Identity and Intercultural Exchange in Travel and Tourism

Anthony David Barker, Anthony David Barker

• Publisher: Channel View Publications
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781845414658
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Hospitality, Travel & Tourism Industry
• Index: Business

This book looks at the relationship between questions of identity formation and modern practices in travelling and tourism. Unprecedented levels of mobility and international exchange over the last 100 years have raised questions about the stability of national and personal identities and new and creative patterns of behaviour and self-realisation are now emerging due to the enormous commercial interests that lie behind the modern travel and tourism industries. The volume will consider these issues and the challenges they create in various geographical contexts (Germany, Spain, Romania, Italy, Africa) and concludes with a number of case studies from the Portuguese context, where the revenues from tourism are integral to its economy and a lifeline in the current economic crisis.

Part 1

Exchanging Places

1	The Business of Creative Tourism and Creativity in the Tourism Business Noémia Bárbara

You cannot use up creativity. The more you use the more you have.

Maya Angelou

The Industry of Tourism

Tourism is nowadays a multidisciplinary field of academic study, teeming with typologies and emerging activities, providing a vibrant untapped body of knowledge. Tourism is not only the largest of industries, it is also one of the most fascinating to study. Time and again, the tourism industry has shown its strength in the face of crises (Brunnermeier, 2009; Hall, 2010; Hall et al., 2003). Despite the impacts of shocks, such as concerns about international security following the attacks of September 11, 2001 in the USA, and the SARS outbreak in Asia in 2003, the 2009 flu pandemic, or the current financial crisis in some parts of the globe, the apparently volatile tourism industry has managed to show its resilience, as is clear when recent data on its market growth were made known. According to the World Tourism Organization (WTO), even in a continuing uncertain economic climate, international tourist arrivals grew by 4% between January and August 2012 compared with the same period in 2011. Moreover, in 2011 international tourist arrivals reached 990 million and with the growth of 4% in 2012 (except for the Eurozone, with only 3%) this figure was forecast to reach one billion for the first time by December 2012 (WTO, 2012a). Thus, the date of 13 December was declared to symbolically mark the arrival of the one-billionth tourist, a landmark in the history of tourism, all the more so given the context of great economic upheaval in both tourist-receiving and tourist-sending countries in Europe and North America.

In the tourism business, receipts grew significantly during the first six to nine months of 2012. Among the five largest international tourism earners, Hong Kong leads (more than 17% of GDP), followed by the USA (more than 8%), Germany (more than 7%), France (more than 5%) and the UK (more than 4%). Considering the top five international markets by expenditure on travel abroad, Russia leads (over 15%), followed by the USA (over 9%), Canada (over 6%) and Germany (over 5%) (WTO, 2012b).

In order to keep this large industry working, tourism marketers need to keep abreast of transformations occurring in related fields; tuned in to the latest trends, they introduce their products into the marketplace. As these products are intangible goods¹ they pose particular difficulties for their prospective purchasers for, as Holloway (1998) points out, they cannot be inspected as can a washing machine, a hi-fi or other consumer durables. The purchase of holidays is a speculative investment, involving a high degree of trust on the part of the purchaser, who, as has often been said, is not only buying holidays but also dreams (Holloway, 1998: 4). For instance, when tourists buy a package tour abroad they are buying more than a simple collection of services; they are buying the joy of the planning and anticipation of the experience, the actual experience and extensions of the experience through its recall by seeing videos, photographs and so on. Usually, the tourist has great expectations when embarking on these complex ventures, which involve both a psychological as well as a physical experience. The challenge for the marketer of tourism is to turn the dream into a reality.

This chapter explores and discusses the ingenuity that has taken root in the tourism business. In order to be competitive, tourism professionals have had to be creative, resourceful and inventive, and use all their imagination and initiative to keep up with this changeable market, where supply and demand can fluctuate wildly and thwart market expectations, and where the dream is always in the making. In the next section, the focus is on alternatives in creative tourism; in the subsequent section, multifarious creative business ideas are analysed.

The Business of Creative Tourism

Creative tourism – towards a definition

Cultural tourism is one of the fastest-growing segments of global tourism (Richards & Wilson, 2006; WTO, 2012a). The discussion of creative tourism within the context of alternative tourism cannot be divorced from the wider context of mass tourism. As was pointed out by Weaver (2001), mass tourism depends on the high volume of package tours, with a clear distinction between high and low seasons in a few dominant markets. Accommodation is usually high density, in selected tourist areas, employing an international architecture and owned by non-local, large corporations. In these contexts, tourism tends to dominate the local economy, with a view to short-term economic growth. On the other hand, alternative tourism rarely depends on market arrangements but rather on individual planning, seeking out a specific area, and is little commercialised; ‘authentic’ experiences are provided both for tourists and locals. It relies on small-scale accommodation, dispersed throughout the area and owned by local small businesses, thus tending to complement already existing commercial activity. It is normally regulated by the native population to minimise negative local impacts, and the aim is for economic growth in the long term, so that profits will bring holistic and integrated well-being and stability to the community (Weaver, 2001: 78).

