"New Asia - Singapore": communicating local cultures through global tourism

The marketing tagline "New Asia - Singapore" represents the positioning sta tement for Singapore's tourism development in the 1990s and beyond. Singapo re is marketed as a city with a contrasting blend of "Asian cultures" and m odern "Asian dynamism": able to satisfy the needs of regional visitors and Western tourists. In this paper, we explore the way local cultures are mark eted and reconfigured for tourists and Singaporeans. We argue that although Singapore's place resources have remained relatively unchanged in the 1990 s, its cultural resources and spaces are certainly not static and unchangin g. On the contrary, local cultures are constantly being revalorised and re- interpreted because of tourism development. This argument is substantiated in two ways. First, Singapore's "cultural stock" has been reconfigured to e nhance the cultural offerings it has to offer visitors and residents; and s econd "cultural landscapes" are being repackaged with new Visual elements a nd narratives. Culture and tourism intersect with the result being the "com munication" of local cultural identities through the lens of global tourism . A two-way relationship between culture and tourism is thus established: w hile tourism provides an opportunity for Singapore's cultural resources to be redefined, likewise cultural landscapes are refashioned to meet the chal lenges of tourism in the new millennium. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.