Sustainable tourism
10 How tourism can help preserve cultural heritage sites
10.5 Conclusions
This chapter has estimated the economic benefits derived from a proposed pres-ervation plan to preserve and restore the My Son sanctuary in Vietnam. The study focused on the benefits accruing to foreign visitors and domestic visitors to My Son. The economic benefits were measured using two CV surveys that were administered at the My Son site in 2005.
184 T. H. Tuan et al.
Results show that foreign visitors’ WTP is much higher than that of Vietnam-ese visitors (about US$9 and US$2 for foreigners and VietnamVietnam-ese, respectively).
However, if we consider the WTP as a fraction of household income, foreign visitors’ WTP constitutes a much smaller part of annual household income than that of Vietnamese visitors (0.02 per cent and 0.17 per cent for foreigners and Vietnamese, respectively). Implementing this entrance fee structure would increase revenues at the site by about half of the current revenues, and at the same time reduce half the number of foreign visitors,
Thus, the results imply that the adoption of an optimal price regime would both increase revenues and reduce congestion at the site. However, this pricing regime would not reduce the congestion problem due to Vietnamese visitors.
The idea of imposing a pricing structure with seasonal differentiation to reduce the number of Vietnamese visitors in the high season is feasible.
The lack of data on the tourist carrying capacity of My Son shows the need for future research to fill this information gap. We need to know more about the impact of additional visitors on this site if a truly sustainable pricing policy is to be developed.
This study has shown how the field of environmental valuation can contribute to sustainable tourism in cultural heritage sites. There is, however, only limited empirical evidence in Vietnam on WTP in terms of increased fees and taxes and the income elasticity of WTP. Therefore, more studies should be conducted to ensure an informed basis for the development of optimal fee policies for tourists visiting cultural heritage sites.
Notes
1 The economic benefits of a preservation plan for My Son sanctuary could potentially accrue to many groups of beneficiaries, including visitors to My Son (both foreigners and Vietnamese), local residents, other Vietnamese, foreign visitors to Vietnam who do not visit My Son, and foreigners not visiting Vietnam (see Tuan, 2006, for detailed discussion). This chapter focuses on the benefits that accrue to foreign and Vietnamese visitors to My Son.
2 The entry price that would maximize revenue can be determined from the demand curve for visits to a site. Willis (2003) and Navrud and Vondolia (2005) specify a func-tional relationship between visits and price as Q = β0e–β1P, where Q is number of visits, P represents the bid or WTP, and β0 and β1 are constants. The optimal price that achieves maximum revenues can be derived from estimating this demand function.
Since this study used the closed- ended elicitation format of CV with four bid amounts, the levels of bids are few and give little variation in the demand curve if we apply the demand estimation approach. We therefore instead use a table to describe the bid amounts with corresponding visitation rates at each level of the entrance fees, and to show the optimal entrance fees that would maximize revenues.
3 While fixed costs per additional visitor could be expected to be low, marginal environ-mental costs could be high if visitor numbers exceed the carrying capacity of the site.
Without information on the site’s carrying capacity, however, it is hard to take this into account.
4 During the peak hours (from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.), there is occasional congestion at My Son. In the summer – the high season for Vietnamese visitors – the congestion
Preserving cultural heritage sites 185 problem occurs more often. With the current growth of visitors, this will be a big problem in the near future unless there is a great improvement in infrastructure and services at the site.
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