An Empirical Investigation of Architectural Heritage Management-Implications for Tourism: The Case of Portugal

Heritage is treated as cultural part of a society’s tradition since it transmits the value of the past as history. Additionally, it is viewed a substantial asset of the cities and urban areas with potential for infrastructural enhancement, improvement of image, and highly utilized as economic resource for urban tourism. Cultural heritage has attracted the attention of tourism planners, urban planners, and historians as means to restructuring human habitat in terms of material and non-material heritage encompassing architecture, monuments, historical relics, artefacts, artistic icons, celebrations, and folklore. Now-a-days, historical buildings as part of cultural heritage, have become a significant tourism resource; therefore, numerous destinations have funded and supported their renovation and reuse. Such change in attitudes towards heritage restoration resulted in heightened awareness at state and European Community levels of the economic. Employing potential of the heritage for tourism purposes has contributed to this. The aim of this study is manifold. First, to investigate and reveal the potentials of architectural heritage in the context of tourism destination development, as well as, examination of public sector policies and plans toward the conservation and preservation of these resources. Secondly, to appraise the outcome of preservation and its implication for tourism. The study is an effort to explore and figure the outcome of interrelationships between tourism and architectural heritage sites through tourists’ image and perception. Study assumes that such multidimensional process and analysis will achieve a pathway towards the protection and reutilisation of heritage sites with positive implications for tourism sector. For the purpose of this research, numerous heritage sites are sampled in Portugal as study landscape. A mixed research method has been utilized to gauge tourists’ image/perception of heritage resources, reuse and impact (i.e., quantitative approach). A qualitative approach utilized to assess the priority of tourists in their visiting and the public-sector policies towardheritage resource management and planning. And Fuzzy logic method to assess the architectural value, tourism and preservation potential of historical buildings in Porto/ Aveiro. The contribution and implications of the study is also elaborated. The result revealed that architectural heritage resource is the main resource of appealing tourists. Also, the study to date demonstrate architectural value, tourism and preservation potential of observed buildings by evaluation through fuzzy logic methods.