Cultural Realms - Rossitza Ohridska-Olson's blog about the business of cultural tourism

The Creative Tourism Business Model

The creative tourism is a form of cultural tourism – it counts on cultural assets to attract travelers to a destination. It is also a form of creative community’s development – by stimulating the creative industries from outside, the local economy improves beyond the profits from tourism.

Click on the image for a large graphic of the creative tourism business model.

On the other side, the business model for creative tourism defers radically from the business model of conventional cultural tourism. First, it is based on a different resources. Cultural tourism is focused on iconic buildings, mega events (festivals, etc.), strong presence of historic heritage, vibrant cultural life at a destination and limited famous geographies (Italy, France, Spain, Egypt, England, etc.).

Creative tourism demand is related to the need for learning and experiencing the creative process – from textiles weaving in the Mapuche regions of Chile to icon-painting in Russia. In some outbound markets, like the USA, the demand is driven in strong traditions and proliferation of hobbies and craft making.  And because the creative tourism doesn’t need impressive historic buildings, UNESCO lists or famous events, its destinations extend to all kind of countries and cities – from Berlin and Barcelona to small villages along the Yantra river and the high planes of Peru. This geographical enlargement benefits communities that otherwise wouldn’t have a shot in taking a piece of the profit in the cultural tourism.

The second big difference is exactly the profit distribution. While  cultural tourism contributes to the local economy through tourism taxes, entrance fees to museums, events tickets, and souvenir buying (tourism and supporting industries exports), the creative tourism contribution goes beyond these benefits. First, in the cultural tourism, most of the tourism exports happen in the outbound market, where tour operators and travel agencies sell the product. Very few of the packaged tours profits or the individual traveler dollars go directly to the local community when it comes to international cultural tourism.

On the contrary, the creative tourism directly contributes to the local economy not only trough tourism exports, but through direct financial contribution to the local creative industries and the supporting local infrastructure.

Another issue with cultural tourism is the vast percentage of the so called “accidental cultural tourists” – travelers who use the product of the cultural tourism once at a destination, but their motivation to travel to this destination is not driven by its cultural assets. That makes financial projections, forecasts and planning very difficult, specially on the domestic markets. The research shows huge gaps in statistics about the so called “cultural tourist”: only in the USA there is a difference between 78% (Mandala research) and 14% (NEA) on what percentage of all travelers are cultural heritage travelers.

Since creative tourism is driven by motivation to learn and participate in the creation of a cultural activity, it is much easier to distinguish the regular tourist from the creative one. That helps hugely all economic activities of forecasting, researching,  and – ultimately –planning the creative tourism development.

While there are differences between cultural and creative tourism,  the business model for creative tourism clearly shows that any destination of cultural tourism also can profit from creative tourism. This merger of different types of tourism finds very fertile ground through the creative tourism activities: creative and adventure tourism, cultural and creative tourism, archaeology tourism and creative tourism, wine & gourmet tourism and creative tourism, etc. Therefore, destinations that already have the assets to develop other type of tourism, as Barcelona, for example with its great resources for cultural tourism, are using this advantage for increasing their profit with creative tourism.

Additional advantages from creative tourism are the non-tangible benefits that it brings to communities. From identity building to attracting talent from other places, the creative industries flourish and contribute to the positive development of local communities. Once creative industries are developed because of creative tourism demand, the tangible benefits increase internally too through  better business, real estate and overall human capital climate.

I have prepared a presentation in Spanish on creative tourism and its impact to local communities. Soon it will be available in English too. E-mail me if you need the bibliography on creative tourism.

Infographics designer: Stevan Olson for Vizantia

Turismo creativo

The Day of Cyrillic Alphabet, Slavonic Culture and Enlightenment

One of the oldest cultural holidays in Europe

The “Day of Saints Cyril and Methodius” is celebrated as an ecclesiastic observance since the 11th century A.D., accordingly to old church chronicles. This holiday commemorates the work of the brothers who created a writing system for the Slavonic languages, known now as Cyrillic alphabet. For many of the people living in Western countries, including the USA, this alphabet is known as “Russian” writing. In actuality, there is nothing Russian in its history, except that from the 11th century (2 centuries after its creation), the Cyrillic alphabet was adopted as the official ecclesiastic writing system in Kiev Russia. (See my article on the Cyrillic alphabet history and its importance now by clicking here).

