Being creative: an ‘obligation’ in tourism and cultural planning?
Ten years after the first research on the relationship between creativity and tourism, nowadays this area represents one of the most innovative research fields contributing to the debate on the transformations of touristic experience, in the light of the changes wrought by globalization, by the democratization of consumption and by postmodernism (Richards, 2007).
Such transformations have remarkably changed the subjects and objects of tourism, entailing the necessity to revisit, in a contemporary light, and the mechanisms involved in its production and consumption. Creativity contributes to tourism in two major ways: on the one hand, it has become a synonym of new models of production and consumption, and of the new values and elements that contribute to the touristic growth of a locality; and on the other hand, creativity is a remedy, a claim, that may enable some regions to address the problems that contemporary tourism itself may cause. Creativity, therefore, is a sign of
contemporaneity and of change, but is also a resource and tool for ensuring that the results of tourism are as positive and beneficial as possible. This double meaning of creativity in tourism is particularly in the case of culture-based tourism.
Creativity, according to this approach, can promote a new way of doing and consuming tourism. It embodies, in fact, both the inclination to experience of the post modern consumer, and the inclination to enhance local heritage, providing a possible alternative resource for tourism development. Creativity therefore, concerns global processes, subjects, companies, processes, resources and experiences.