Southeast Asia's 36 UNESCO World Heritage Sites make a significant contribution to their respective country's national prestige and identity, international profile and tourism development plans. Yet, although much is known about some individual sites like Angkor and Borobudur, we know very little about all sites in comparative terms.

This wide-ranging study explores how both cultural and natural sites are being managed, how they are coping with the conflicting pressures from the global, national and local levels, and points to best practices for their future conservation and development. Some 20 sites across seven countries in the region are examined and placed in a historical, political, economic, environmental and cultural context. The contributors also focus on the tensions that exist between the often competing interests, understandings and agendas of the various stakeholders involved in these globally important sites.

Although the importance of World Heritage Sites carries their significance and influence beyond their borders in that they are part of national and international flows of people, capital, ideas, images and values, they are also defined, bounded and localized spaces within which there are encounters, exchanges and conflicts.

The first volume to address issues raised by world heritage in Southeast Asia, it will be a key resource for academic researchers and for policy- and decision-makers in this field of studies.

This volume on world heritage and tourism completes a trilogy of publications by Professor King on tourism-related issues. The two earlier volumes - Tourism in Southeast Asia: Challenges and New Directions (2009) and Heritage Tourism in Southeast Asia (2010) - were jointly published by NIAS Press and the University of Hawai'i Press.