To my knowledge, there is not a culture related Saint in any other Christian to be celebrated by both Eastern Orthodox believers, Catholic devotees, and atheists alike for more than 10 centuries and across so many countries. Literacy and culture were so important in Eastern Europe during all these years, that portraits of Saints Cyril and Methodius, who created the Cyrillic alphabet were painted over and over again in churches and cathedrals. Their icons received the same devotion as the ones of St. Mary and St. George, and their life stories were told and retold in numerous books.

Even before Bulgaria was free from Turkish domination, Saints Cyril and Methodius celebrations were the major cultural event of the year. In 1851, on May 11, a Bulgarian teacher and revolutionary fighter against the Turkish domination of the Balkans, organized the first secular celebration of these Saints. Since then, all people in Russia, Slovakia, Macedonia, Serbia, Czech Republic, etc. venerate Saints Cyril and Methodius who gave them access to written culture, vast sources of knowledge and cultural independence from Muslim and other religious or social invasions. 

Now, because of changes in the ecclesiastic calendar, the “Day of Saints Cyril and Methodius” is marked on May 11 by Christian devotees, and on May 24, secularly.

In many countries May 24 is also an official national holiday. Festivities are accompanied by parades, local and national cultural events, culture award ceremonies and many other expressions of respect to the achievements of society in the field of arts, education and enlightenment. In many countries this day is also celebrated as a day of education. That is why on May 24, teachers, students and alumnae gather together for all kind of events.

Why do I care about this? First, because I come from a country where, even in communist times, these were the only Saints to be celebrated officially, publicly and nationally. Second, because, as an expat, I miss celebrating a day of culture or education. A day on which the entire nation gathers together, not in stadiums or around barbecues, but in theaters, operas, libraries and schools to celebrate literacy, arts, and education. Not a day to sit collectively around a televised sporting event. Not a day jumping, screaming and  mindlessly applauding a celebrity with dubious reputation, trying to overcome a deafening sound system in a 100,000-seats arena.

I dream of a day when everyone from every culture in the United States would show off their cultural achievements, their heritage and their modern glory in arts, architecture, education and culture. A day, which will be an official, publicly recognized, national holiday of culture. A day, when nobody works and everybody goes to the streets to display their love for all cultural accomplishments of this great country.

Until then, I will continue to celebrate May 24, the Day of Saints Cyril and Methodius.

Photography: first image: icon of Saints Cyril and Methodius, Pirin Mountain village church, Bulgaria. Photography: Rossitza Ohridska-Olson. Second image: Monument to Saints Cyril and Methodius, sponsored by Bulgarian millionaires, brother Bobokovi, prepared to be sent to Odessa as a present to the Ukrainian city to remember the creators of the alphabet used in that country. Photography by Nedko Ivanov.

National Geographic Traveler Confirms Trends in Cultural Tourism

Rarely I like to say “I told you so…”, because it normally involves an advice I gave and somebody didn’t follow, in spite the money they paid to me to get this consultation. Or it is my husband for another reason – you know how it goes…

This time I am happy that Nat Geo Traveler confirms my forecast by choosing the “50 Tours of a Lifetime”. Here it is why (click on the picture for bigger size. Will open in a separate window):

As you can see from the table above, 32 out of the 50 featured trip are cultural tourism trips. From them, National Geographic Traveler classifies 22 as cultural, the rest are classified as cultural by the tour operator who organizes them. As I underlined, cultural and creative tourism, are recession resistant. In the 2009 edition of “50 Tours of a Lifetime”, National Geographic lists 22 trips. If we apply their criteria, there still be an increase of 100% over the last year.

It is normal for National Geographic, a global company, to list trips all around the world. Still, emerging destinations are predominant with the most exotic taking leading role, as I predicted in the 2010 Cultural Tourism Trends. As per the geography of these destinations, I “struck gold” with 10, out of 50 – not too bad, view the fact that 22 were named “cultural tourism destinations”.

Creative tourism take a significant place, view it is a new approach to cultural tourism. It is often mixed with other activities – volunteering, cultural travel, etc. Which proves another of my statements: “The consumer demand for authentic experiences and more “to do at the destinations” will pressure change not only the geographies of the cultural tourism, but also the relationships local community- visitors.” That is why many of the tours winning the prestigious label of “50 Tours of a Lifetime” offer interaction with local people, traditions and cultures, independently the main reason for travel: adventure, wildlife, active or volunteering tours.

Europe got it right by offering tours off of the bitten pad and big city cultural tourism. The tour choice shifted, as forecasted to niche sub-destinations:  Italy with Piedmont wine tours, which are more cultural experience then typical wine tasting, Pompeii with archaeological tours – another trend of niche tourism that I predicted, etc.

