Tourist accessibility of heritage spaces through the lens of spatial justice

Guided by Soja's (2010. Seeking spatial justice. University of Minnesota Press) theory of spatial justice and Lefebvre's (1972. Le Droit à la Ville suivi de Espace et Politique. Éditions Anthropos) theory of spatial production, this study examined the accessibility of heritage spaces to tourists in Macao. The results of qualitative face-to-face interviews with ten key informants showed that there were discrepancies between how heritage spaces were represented in heritage policy and how heritage spaces were planned and managed. A simplified approach adopted in heritage preservation, due to the lack of expertise and in order to produce tourism products fast to appeal to tourists, had caused tourists to lose their appreciation of the authenticity of the city's heritage attractions. Besides, government resources were skewed toward heritage spaces located in the popular tourist sites, causing tourists to be not well informed of the existence of different heritage spaces along the historical corridor. Poor accessibility further affected all the heritage spaces. Tourists did navigate around the spatial injustice constraints by either not visiting the heritage sites that required intensive walking, or visiting only a few to obtain a general feeling of the city's heritage. This study contributed to the limited studies on spatial justice in heritage tourism and encouraged policies and practices to fairly distribute heritage spaces and resources.