The World Heritage Convention and its Effects on the Tourism Public Policies in Olinda (Pernambuco, Brazil)

Resumo

The Historic Centre of the Town of Olinda is one of the 20 World Heritage sites currently existing in Brazil. Entitled for its cultural-historic characteristics, Olinda is considered an important testimony of the American colonization period and presents meaningful touristic activity, based primarily in the visitation of its historical buildings and the interaction with its effervescent and diversified range of artists and cultural manifestations. Although primarily aimed to protect from destruction natural and cultural sites of world interest and importance, the World Heritage Convention, international document responsible for the registering of the Historic Centre of the Town of Olinda in the World Heritage List, it end up protecting sites that, under touristic perspective, are seen as elements of a large degree of attractiveness. Therefore, through its operational mechanisms, the Convention produces a sort of worldwide inventory which, besides indicating the important sites for humanity from the perspective of protection, also offers sites of relevance to tourism under the perspective of market principles and business opportunities. In this sense, this study aims to understand the effects generated by the World Heritage Convention on the tourism public policies in Olinda and is guided by procedures related to exploratory research. The results achieved made explicit the existent harmony between the adopted initiatives to protect this heritage, governmental actions related to the implementation of tourism policies in Olinda and the World Heritage Convention and, in addition, also being used to identify a form of public administration based on partnership between entities to achieve their goals.