Abstract
In the last two decades, creative tourism has evolved as a burgeoning field, encompassing a wide range of concepts and practices, in different places around the world. From the very beginning, however, creative tourism has aimed to contribute to sustainable development and increased community wellbeing, as an alternative to mass cultural tourism. With this review article, our main objective is to identify and analyze a body of literature that specifically addresses creative tourism in islands, contributing to fill a gap in the knowledge since no reviews with this focus have yet been undertaken. Our aim is to provide a critical overview of creative tourism experiences at island destinations worldwide, addressing the plurality of empirical contexts and methodological approaches found in academic research. This review highlights the key trends in creative tourism, pointing out two distinct approaches: creative tourism in urban contexts, based on creative events, “cultural clusters” or Cultural and Creative Industries (CCIs), versus community-focused small-scale tourism experiences in rural contexts. This paper also provides an opportunity to assess the evolution of sustainable creative tourism approaches in islands.
Highlights
The emergence of the concept of creative tourism was contemporaneous with the identification of the ‘experience economy’, and many analysts have likened creative tourism to experiential tourism [1]
One of the earliest formulations of creative tourism, by Richards and Raymond (2000), defined it as “tourism which offers visitors the opportunity to develop their creative potential through active participation in courses and learning experiences which are characteristic of the holiday destination where they are undertaken” [2]
The main objective of this paper is to identify and analyze the body of literature that addresses creative tourism in islands worldwide, providing a critical overview on the multiple empirical contexts and research approaches found in our review of the literature
Summary
The emergence of the concept of creative tourism was contemporaneous with the identification of the ‘experience economy’, and many analysts have likened creative tourism to experiential tourism [1]. This work has been carried out in the context of the project CREATOUR AZORES, which is coordinated by the Azores Tourism Observatory in partnership with the Gaspar Frutuoso Foundation of the University of the Azores and the Centre for Social Studies of the University of Coimbra (CES) This is an integrated research-and-application project that aims to develop, implement and foster creative tourism experiences in the Azores Islands, thereby enriching the tourism experiences of both visitors and communities while promoting cultural vitality and sustainability and allowing artistic and creative activities to play a driving role in socio-economic development. The main objective of this paper is to identify and analyze the body of literature that addresses creative tourism in islands worldwide, providing a critical overview on the multiple empirical contexts and research approaches found in our review of the literature. This paper highlights the key findings resulting from this literature review and proposes possible sustainable directions for the development of creative tourism
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