Creative tourism development in small cities and rural areas in Portugal: Insights from start-up activities

Abstract

The rise of the ‘experience economy’ (Pine and Gilmore, 1998) has led to the recognition of experiences as intrinsically embodying economic (and other) value. In the tourism context, this translated into a focus on creating memorable and unique events and activities, initially designed as ‘staged experiences’. However, in a ‘prosumer’ culture with a growing desire for interaction and involvement, this progressed further, with tourists increasingly desiring ‘co-creation’ experiences and taking on more active roles (Campos et al., 2015). In parallel, tourists’ growing desire for direct and meaningful involvement in the face of ‘massified’ cultural tourism offers and organized experiences has fuelled the development of ‘creative tourism’ (Richards and Wilson, 2007). In this context, creators of creative tourism experiences need to think carefully about the aspects of creativity that are related to its place and that offer creative tourists a specific motivation to visit (Richards, 2011). This chapter begins by outlining some of the key lines of discussion in the field of creative tourism and then provides an overview of CREATOUR, a national creative tourism research-and-application project in Portugal, and its project pilots, presenting a few examples to illustrate the types of creative activities designed and how they connect to the place in which they are being developed and implemented. Then, reflecting on discussions with pilot organizations during the ‘start-up’ phase of the project, a series of challenges and issues that have been encountered are discussed. In closing, lessons learned in the start-up stages about the importance of embedding place-specificity in the development of creative tourism offers in smaller cities/towns and rural areas are reinforced.