REVIEW: World Heritage sites and tourism: global and local relations

Like most volumes that set out to examine the manifestation of phenomena in diverse geographical, historical, economic, cultural and socio-political contexts, interweaving assorted narratives to create a cohesive whole requires a solid, unifying thread. In this instance, the link is World Heritage listing and the ways by which such sites produce outcomes and legacies that tourism interventions tend to engender. World Heritage listing often results in a range of tensions, and dilemmas for stakeholders who come to the discourse with compatible or conflicting viewpoints, and often with divergent and contradictory interests that depart from the central tenets of World Heritage listing (Cheer, Reeves, & Laing, 2015; Collins, 2008). In setting out to ‘analyze the complex and interconnected system of players who both orchestrate and experience the changes that emerge with World Heritage desig- nation’ (p. 1), an enormous task is attempted, possibly beyond the remit of a collection of case studies given the inherent variegations evident across the globe.