Hidden Gems to Sinking Cities: The Local Consequences of Unesco World Heritage Site Management

UNESCO World Heritage Site (WHS) designation functions as a powerful global brand for heritage-rich communities. The benefits and costs of that status depend heavily on how tourism is managed. Existing scholarship focuses on UNESCO’s responsibility, obscuring the local management of these sites and the consequences for local communities. Using a longitudinal case comparison design, I examine the evolution of site management practices and tourism levels over twenty years at Angkor Archaeological Park in Cambodia and the Historic Sanctuary of Machu Picchu in Peru. Through three analyses, I trace each site’s management phases, map UNESCO’s formally prioritized concerns over time, and highlight key community-level consequences. A notable insight is that as tourism intensifies, local communities are actively excluded from economic participation through tourism management policies enacted by local management. These findings contribute to debates on overtourism and “UNESCO-cide,” offering implications for future heritage designations and sustainable tourism management.