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Faculty of Hospitality Management Hogeschool Maastricht PO BOX 3900 6202 NX Maastricht The Netherlands and Centre for Postgraduate Studies of the University of Limburg Diepenbeek Belgium ,1752'8&7,21
As in all the countries in north-western Europe where beach holidays are very dependent on the weather, culture is for Belgium a substantial element of the tourism product, and represents one of the most important attractions in the framework of tourism marketing policy. An essential asset for developing cultural tourism in this country is the historical consciousness of the Belgian people. Their remarkable interest in and knowledge of the countryâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s heritage is to be attributed to the age-long struggle their ancestors had to wage against foreign occupying powers, including the Spanish, the French and the Dutch. The preservation of cultural identity offered a reliable beacon during times of political and military oppression that lasted until 1830, the year in which the Belgians gained their independence. The importance of cultural and historical knowledge is reflected in the programmes of the institutes for tourism education which traditionally pay much attention to history of art and of civilization. So it may safely be said that cultural tourism finds receptive ground in Belgium. 6833/< $1' )81',1* 2) &8/785$/ $775$&7,216
One of the strengths of Belgium as a tourism product is the diversity and the concentration of the cultural-historic as well as the artistic heritage. All categories of cultural attractions covered by the typology of Munsters (1994, Table 6.1) can be found in Belgium, within a radius of 100 km from the centrally-situated capital Brussels. With regard to the distribution of cultural tourism resources in Belgium as a whole, Flanders (northern Belgium) can - generally speaking - be considered as a region characterized by an extensive medieval heritage resulting from a long period of economic prosperity, while the Walloon provinces of southern Belgium possess a richer supply of industrial archaeology dating from the Industrial Revolution.
Greg Richards (1996, ed.) Cultural Tourism in Europe. CABI, Wallingford
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