Tourism experiences gretzel jamal 2009 richards 2011

tourism’ experiences ( Gretzel & Jamal, 2009; Richards, 2011; Fernandes, 2011; Stolarick,
Denstedt, Donald & Spencer, 2011; Wattanacharoensil & Schuckert, 2016; Fahmi, McCann &
Koster, 2017). The convergence of tourism and the creative economy has in many areas
occurred naturally through the growth of the creative industries, creative clusters and the
creative class (Gretzel & Jamal, 2009). But as Fahmi et al. (2017) note in the case of Indonesia,
the creative economy has also been “ forcibly connected to other development agendas ” , such
as tourism and cultural preservation, poverty alleviation and city branding.
The Bilbao Guggenheim and other iconic buildings by ‘starchitects’ have also become a major
part of global urban competition strategy (Ponzini, Fotev & Mavaracchio, 2016). Tourists can
also stay in ‘design hotels’ ( Strannegård & Strannegård, 2012) or visit the World Design Capital
(Booyens, 2012). Destinations try to attract the mobile ‘creative class’ as a new breed of
cultural tourist particularly interested in the creative atmosphere and ‘buzz’ of places. Such
locations are increasingly identified and packaged as ‘ creative clusters ’ of which there are
growing numbers around the world (Marques & Richards, 2014). Many of these formally
designated clusters are now major tourist destinations in different countries (Richards, 2014;
Booyens & Rogerson, 2015), and there are also growing numbers of visitors to informal
creative areas in cities such as London (Pappalepore, Maitland, & Smith, 2014).
The media also has an important influence on cultural tourism flows, as the many case studies
on the impact of films such as The Lord of Rings or the Chinese blockbuster Lost in Thailand
show (Connell, 2012; UNWTO, 2018). Lost in Thailand arguably induced more than four million
Chinese tourists to visit Thailand in 2013, underlining that film tourism can also play a role in
rearticulating geopolitical imaginaries (Mostafanezhad & Promburom, 2018) as well as
supporting particular place images and stereotypes.
Creative experiences such as artistic creation, dance, cookery, are now also being used to
frame destination culture. Aoyama (2009) examines the growing flamenco tourism industry in
Seville, which is increasingly integrating creative production (flamenco schools, local cultural
groups) with consumption (performances for tourists, creative tourism flamenco courses for
visitors). Destinations are also now having to deal with the challenge of embedding relatively
mobile creative processes and ideas in place to attract visitors. This inevitably raises questions
about the possibility and desirability of copyrighting or protecting intangible cultural heritage
(Wanda George, 2010). Ownership is already a fraught issue with tangible heritage, but
cultural globalisation makes embedding of intangible culture a major challenge.
In the field of gastronomy, a lot of work has been done in protecting food local products,
including the development of labels and certification of origin (Ren, 2010). Such labels can not
only help to protect food products, but they also serve as markers for cultural tourism
visitation (Benkhard & Halmai, 2017). Cultural tourism can also be stimulated through the