Tourism and Heritage: The Paradoxes of a Risky Relationship in the Maghreb

The main issues in the now-global tourism industry raise many questions related to the role of local populations in touristic development. Mass tourism is usually seen as provoking social and spatial inequalities, due to the economic and political issues that come with it. Paradoxically, some tourism-related economic investments are seen as a possible solution to heritage under threat by supporting its conservation. From the ‘Arab Revolutions' emerged recriminations of an activity that is increasingly seen as a serious threat to local identity, rather than as a resource. Although tourism figures large in development processes, the risk is that heritage will be considered in exclusively mercantile terms, casting aside everything related to locality and civic interaction in the process. In such a case, can tourism save heritage? Is the rise in touristic flows compatible with making better use of heritage in the context of sustainable local development?