The Relationship Between Cultural Heritage Tourism and Historic Crafting & Textile Communities

The tourism industry continues to grow exponentially each year as many First and developing nations utilize its many subsets to generate commerce. Of the many types of tourism, arguably all countries employ heritage tourism as a method to protect their varying forms of cultural heritage , to establish national identities and grow their economies. As it is understood, to create a national identity a group of people will first identify what they consider to be the culturally significant features of their society that embodies their heritage. Heritage is a legacy that will be passed onto future generations that encompasses customs, expressions artifacts structures etc. This thesis will focus on the production of crafts and textiles as material culture for heritage tourism markets as a segment of cultural heritage. It will examine how the production of material culture is affected when it intersects with large scale heritage tourism.