The World Heritage List: The making and management of a brand

Abstract

The central contention of this paper is that the World Heritage Site (WHS) designation has over time evolved from a technical measure aimed exclusively at preservation into an acclaimed and widely respected brand that countries use to attract heritage tourists, and that tourists, in turn, rely on in selecting the destinations they will visit. The article adopts the definition of Kotler and Gertner (2002) that the two principal requirements of a place brand are a promise of quality and differentiation, requirements that the WHS designation fully meets. It then examines the special requirements and challenges of destination branding, noting in particular the multiple stakeholders involved and the often limited and divided management control that results from a multiplicity of partners. In the following section, the development of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization's (UNESCO) World Heritage program is traced from its origins as an emergency measure to save the Egyptian temples of Abu Simbel to the establishment of the inter-governmental World Heritage (WH) Committee in 1972 and the inauguration of the World Heritage (WH) List in 1978 (UNESCO, 2009). During the ensuing three decades, a total of 890 WHS designations have been conferred on natural and cultural sites in 148 lands. Lastly, the article looks at the management of the WHS brand at the international, national and site levels. It is concluded that the WH Committee is using the limited means available to it – particularly the designation process and the Endangered List—in a prudent and effective manner to preserve and enhance the WHS brand. At the national and particularly the site level, the data available are insufficient to draw definitive conclusions. Nonetheless, the WHS brand continues to be respected and valuable both to the WH sites that use it in their advertisements and to tourists who depend on it in selecting the destinations they will visit.