Within this alternative tourism, several niches and micro-niches have emerged, where small numbers of tourists and travellers² with special interests, keen on culture and/or activity-based tourism in authentic settings, demand specialist holidays to meet their specific desires (Robinson & Novelli, 2005: 9). One of these recent niches, creative tourism, was first mentioned by Pearce and Butler in 1993 (see Richards, 2011). Moreover, the term was used to define a phenomenon growing not only in the cities but also in rural areas.³ The development of crafts tourism was to be defined only some years later, by Richards and Raymond (2000: 18), as:

Tourism which offers visitors the opportunity to develop their creative potential through active participation in courses and learning experiences which are characteristic of the holiday destination where they are undertaken.

In 2005 Susan Briggs, the person responsible for the publication Cultural Tourism. How You Can Benefit. A VisitBritain Advisory Guide, provided a more detailed and comprehensive definition to clarify the concept for the general public:

Tourism motivated wholly, or in part, by interest in the historical, artistic or lifestyle/heritage offerings of a tourism destination emerged to meet the demand from visitors looking for more than ‘sun, sea and sand’ mass market experiences. It encourages arts and tourism sectors to work more closely together and it encompasses visits to enjoy visual and performing arts, museums, galleries, heritage attractions, artists’ open studios, art fairs, auctions, public art and architecture, films, festivals and other cultural events. (Briggs, 2005: 5)

The prevalence of these practices increased in a fairly short period and they were taken up by the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), namely in the form of the Creative Cities Network, which developed the following definition:

Creative tourism is travel directed toward an engaged and authentic experience with participative learning in the arts, heritage, or special character of a place, and it provides a connection with those who reside in this place and create this living culture. (UNESCO Creative Cities Network, 2006: 3)

Richards has written a great deal on this concept from its inception (Richards, 2001, 2010, 2011; Richards & Raymond, 2000; Richards & Wilson, 2006, 2007a), opening the field for other research on this kind of niche tourism, perceived both as an ‘adjunct and as an antidote to mass forms of cultural tourism and the serial reproduction of culture’ (Richards & Wilson, 2006: 1219).

Great criticism quickly followed on from the concept of cultural exploration, on the grounds that it had pushed urban and regional bodies to adopt questionable tourism strategies – the so-called phenomenon of McGuggenheimisation, that is, the proliferation of Guggenheim museums throughout the world to replicate the success of the unique popular experience of Bilbao (Bradburne, 2002a, 2002b; Thakara, 2002; Richards & Wilson, 2006). As culture has become a crucial commodity for generating profit in post-industrial economies, it is increasingly used as a resource in cities and regions across the European Union, as a means of preserving their cultural identity and fostering development. The European Capital of Culture programme, for example, has become a symbol of this striving both for development and for the reproduction and exploitation of cultural brands and ‘commodities’.

In New Zealand the practical experience of developing creative tourism has led to the government initiative Creative Tourism New Zealand (CTNZ), greatly inspired by Raymond’s works seeking to redefine this concept. In the light of its experience, CTNZ defines its creative tourism initiatives as:

A more sustainable form of tourism that provides an authentic feel for a local culture through informal, hands-on workshops and creative experiences. Workshops take place in small groups at tutors’ homes and places of work; they allow visitors to explore their creativity while getting closer to local people. (See Raymond, 2007: 145)

According to Richards (2011), recent research has identified this creative tourism as an escape route⁴ from the reproduction of mass cultural tourism, since it offers more flexible and authentic experiences, which can be co-created between host and tourist. Although authentic experiences also buttress other niche tourism trends, such as ecotourism (Weaver, 2001), creative tourism has a different particularity in terms of its appeal to tourists. Instead of trying to find activities that provide an escape from everyday life, these are grounded in the very everyday life that many in the past seemed to want to escape from, in the migration from country to town and the movement from agricultural and artisanal work to urban and factory labour. In contrast, sensation-seekers engage in adventure tourism, motivated quite often not just by risk but also by ‘rush’, pursuing activities habitually described as ‘ineffable’ or ‘indescribable’ (Buckley, 2012), whereas creative tourists do not want to discard their everyday personas to satisfy a taste for adrenalin. They want to find the roots of their identity by developing new relationships with the community of their destination and these people’s everyday lives (Raymond, 2007). Furthermore, they want to tap into and explore their own creative skills with a class of creative people from whom they can find new ways to learn and grow. In order to clarify this study and probe what is generally understood by creativity, some basic definitions and arguments should be briefly explored.

