The Importance of Intangible Cultural Heritage Assets in Destination Preference: An Implementation on International Cultural Tourists

Abstract

This research is based on intangible cultural heritage values, which have been conspicuous in recent years, however there are limited number of studies about it in the literature, and the typologies of cultural tourists. In this research, it is aimed to determine how much the intangible cultural heritage assets are of importance while the cultural tourists decide on their destinations. The target population of the study consist of the international cultural tourists who visited Konya in 2015. In this context, a questionnaire, prepared in English, German, Japanese, Korean, and Persian, was conducted to 496 international cultural tourists around Mevlana Museum and Mevlana Culture Centre, which are the most important tourism centres of Konya, and 481 valid survey data were obtained. The data obtained were analysed using SPSS program and the factor analysis revealed that the Intangible Cultural Heritage values were divided into “customs”, “traditional craftsmanship”, “dance and music” and “oral traditions” and that the importance of cultural tourists to Intangible Cultural Heritage values were significantly different for each dimension of Intangible Cultural Heritage.