The tourism segment that most directly relates to the cultural routes is cultural tourism. Cultural tourism essentially involves visits to cultural attractions and events by culturally motivated people. Taking the World Tourism Organisation definition of tourism as its basis, the ATLAS definition of cultural tourism is:
‘The movement of persons to cultural attractions away from their normal place of residence, with the intention to gather new information and experiences to satisfy their cultural needs’.
(Richards, 1996) This definition is not very precise, because of the vast range of cultural attractions and events and the different cultural motivations that people may have. There is some evidence to show that cultural tourism is an increasingly important segment of the total tourism market. For example, figures from the World Tourism Organisation indicate that the proportion of international trips accounted for by cultural tourists grew from 37% in 1995 to 40% in 2004. Although this seems a small increase, the large growth in global tourism volumes means that by 2009 there were around 375 million international cultural trips. Cultural tourism is also seen as a desirable market by many countries and regions because it is generally high spending tourism, usually undertaken by highly educated individuals who stimulate cultural activity in the destination. Local residents also seem to appreciate the potential benefits of cultural tourism. When asked what forms of tourism hey would like to see developed in future, over 90% of Barcelona residents indicated that they would prefer to develop cultural tourism. They also saw benefits from cultural tourism, such as increased local incomes and support for local cultural institutions (Richards, 2006). The OECD report on culture and tourism (2009) indicated that the main drivers for developing culture and tourism