What is creativity?

There is no one accepted definition of creativity, but psychologists tend to perceive it as alternative visions or ideas useful in solving problems, and to highlight the originality of those alternatives or ideas (Franken, 2007: 394). Those who study creativity distinguish it from the myth of genius, for it is present in many people and requires hard work. Another feature of creativity is that, besides the novelty that accompanies it, it has to be useful, to have value and to be appropriate to the cognitive demands of the situation (Weiseberg, 1993: 4). Csikszentmihalyi (1996), who has analysed the characteristics of creative individuals, asserts that they are people who express unusual thoughts, who are interesting and stimulating, who appear unusually bright and who experience the world in novel and original ways; they are people whose perceptions are fresh and whose judgements are insightful. Csikszentmihalyi points out that these (anonymous) individuals may make important discoveries that only they know about, but when they are public figures they may change our culture in some important ways because their achievements are by definition public, and thus it is easier to write about them, as is the case with, for example, Leonardo, Edison, Picasso and Einstein (Csikszentmihalyi, 1996: 25–26).

Nowadays the popular expressions thinking out of the box, and its analogue blue-sky thinking, reflect both the value attached to the features of creativity mentioned above and dissatisfaction with contemporary modes of perception. As Richards (2011) has put it, there is a need to build personal narrative, biography and identity from authentic, creative, alternative tourism experiences. Taylor (1988) examined the definitions of creativity available at the time and grouped scientific approaches according to their focus on four objects of study: the creative person, the creative process, the creative product, and the creative environment. These four conceptual elements intermingle in the following broad depiction of the creative tourist.

Profile of the creative tourist

The creative tourist belongs to what Florida (2002) has termed the creative class, a cosmopolitan highly mobile class from the middle and upper strata of society, from both developing and developed countries, which shares higher levels of education. This creative class is attracted to places that offer a combination of amenities and tolerance of difference. Elaborating on Florida’s theories, Maitland (2007) specifies these amenities as being areas that offer low crime rates, good public transport, good architectural design, bars and restaurants, and a vibrant street life. Creative tourists establish friendship networks, especially through social networks, and choose destinations ‘off the beaten track’ rather than the standard tourist attractions. They like to meet the locals and come to some understanding of the mundane details of everyday life, such as shopping in regular street markets or supermarkets and being part of the ‘real life’ of their hosts, in anticipation of an authentic experience.

This type of tourist wants to escape the tourist bubble created by cities, regions and countries that have replicated venues of proven success for tourists unable to travel to original destinations. This creative person craves new experiences (Raymond, 2007) and is looking for transformation both of himself/herself as an individual and of the places of destination, not only visiting the places, but ‘making’ them. The ability of such tourists to engage in the activities on offer will depend on their motivation, skill and capacity to face challenges. According to Richards and Wilson (2007c: 263), ‘When the challenge of an experience is in balance with our skill levels, this is when we experience Csikszentmihalyi’s (1990) “state of flow” or achieve an optimum experience. Too little challenge is boring, too much induces discomfort’. The goal of the creative destination should therefore be to achieve this kind of balance.

Being open-minded and passionate about learning, creative tourists respect other cultures and are willing to interact with them imaginatively, in order to contribute to a new tourist product, of which they are co-owners, and to ensure ‘co-makership’ happens through an exchange of skills and knowledge with those who are visited (Richards, 2011). Given the right environment, the creative process may also lead them to routes where instead of accumulating experiences, they remake themselves by discovering hidden features of their personality, new facets of their identity.

Having very diversified ways of life, the creative class enjoys participating in a wide range of authentic experiences; indeed, they are characterised by being more interested in being participants than in being spectators (Florida, 2002). This active aspect had already been explored by Ray and Anderson (2000), who divided this creative class into two segments: the cultural creatives and the green cultural creatives. The former are said to include writers, artists, musicians and the like who combine a focus on spirituality with social activism. The latter segment, who include people representing most of the professions, share, among many other characteristics, a strong love of and respect for nature and the planet and its natural balance; they are quite proactive on environmental issues and are believers in the principle of cradle-to-cradle instead of cradle-to-grave. Respectful of other people’s cultures and their natural gifts, they are also defenders of more funding for education and community sustainability and are optimistic and willing to get involved in creating a new and better way of life.

Research undertaken in two pilot creative tourism events in the UK, in 2009, s...