The use of intangible heritage and creative industries as a tourism asset in the UNESCO creative cities network

Abstract

The creative economy has been recognized as key in urban development and planning, which the UNESCO Creative Cities Network (UCCN) consolidates. While benefiting from the label, the tourism sector also plays a fundamental role in the creative strategy. This paper explores how intangible heritage and creative industries can work as a tourism asset for creative cities and thus participate in their development. An NVivo thematic content analysis of all the tourism-related actions listed in the UCCN reports was performed to identify what types of cultural tourism products and actions are linked to the creative cities and to understand how they relate to their UNESCO creative fields to detect gaps and potentials. Tourism activity represents 17% of the total actions listed in the creative cities’ reports, mostly concentrated in the Crafts & Folk Art field. The empirical results highlight tendencies that can be applied and adapted to future destinations with intangible assets on their territory and that want to work with the creative industries. Thus, this paper unveils an underexplored potential of synergies between two important economic and creative activities.