International Committee on Cultural Tourism

LETTER FROM THE CHAIRMAN
Perhaps the most impressive news I have heard recently is the report from the Canadian ICOMOS Committee about the success of their use of the Internet. In September I heard that in the first three months on the Internet, they had received 3,000 requests for copies of the Venice Charter! By the time I arrived in Calgary for their annual meeting, François Leblanc told me that the total had reached 6,000. I doubt if in the whole history of ICOMOS, the Paris Secretariat has given away 6,000 copies of the Charter. Yet on the Internet 6,000 total strangers asked for copies.

We -- ICOMOS, ICOM, IUCN, UNESCO itself -- are all in the information business. We all know the value of face-to-face contacts but we now have to accept the limitations: the travel costs, the time away, the trivia of many meeting agendas. We all have to ponder the potential of this readily available information source which can be tailored to suit our own professional communication needs and can also reach huge numbers of concerned strangers.

The basic rationale for our charming and friendly little club and all of its scientific committees has been changed. We may still want to meet face-to-face, but now those meetings will have a different format and will fill a different need.

If the structure of professional organizations is changing, the opportunities for professional organizations has opened up dramatically. We can have our meetings on-line but we will no longer be talking among ourselves. We will be informing, answering questions, offering advice and information to an amazingly huge world-wide club.

The power of this existing information exchange and its future growth tell me that we must re-think what we have been doing and how we have been spending money. Do we now need newsletters like this? Do we need magazines, journals and printed papers from conferences? I think not. I think it isn't a matter if, it is when we change our old ways of doing business. In the meantime, this Committee will continue its old bad ways of doing business but there will be a parallel effort to find a new format in order to re-invent ourselves.

Robertson E. Collins

 
THE ICOMOS INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE ON CULTURAL TOURISM ANNUAL MEETING
On September 26, the ICOMOS International Committee on Cultural Tourism held its annual meeting in Budapest, Hungary, at the invitation of the Hungarian National Committee of ICOMOS. The meeting was planned to coincide with a national conference on Culture and Tourism. Many leaders in the Hungarian conservation community spoke. Lester Borley reported on his recent experiences with Europa Nostra and Nanna Cnattingius showed slides of the many community-level programs in Sweden.

In order to comply with the Eger Principles for ICOMOS International Committees regarding committee membership and operations, prior to the meeting, Mr. Collins wrote to the Chairmen of all the ICOMOS National Committees to ask that they propose national representatives to the Cultural Tourism Committee. Six National Committees responded and these representatives were named voting members of the Committee. Other voting members were appointed by the Chairman to assure geographic represen- tation. New nominations were added to the previous list of corresponding members.

The new membership list is as follows:
Voting Members: Robertson E. Collins, USA, Chairman; Roland Fluckiger, Switzerland; Walter Jamieson, Canada; Valery Patin, France; Nanna Cnattingius, Sweden; Sinikka Joutsalmi, Finland; Sophocles Hadjisavvas, Cyprus; Di Stewart, New Zealand; Eugene Kindo Bouadi, Ivory Coast; Stephen S. Halsey, USA (Hong Kong); Elizabeth Kovacs, Hungary; Frances B. Affandy, Indonesia; Vikas Dilawari, India.
Corresponding Members: Harri Hautajarvi, Finland; Russell V. Keune, FAIA, USA; Hisashi B. Sugaya, USA; Peter C. James, Australia; Graham Brooks, Australia; Lester Borley, UK; Harald Gaspard, Haiti; Alisa Maeir, Israel; Catherine Kremezi, Greece.

The membership list was sent to Paris for comment and review and was presented to the ICOMOS Executive and Advisory Committees by Ann Webster Smith, representing Mr. Collins, at their recent meetings in Nara, Japan. The Committee has been invited to hold its next annual meeting in Athens in September 1995. Dates and details will be forthcoming.

 
1994 AMERICAN EXPRESS PRESERVATION AWARDS
The American Express Company announced four winners from a total of 24 entries representing 10 countries in the fourth annual Preservation Awards Program for the Caribbean. Max A. Belin, Area Sales Manager for the American Express Latin America and Caribbean Division, presented the awards at the Caribbean Tourism Organization's (CTO) annual conference in Ocho Rios, Jamaica, on September 8, 1994. The original award cycle, 1990-1992, was created by the American Express Philanthropic Program. In response to its great success, in 1994 Latin America and Caribbean Division assumed sponsorship and funding of the program.

These awards, for which all CTO member countries are eligible to compete, were created to recognize excellence in the protection and enhancement of the Caribbean's cultural and architectural heritage. The entries cover a broad range of cultural properties and types of projects. The program is administered for the American Express Company by US/ICOMOS. An international jury was convened to review all nominations and selected the winners. The jury was composed of Arq. Esteban Prieto, ICOMOS Vice President, of the Dominican Republic; Sarita Frances, President, Montserrat National Trust, and 1992 award winner; Margot Ammidown, consultant and former Director of the Metro Dade County Historic Preservation Office in Florida; and Sylma Brown, Special Projects Manager for the Caribbean Tourism Organization. Ellen Delage, US/ICOMOS Program Officer, served as jury secretary and administered the program.

