Cultural Tourism Policies and Digital Transition of Ancient Village Heritage Conservation in China

Cultural tourism industry has become a new economic growth point for China, with the rising consumers’ demands for cultural experience and cultural creativity. The cultural tourism policies in China advocate the accelerating integration among cultural tourism, design, digital technology and cultural innovation. Digital technologies, such as the Internet, 3D digitization, AR (Augmented reality) and VR (Virtual reality), are increasingly applied to the conservation of cultural heritage and cultural tourism. Digital technology can systematically record the knowledge and technical skills of cultural heritage through three-dimensional digitization, digital data processing and storage, archival management, and then convert them into shareable and reproducible digital forms. In China, the digital transition of ancient village heritage conservation is still in the stage of data compilation and theoretical exploration. This study is based on a digital conservation project, that aims to establish the big data and cloud service platform for the conservation of Chinese ancient village heritage. After a critical analysis of successful cases on digital conservation, this paper will present and discuss the theoretical framework of the digital transition of ancient village heritage conservation, as well as more adequate strategies to better utilize the date for tourists’ experience and heritage knowledge dissemination.