This theme will explore archaeological heritage resources and the sustainability challenges they face with visitation, climate change and urban growth impacts, and their evolving role within a venue's tourism product mix. The theme will examine how management in areas of (often fragile) archaeological monuments and remains caters for: tourist numbers and visitation patterns, tourist access, infrastructure and circulation; and the archaeological interpretation, presentation and conservation management. These will be discussed in the context of operational documents including UNESCO's Historic Urban Landscapes approach and Sustainable Tourism Programme guidance documents; Sustainable Development Goal targets 8.9 Devise and implement policies to promote sustainable tourism and 11.4 Heritage: Driver and Enabler of Sustainability; and the ICOMOS ICTC International Cultural Tourism Charter: Managing Tourism at Places of Heritage Significance, 1999 (under revision). A sub-theme will explore the dynamics and impacts of ‘undertourism’ and ‘overtourism’, and the question of what approaches best represent sustainability for archaeological sites.

Thinking about sustainability issues in relation to archaeological sites that are open to the public has evolved from the archaeological as well as the tourism side. It is becoming clear that a combined approach is vital to a successful sustainability strategy and the two once separate ‘sectors’ have been moving towards each other. In this theme we aim to mark time and check what we jointly understand by the sustainable development of public archaeological sites. What are sensible approaches to the sustainable development, use and management of archaeological sites that are open to the public regarding e.g. the community, site interpretation, local business development, and the environment. We invite papers, workshops and roundtables that highlight approaches to sustainability that take into account as many perspectives as possible to the tangible and intangible values of a site, from a joined archaeology and tourism perspective. We also intend to open up the debate around the assumption of travel as a human right, as stated in the 1999 Global Code of Ethics for Tourism. Within this theme we would like to review that statement in the light of the development of heritage tourism over the last 20 years and the associated significant issues of sustainability.

This theme seeks to examine established and/or site specific management frameworks within designated Protected Areas, World Heritage Sites and National Parks and how these integrate specific provisions for archaeological heritage management especially where there are other management concerns. The theme will examine how management in often fragile Protected Areas, WH sites and National Parks caters for the presentation of both archaeological heritage (cultural values) and, where it arises, how it can be linked to the protection, conservation, management and presentation of natural values: The theme will aim to analyse the source, dynamics and impacts of tourist numbers and visitation patterns, tourist access, infrastructure and circulation. It will seek to establish how these may be usefully related to the doctrinal principles set out in the ICOMOS ICTC International Cultural Tourism Charter: Managing Tourism at Places of Heritage Significance, 1999 (under revision) and the practical advice presented in the ICOMOS/ICAHM Salalah Guidelines for the Management of Public Archaeological Sites (adopted 2017). A sub-theme will explore the dynamics and impacts of ‘mass tourism’ and ‘hit and run tourism’ especially on sensitive archaeological sites.

The concept of cultural routes, developed in the closing decades of the 20th century has proven a very sucessful framework for particpatory cultural heritage management globally. This theme aims to provide a forum to analyse and assess the impact of this development in relation to the preservation, protection and valorization of archaeological heritage on the one hand, and the way in which the concept has been the used by the heritage tourism sector. The session will serve as a means for exchange of ideas and experiences between stakeholders from both heritage and tourism and beyond. It hopes to showcase examples of success and good practice while offering advice on pitfalls and issues experienced in the management of cultural routes at local, regional, national and international levels. The theme seeks wide participation. It hopes to attract both tourism and heritage experts and a range of non-specialist practitioners for use of cultural routes as a common principle in their work, whether on theoretical or practical level.