Creating Mindful Tourists at Heritage Sites through Tour Guide’s Interpretation: A Case of Georgetown World Heritage Sites

Abstract

When planned and managed effectively heritage tourism can realize positive impacts but when poorly managed heritage tourism can be devastating and cause damage to resources due to unethical conducts and uncontrolled visitations. Tour guide’s interpretation at heritage sites has been considered to be one of the most important factors in creating mindful tourists and is part of good management practise at sites. In this study, the relationship between three factors of interpretations namely knowledge of audience, knowledge of resources and appropriate techniques, and mindfulness of tourists are investigated. A survey questionnaire was distributed to tourists who were visiting the George Town Heritage Sites in the presence of a tour guide. The findings indicate that knowledge of audience, knowledge of resources and appropriate techniques significantly contribute to creating mindful tourists. Of the three factors, knowledge of resources was found to contribute the highest to tourist’s mindfulness.