Cultural sustainability is maintaining the conditions and processes that sustain a community's shared cultural identity across generations. It's about ensuring that the traditions, stories, knowledge, values, and ways of life that have shaped that identity for generations remain living parts of its future.

In tourism, it is shaped every day through how experiences are designed, how stories are told, how communities are engaged, and how value is shared. While many destinations recognize culture as a core asset, it is often difficult to define and manage in practice, making cultural sustainability a critical but underdeveloped part of tourism management.