When Cheryl Hargrove wrote Cultural Heritage Tourism: Five Steps for Success and Sustainability in 2017, she gave the field something it badly needed: a practical, start-to-finish process for assessing a place’s potential, planning with the community, developing authentic experiences, marketing for positive impact, and managing for the long haul. Plenty of us still keep a copy within arm’s reach.

 

The guiding principles of heritage tourism have held up, but the landscape around them looks very different today. Much of this work now falls to a museum director, a byway coordinator, or a Main Street manager, fitting it in alongside everything else, often without the dedicated support it once had. That makes the lessons of the last thirty years even more valuable.

 

Cheryl was the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s first director of heritage tourism and also the Associate Director for National Geographic Society’s Center for Sustainable Destinations. Through her work, she has helped destinations in all fifty states focus on preserving and promoting authentic place-based experiences. She’s joining me to talk about what the field has learned, what she’s hearing from leaders around the country, and what it will take to keep heritage, culture, and tourism working together.