Two awards were presented for completed projects:
Turks and Caicos National Museum -- Guinep Lodge, Grand Turk, Turks & Caicos, British West Indies. This national museum, a cooperative undertaking of the residents and the public and private sectors, is located in the carefully restored oldest residential property on the island.
Estate Canegarden, St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands. This project recognizes the dedication of a private owner who supported extensive documentation and quality craftsmanship to restore one of the most distinguished examples of island architecture to its 18th-century appearance.

One Special Merit Award was presented: Cayman Style, Cayman Islands, British West Indies. The project consists of text, illustrations and models forming an in-depth study of vernacular Cayman architecture, by John Doak, a local architect and preservationist. The work will serve as the basis for a national preservation plan, an educational curriculum and a field guide for surveyors.

One $10,000 cash award was presented to a project under development: Colegio de Arquitectos de Puerto Rico Headquarters Restoration Project, Santurce, Puerto Rico. The award recognizes the commitment of the Puerto Rican College of Architects to the preservation of the historic fabric of San Juan, and the meticulous restoration work by the architect and preservation team.

 
CULTURAL DEVELOPMENT AND TOURISM
UNESCO's Intergovernmental Committee of the World Decade for Cultural Development (1988-1997) recently completed a mid-term review of activities and underscored the need to consider local culture in the development process. The decade has four goals: acknowledging the cultural dimension of development; affirming and enriching cultural identities; broadening participation in cultural life; and promoting international cultural cooperation. To ensure that the decade's second- half emphasizes development's cultural dimension, the Committee approved several large-scale projects for 1994-1995. The projects range from developing tourism to make it beneficial to culture and local development in the Arab and Asian regions to countering xenophobia and promoting cultural pluralism in Europe.

In the Arab region, experts will examine how tourism can not only protect and enhance cultural heritage but also can be a positive economic factor in a country's development. There is a growing awareness among scholars and visitors that tourism should not be limited to monuments and works of art, but should also include arts and crafts, food, festivals and the countryside. This emphasis should encourage local crafts, gastronomy and other creative activities to produce income. The study will make suggestions that will permit local communities in general to benefit economically from culture and tourism.

In Latin America, a project will study the impact of the Guarani missions of the 17th and 18th centuries. These missions were a result of the encounter of cultures and races in the New World which led to the birth of the American identity. They were also a model for the region's political and economic development. The project aims to protect the archaeological remains, and to use lessons learned from the missions to build closer cultural, social and economic ties between the countries sharing this heritage (Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay).

 
PUBLICATIONS
US/ICOMOS has reprinted the volume produced by the ICOMOS International Committee on Cultural Tourism and distributed at the ICOMOS General Assembly in Colombo, Sri Lanka, 1993, Tourism at World Heritage Cultural Sites: The Site Manager's Handbook. A grant from the Montauk Foundation (USA) will allow the committee to provide a copy of the handbook to the site manager of every World Heritage cultural and mixed site. A second edition is planned, with illustrations and revised contents. Comments and suggestions for changes, case studies and bibliographic additions are solicited from readers in a questionnaire that is included with the publication. A limited number of copies are available to interested members. Please send $10 (domestic) or $15 (international) to US/ICOMOS to cover the cost of shipping and handling.

The Heritage Tourism Program of the U.S. National Trust for Historic Preservation, under the direction of Cheryl Hargrove, has published the booklet, Getting Started: How to Succeed in Heritage Tourism. This 48- page, four-color guide helps communities combine preservation and tourism to obtain manageable economic growth. The guide describes the benefits of heritage tourism, the principles behind quality heritage tourism programs, and the steps for getting started. $25, including postage and handling. Contact: Heritage Tourism Program, 910 16th Street, Suite 1100, Denver, CO 80202, USA, tel: 303-623-1504.

ICOMOS CANADA Bulletin, MOMENTUM 1994, Vol.3, No.3, 1994, is a thematic issue on cultural tourism. This was the theme of the ICOMOS Canada annual congress, held in Calgary, Alberta, October 21-23. The bulletin contains examines a range of tourism issues from an international, national and local perspective, and includes articles by ICOMOS Cultural Tourism Committee members Walter Jamieson and Claude Moulin. Contact: ICOMOS Canada, P.O. Box 737, Station B, Ottawa, Ont. K1P 5R4, Canada, tel. & fax: 613-749-0971.

The Asia/Pacific Cultural Centre for UNESCO (ACCU) has published the report of the 1993 Regional Training Seminar for Cultural Personnel in Asia and the Pacific, Cultural Heritage and Tourism -- Preservation and Presentation of Cultural Heritage, held in Tokyo, September 28-October 7, 1993. Organized within the context of the World Decade for Cultural Development, the seminar examined the problems inherent in striking a balance between tourism development and preservation of cultural heritage. Contact: ACCU, 6, Fukuromachi, Shinjuku-ku, Tokyo 162 Japan, tel: 03-3269-4435, fax: 03-3269-4510.

