Exploring the Experience of Creative Tourism in the Northern Region of Portugal—A Gender Perspective

Juliana Alves,Paula Remoaldo,Mansour Ghanian

doi:10.3390/su122410408

Abstract

Creative tourism is a quite recent tourism segment that has been rapidly diffused all over the world. Nevertheless, studies on this segment were not concerned, until present, with the differences in gender intention, evaluation and the overall satisfaction regarding creative tourism activities. For that, this paper examines these three components from a gender perspective regarding the creative tourism activities developed by CREATOUR pilots in the northern region of mainland Portugal between 2017 and 2019. The methods used were quantitative in nature. Five hundred and ninety-five questionnaires were applied to the participants in the 45 creative tourism activities developed by the 10 pilot institutions selected to join the CREATOUR project (Creative Tourism Destination Development in Small Cities and Rural Areas). The questionnaire used consisted of 31 closed questions aimed at the profile, the motivations, the perception and the evaluation of activities by the participants. It used descriptive statistics and discriminate analysis. The main results show that men and women had similar demographic characteristics (e.g., age and educational level), but they were significantly different in some variables, such as their intention to participate in creative activities, and their evaluation and overall satisfaction with their personal experiences. It is statistically confirmed that, based on their experiences in creative tourism, men and women fall into different clusters.

Highlights

In the age of the experience economy, tourists are becoming more active and they seek to be involved in new experiences; they crave holiday experiences that may change their lives rather than packing their schedule with a variety of entertaining experiences [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]
No studies have so far examined tourists’ attitudes towards creative tourism from a gender perspective; we developed, between 2017 and 2019, research to examine the experience of the CREATOUR Project in the northern region of Portugal from a gender standpoint, a central axis that remains marginal in tourism studies literature depicting post structural or postcolonial perspectives
The main goal of this paper is to examine the intention, evaluation and overall satisfaction among both men and women as to the creative tourism activities developed by CREATOUR pilots in the northern region of mainland Portugal between 2017 and 2019

Summary

Introduction

In the age of the experience economy, tourists are becoming more active and they seek to be involved in new experiences; they crave holiday experiences that may change their lives rather than packing their schedule with a variety of entertaining experiences [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]. The concept of creativity, which is at present widely used in tourism literature, is defined as the way host communities, which harbour the entire range of cultural heritage events and actors, may be re-designed and regenerated as creative cultural spaces, while using all their tangible and intangible cultural assets [10] These two concepts, i.e., creativity and innovation, are crucial in creative tourism. This recent tourism segment must show the capacity to develop the main conditions for the exercise of creativity and the participation of tourists in creative workshops and activities, as well as the ability to provide a crucial, true and authentic tourist experience This segment was first defined in 2000 by Richards and Raymond [11] as an extension or a reaction to cultural tourism, the latter being one of the segments of tourism that is significantly contributing to the economic development of tourist destinations [12,13]. In the last few years, creative tourism has been in an uphill battle against massified cultural tourism and is trying to be an alternative to such a saturated segment, by aiming to contribute towards the sustainable development of destinations and their local communities

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