Heritage education towards sustainable development in tourism: an inclusive systematic literature review

Sustainable preservation of heritage is a learning process that should involve multiple stakeholders such as corporations, and governments but also tourists and local communities. The purpose of this paper is to provide a more inclusive systematic review of the literature to explore the links between heritage, education, and sustainable development and how tourism influence this relationship. We used the Web of Science and the Scopus databases and identified a sample of 174 articles drafted from 2002 to January 2023. Where most tourism academic systematic literature reviews are conducted only from studies published in the English language, we included articles in English, Spanish, Portuguese and French. We found four major interconnected themes, namely protected areas, formal education, local communities and policies. Although protected areas offer opportunities for sustainable tourism and economic development of local areas and communities, barriers such as lack of resources or community involvement require further attention. Finally, policies are a tool for integrating the previous themes at local, national, and international levels. This work contributes to our understanding of the role of education and heritage as a tool for achieving sustainable development goals within the tourism industry. Finally, new emerging areas for research are explored.