 
"BUILDING A SUSTAINABLE WORLD THROUGH TOURISM"
The International Institute for Peace through Tourism sponsored the Second Global Conference, Building a Sustainable World Through Tourism, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, September 12-16, 1994. Approximately 600 people attended from 80 countries to discuss the role of tourism in attaining international peace. Queen Noor of Jordan served as honorary chairperson for the conference. Guest speakers included Knut Hammarskjold; Dr. Noel Brown, Director, United Nations Environment Program; Robert Burns, Chairman, World Travel and Tourism Council and others. Concurrent sessions with presentations and discussions on topics such as cultural heritage tourism, Ecotourism, Sustainable Tourism Development, Tourism and the Environment, Parks and Protected Areas, Rural and Community-Based Tourism, Indigenous Peoples Tourism and Barrier-Free Tourism ran for three days. The cultural heritage tract developed guidelines and principles for Cultural Heritage Tourism which are currently being circulated in draft form for public comment. Contact US/ICOMOS to receive a copy. At the conclusion of the conference, the attendees voted to make International Peace Through Tourism an interna- tional membership organization with the mission to seed, nurture and grow their vision for peace into the next century. Louis J. D'Amore, President and organizer of the conference, will assume this new organizational task.

 
NEWS BRIEFS
Lester Borley was one of several international guest speakers at the U.S. National Trust for Historic Preservation Annual Conference in Boston, Massachusetts, in October. Recently, Europa Nostra/IBI focused on the problem of the high VAT levy on repairs to historic buildings by private owners, when new buildings are exempt from this tax. The organization will attempt to reverse this situation in the European Parliament, and promote awareness of the relation between cultural tourism, job creation and the preservation of historic towns and villages in Europe. * * * Bill Sugaya of San Francisco recently participa- ted in a Pacific Asia Travel Association Task Force to Macau. The team was to review the impact of the new airport soon to be completed and the many 5-star hotels that have recently opened. Contact him for details: tel: 415-957-0100, fax: 415-957-1199. * * * Russell V. Keune, FAIA, Director of International Affairs, American Institute of Architects (AIA), recently traveled to Hong Kong to conduct the first conference convened in Asia by the AIA International Markets and Practice Committee. The conference focused on 9 southeast Asian countries, through the presentation of a series of case studies by country. * * * Steve Halsey, Hong Kong, recently made an extended tour of Cape York in Northern Queensland, Australia. He addressed a meeting of the Cape York Tourism Council and also met with travel leaders in Cairns and Sydney. * * * Elizabeth Kovacs is preparing a written record of the papers presented at the September conference on cultural tourism in Hungary.

 
CALENDAR
* January 11-14, 1995. The Future of Asia's Past, An International Conference on the Preservation of Asia's Architectural Heritage, Chiang Mai, Thailand. Organized by The Asia Society, The Getty Conservation Institute and The Siam Society. This meeting of scholars, government officials, tour operators, industrial developers, archaeolog- ical experts and the interested public is designed to stimulate awareness of the impact of increased tourism, economic development, and threats such as natural disasters and pollution on Asia's rich and fragile architectural heritage. In thematic plenary sessions, speakers will address cultural, political, and economic issues relevant to the preservation of monuments in Asian countries and outline possible strategies for their survival. Smaller discussion groups will focus on specific sites such as Ajanta (India), Dunhuang (China), Angkor (Cambodia) and Herat (Afghanistan) to highlight the particular challenges facing each site. Registration by December 1, 1994: $225. Contact: The Asia Society, 725 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10021, Attn: Galler- ies/Conservation '95, tel: 212-288-6400, fax: 212-517-7246.

 
ICOMOS INTERNATIONAL COMMITTEE ON CULTURAL TOURISM

Robertson E. Collins, U.S.A., Chairman
Roland Fluckiger, Switzerland
Walter Jamieson, Canada
Valery Patin, France
Nanna Cnattingius, Sweden
Sinikka Joutsalmi, Finland
Sophocles Hadjisavvas, Cyprus
Di Stewart, New Zealand
Eugene Kindo Bouadi, Ivory Coast
Stephen S. Halsey, USA (Hong Kong)
Elizabeth Kovacs, Hungary
Frances B. Affandy, Indonesia
Vikas Dilawari, India
Arthur Haulot, Belgium, Chairman Emeritus

Secretariat:

    US/ICOMOS
    U.S. Committee, International Council on Monuments and Sites
    Decatur House
    1600 H Street, NW
    Washington, DC 20006

Telephone 202/842-1866
Facsimile 202/842-1861

 
ICOMOS
Roland Silva, Sri Lanka, President
Jean-Louis Luxen, Belgium, Secretary General
Jan Jessurun, Netherlands, Treasurer General
Vice Presidents:
Elliott Carroll, USA
Joan Domicelj, Australia
Nobuo Ito, Japan
Esteban Prieto, Dominican Republic
Andras Roman, Hungary