AUDITORIUM - Cultural Sustainability Indicators for Heritage Tourism Management. Integrating the Local Community’s voice

This research aims to develop a model of cultural sustainability indicators for the management of tangible and intangible heritage, mainly in tourist places enlisted among the world heritage sites by UNESCO. To this end, we intend to establish a partnership between the UFMG - Federal University of Minas Gerais (Brazil) and the UNESCO Chair in Information and Communication Technologies to develop and promote sustainable tourism in World Heritage Sites, established at USI – Università della Svizzera italiana (Switzerland) which is developing a concept of cultural sustainability for tourism through literature review and application of online surveys and interviews with heritage managers. Thus, this research proposal aims, from this concept, to elaborate and test in loco the feasibility of implementing cultural sustainability indicators having as a pilot project heritage sites located in Switzerland and in Brazil – specifically in the North of the state of Minas Gerais. For that reason, the project will also count on the partnership of UFVJM – Federal University of Vale do Jequitinhonha and Mucuri (Brazil). Interviews and workshops with the local communities and property managers of both territories will be conducted and the results will be used to design a larger scale research to define a cultural sustainability indicator map that can be monitored online and used on other tangible and intangible heritage supported by UNESCO. The indicators tool will help in the elaboration of cultural sustainability policies in heritage sites, improving the visitor experience in these spaces and their integration with the local culture. This integration, made sustainably, will mainly generate an improvement in the quality of life, making the culture to positively aggregate the social, economic and environmental development of cities and communities. Also, it is expected that this pilot project could be extended in the future resulting in new opportunities of fundings to define and refine the methodology through studies in more destinations.