Cultural resources and the competitiveness of the travel and tourism: insights from the last decade

The cultural heritage, together with the cultural goods and services provided by the various public and/or private operators, as results of their cultural, artistic and/or creative activities, represent one of the categories taken relatively recent into consideration when discussing the employment and contribution of the various sorts of resources to the sustainable development of the local communities or of the society as a whole. Capitalization of the cultural resources continues to be a real challenge for the communities and the organizations owning them, as both have to cope with a rather poor awareness accompanied by a significantly limited interest of the potential audience and, in the same time, with relatively low self-capabilities in terms of promoting and seizing the related opportunities. The travel and tourism industry is one of the main capitalizers of the cultural resources by providing the tourists - potentially interested consumers of cultural heritage, goods and services - opportunities to discover, explore, experience and enjoy cultural heritage places, objectives, objects, related services and/or activities. Paper aims to assess the contribution of the cultural resources - defined in terms of the number of the World Heritage cultural sites, oral and intangible cultural heritage and cultural and entertainment tourism digital demand - to the competitiveness of the travel and tourism industry, described through a set of specific variables, based on the secondary data provided by the World Economic Forum and World Tourism Organization, at the level of the top 20 tourist destinations in the World and in the last decade.