Kaat De Ridder

What gives places meaning, significance, and context? What drives people to visit, explore, and experience places, and how do they do it? The answer to these questions is often encapsulated in the term 'culture and heritage', with all its forms and variations, encompassing its own dynamics, characteristics, and stakeholders. Culture and heritage are key reasons why people travel, and it's a subject in which Kaat is deeply interested. Kaat De Ridder is a heritage tourism researcher and lecturer at Thomas More university of Applied Sciences in Belgium. Over the past years, her research has been dedicated to ICH tourism. As a qualitative researcher and cultural heritage tourism expert appointed by the Department of Culture, Youth, and Media, she embraces the challenge of addressing questions like 'How do we translate this heritage into a meaningful experience for visitors and communities, in collaboration with which stakeholders, and through which methods?' and 'How can this experience appeal to a broad audience, and who is that audience?' 

Aspects such as sustainability (in the broadest sense), safeguarding, and inclusivity play a significant role in these challenges. Not all types of culture and heritage are the same, however. Through the projects in which she has participated like 'Tourism valorisation of ICH' and 'DigitICE', she focussed on intangible heritage, working with both tourism and heritage stakeholders to create a framework where visitors can experience this type of heritage, whether or not through the integration of technology, while also ensuring the safeguarding of practices and the communities that uphold them. 

As a Bachelor in Hotel Management, a Master in Tourism, and with several years of experience in a sales environment, she understands that the business side of such cultural tourism narratives is crucial for achieving sustainable outcomes. Finding a well-considered balance between conservation, safeguarding, and valorisation, and between tourism and heritage, is a challenge in which she has built up experience.