The Crocus Project aims to support the development of cultural and creative tourism in rural and remote areas of Europe. Cultural tourism is a familiar activity, with a history dating back to the Grand Tour and beyond. But what is creative tourism?

Creative tourism was conceptualised just a quarter-century ago, as a form of tourism that generates active involvement of tourists with the places they visit, in contrast with the relatively passive nature of cultural tourism. In recent years there has been a dramatic rise in research on creative tourism, and a growing number of  destinations have incorporated creativity into their tourism development strategies.

At a session of the ATLAS Conference organised in conjunction with Crocus, we asked the question: 25 Years of Creative Tourism: Are we being creative enough? Experts Greg Richards (ATLAS), Esther Binkhorst (Tip-Top Tourism) and Melanie Smith (Budapest University of Economics and Business) offered their views on the development of creative tourism.

Greg Richards reviewed the development of the topic, drawing on 25 years of academic research. He underlined the immense variety of approaches to creative tourism over the years, including 15 different definitions and many different forms of creative tourism, including:

• Cemeteries
• Battlefield tourism
• Urban branding
• Boutique hotels
• Virtual festivals and events
• Gothic itineraries
• e-storytelling
• Creative kampungs
• Creative townships
• Playtowns and digital technology

He asked the question whether this variety of different creative activities reflected a lack of conceptual clarity, or simply the vast scope of creativity itself.

Melanie Smith illustrated one of the recent developments of creative tourism, highlighting the convergence of creativity, tourism and wellbeing. She linked this to the concept of eudaimonia, which is partly based on self-development, personal growth and transformation. Tourists increasingly want to develop themselves and their creative potential through travel, and this is helping to provide opportunities for rural and remote areas to utilise their intangible heritage resources to innovate new tourism products. She highlighted the growth of creative retreats in rural areas, which offer ‘enhancement’, ‘improvement’, ‘cultivation’ and ‘learning’ as an alternative to busy urban lifestyles. Although people often travel to rural areas to ‘get away from it all’, Melanie emphasised the value of meeting and interacting with locals as a means of enhancing creative tourism experiences and sharing skills and knowledge.

The concept of co-creation was also discussed by Esther Binkhorst, the founder of Tip-Top Tourism, a platform that promotes sustainable and inclusive  tourism by engaging travellers, particularly those with functional diversity, as co-creators in the design and testing of tourism services. She sees creative tourism as part of the transition from an experience economy to a transformation economy, allowing people to realise their full potential through travel. Initiatives such as Tip-Top Tourism enable travellers to become co-creators of their experiences, not just passive consumers. This can also help to empower locals, who are transformed from mere service providers into curators of local knowledge and heritage, storytellers and teachers.

The development of creative tourism in rural and remote areas of Europe therefore has the potential to transform the relationship between tourists and the places they visit. One of the aims of Crocus is to develop a place-based perspective on tourism development that emphasizes the creative potential of tangible and intangible heritage. This in turn should enhance the tourist experience and increase the sustainability of cultural and creative resources in rural Europe.

A full report on the panel debate on 25 years of creative tourism has now been published open access in the Journal of Policy Research in Tourism, Leisure and Events. More papers on cultural and creative tourism from the special track organised by Crocus at the ATLAS Conference will soon be available in a special issue of the journal.