needs and wants of
customers are also essential for the hotel to grow well within the industry.
What impacts does cultural tourism have that would affect equality, diversity and inclusion?
Cultural tourism is the type of tourism activity travellers are excited to learn, discover and
experience the specific culture of the destination where they visit. Here, customers attend
occasion of the destination and learn the history behind the celebration of occasion. Travellers
wear the costume of the destination where they visit and like to spend their days like local people
of that location spend normally. Cultural tourism can affect equality, diversity and inclusion
within a hotel or culture of the place.
While travellers travel the destination they explore the natural resources and the way which is
chosen by people to live their life of that location which is negative for the destination and
people who are living there (Mura and Kajzar, 2019). In context of Premier Inn hotels, they
welcome their customers of any culture and help them to explore the culture of the destination.
The employees of the hotel treat their guests in a polite and equal manner as compared to other
guests. Equality gets affected in a positive manner by cultural tourism because it help to promote
tolerance between people as they learn and better understand each other’s culture. When a
traveller gets engaged fully to know about the culture of the destination then he/she will explore
their personal experience about the destination and share it with other people so that the grudges
between two different cultures will get reduced.
On the other hand diversity also get impacted by cultural tourism because when guests of
different culture arrive at the hotel and need different level of services than it impacts diversity
because employees start treating special to the few of the guests and ignores their other guests.
This impacts their diversity for customers which can impact negative upon their organisation.
Due to cultural tourism most of the hotels and restaurants adopt specific culture services and
food menu which can attract customers toward a specific culture (Al-Ababneh and Masadeh,
2019). For example, a specific restaurant offering only Italian traditional food with Italian music
at the background than it may distract to those customers who did not prefer to have Italian food
and culture. Some of the accommodation services of hotels are also showing the specific culture
of the destination which may impact negative for other cultural customers. For example, majority

of Indian customers of travel and tourism industry avoid having beef in their meal and when they
receive a restaurant whose most of the dishes are prepared by beef meat than they get highly
dissatisfied and shift to other hotel and restaurant services. Hence, it is not important that cultural
tourism always benefits the hotel and restaurants.
Cultural tourism helps customers to know and experience about specific culture. Hence, when
they were taught about the history of the culture of specific destination than they get excited to
know more about the destination and they start respecting the culture and their norms (Ponsignon
and Derbaix, 2020). Hence this is how inclusive get positively affected by the cultural tourism.
On the other hand, few of the customers are may make fun of the specific culture if they find it
funny even in front of the local people. Hence, this disrespect can create conflicts between two
different cultures which are not good for the societal development.
Heritage management is a growing field that concern with the identification and protection of
culture heritage in a public interest. It helps to identify the history of a culture and aware people
about the importance of their traditional beliefs. It is essential for the travel and tourism industry
to have heritage management activities to protect their culture from getting diminished.
COVID pandemic slower the growth of travel and tourism industry due to various government
rules and regulations such as social distancing, closing the geographical boundaries to avoid non-
local people to enter the country and many others. After the pandemic situation is becoming
normalize than again customers start travel from pone place to another. Focusing on Hygienic
factors is one of the biggest opportunities for the hotels to satisfy their customers.
Conclusion
From the above information it is concluded that travel and tourism industry is one of the fastest
growing industry within UK. Equality, diversity and inclusive is all similar kind of words which
can be used within this industry. It is essential for the hotels and restaurants to maintain equality
within their hotels by providing employment benefits to employees according to their job role
and experience and avoid discriminating their employees and customers on the basis of their
gender, skin colour, race, religion and many others. Respecting and valuing the culture of every
employee and customer will help the hotels to grow well within the industry and gain
competitive advantage.

References
Books and Journals
Al-Ababneh, M. and Masadeh, M., 2019. Creative cultural tourism as a new model for cultural
tourism. Journal of Tourism Management Research, 6(2), pp.109-118.
Chami, M.F., 2018. Community involvement and sustainable tourism development in heritage
management: Amboni Limestone Caves, Tanzania. African Journal of Hospitality,
Tourism and Leisure, 7(2), pp.1-13.
Corsale, A. and Krakover, S., 2019. Cultural tourism between local and transnational identities:
Jewish heritage in Syracuse, Italy. Tourism Geographies, 21(3), pp.460-481.
Gholitabar, S., Alipour, H. and Costa, C.M.M.D., 2018. An empirical investigation of
architectural heritage management implications for tourism: The case of
Portugal. Sustainability, 10(1), p.93.
Mura, L. and Kajzar, P., 2019. Small Businesses in Cultural Tourism in a Central European
Country: Mura, L., Kajzar, P.(2019). Small Businesses in Cultural Tourism in a Central
European Country. Journal of Tourism and Services, 10 (19): 40-54. https://doi.
org/10.29036/jots. v10i19. 110. Journal of Tourism and Services, 10(19), pp.40-54.
Ponsignon, F. and Derbaix, M., 2020. The impact of interactive technologies on the social
experience: An empirical study in a cultural tourism context. Tourism Management
Perspectives, 35, p.100723.
Richards, G., 2018. Cultural tourism: A review of recent research and trends. Journal of
Hospitality and Tourism Management, 36, pp.12-21.
Tu, H.M., 2020. Sustainable heritage management: Exploring dimensions of pull and push
factors. Sustainability, 12(19), p.8219.
Woyo, E. and Woyo, E., 2018. Towards the development of cultural tourism as an alternative for
tourism growth in Northern Zimbabwe. Journal of Cultural Heritage Management and
Sustainable Development.