Tourism and the perceptions of local communities : case study of the World Heritage site of the historic city of Ayutthaya, Thailand

In the October 2007 edition of World Heritage, Jonathan Tourtellot of the National Geographic Society wrote of tourism as the 'biggest threat and benefactor' of World Heritage sites. Although he did not specifically state it, others have made it clear that the 'threat' is not only to the heritage resource itself but can extend to those communities organically connected to World Heritage sites. In the tourism research literature there has long been an attempt to understand the impact tourists have on the various environments (physical, cultural, social, economic and so forth) of destination communities. 'Cultural impacts' is a term readily found in the tourism literature and rarely is the notion an entirely positive one. It is often related to terms such as 'commodification', 'modernity', 'globalization', 'rupture', 'loss of traditions' and so forth. In the early 1990s Robert Wood wrote memorably of the governing metaphor which seemed to dominate the research scenario: it was as though tourism and a destination community were billiard balls, each a discrete entity and tourism was the white ball hurtling towards a stationary coloured ball, the destination, that then 'suffers' the impacts of this external force! (Wood, 1993). This chapter looks at the perceptions that the destination community of Ayutthaya has towards the many tourists who visit Ayutthaya historical park and attempts to make sense of the relationship between tourism and this vibrant regional city just 80 km north of Krung Thep (Bangkok) in terms of the perceptions the locals have about the effects tourism has on their lives, and whether the cultural dimensions of these perceptions/realities are in fact the result of tourism.