The most surprising was my comment on religious tourism: from the only one religious trip, among the 50 of National Geographic Traveler, was my certainty that Spain with its Camino de Santiago will take its deserved place among pilgrimage trips.

As per the business of cultural tourist, I predicted correctly that small, concierge type agencies would satisfy better the shifting cultural traveler profile towards personalized, responsible travel. Thirty-nine out of 50 trips are operated by travel companies that have in place sustainable, eco- or responsible travel policy. Thirty-three are operated by small travel agencies, offering customizable and personalized, individually designed trips with flexibility in travel dates.

P.S.

While preparing this blogpost, I went and read about all 50 tour operators | agencies, their tours, destinations, their policies, explored their websites and decided to name my favorites among the National Geographic choices:

Best cultural tourism agency: Wilderness Travel: for its rich choice of destinations, a wide array of experiences offered to travelers and user-friendly website, full of information and possibilities for customization of trips.

Best creative tourism agency: Cultural Crossroads (http://culturalcrossroads.com) for its highly customized tours and unique creative activities, in addition to incredible insider access to many places and people that other agencies cannot even dream.

Best niche tourism agency: Andante Travels, UK – for archaeological tourism. In addition to cover almost all possible interests in archaeology travel – from amateur lovers of archaeology to professional researchers, the website of the agency is the only one that offers a search engine that permits the user to search by historic period, in addition to destination, date and other normal travel search criteria. They are the only agency, which gives back directly to the archaeological sites, which can apply for a award, independently if the agency has a tour to the site or not.

Best personal discovery: Go Native America  - for promoting tribal cultural tourism, preserving the identity and authenticity of the Native Americans across North America, and in the same time providing exciting, educative and spiritual tours.

If you want compare yourself both documents, for the National Geographic Traveler “50 Tours of a Lifetime” click here and for Cultural realms “Cultural tourism in 2010: trends, destinations and business outlook” click here.

If you want to name your favorite tour operator | travel agency (and say why), please post a comment here, after the blog. Needless to say that if you work for some of these travel company, you cannot name it – it is logical, isn’t it?

Photo: Basket weaving lessons in Jordan
Courtesy of Carrie McDougall, with special permission for Cultural Realms

Creative Tourism: Destinations vs. Passions? Or both…

The ultimate form of cultural tourism – experiencing the creation of cultural values in the creative tourism – continues to be a big trend in destination marketing. The focus is on local arts, crafts, gastronomy, wine culture, and everything that a place can offer. Combined with the brand war between similar places to show their uniqueness, the main element of the tourism product for creative tourism is the local focus.

Is this the right approach? Yes and no.

The Destination Approach

The traveler interested in creative tourism will be appealed by the right destination promotion that offers a lot of possibilities for creative travel. They will choose a destination because of its overall appeal and the possibility to participate in the exiting experiences of creative tourism. In this sense, the destination approach should be focused on the local ambiance and uniqueness of this destination or city. That is true for 61% for the US cultural traveler and 28% of the European cultural traveler. On both side of the Atlantic the first most important reason to choose a destination is its overall appeal – its cultural environment. But it this enough?

The Passion Approach

From all cultural travelers in the USA, 23 % started with a certain type of travel experience in mind when planning their next trip. In Europe, from those whose main choice for travel was to experience culture, 38% cited the cultural heritage as main reason to choose a destination. This is in actuality the market for cultural and creative tourism: the main motivation behind the travel is to experience culture, not only to participate in cultural activities while traveling to a destination. In other words, this is the choice of the concrete passion of the individual: it is more important to make a tour of the Roman Empire heritage or the Frank Lloyd Write architecture, than to visit Italy or Chicago per se.

Understanding this trend, UNESCO created the Creative Cities Network.  Music lovers have choices from Italy to Spain, folk arts and crafts enthusiasts will be delighted to travel from Santa Fe to Aswan, Egypt. And while the gold seal of the UNESCO prestige worldwide provides these chosen destinations with enormous potential for marketing based on the UNESCO name only, other destinations should consider much more proactive measures in order to appeal to the cultural traveler, who pursue a passion.

Niche marketing vital for creative tourism destinations

Destinations tend to focus on marketing the overall product in order to appeal to larger groups of travelers. For big cities or clusters of monotypes of attractions (business, meetings, etc.) this works perfectly. Take for example Hamburg: the world city for industrial trade shows. No matter that Hamburg has a lot to offer to cultural travelers, the city is positioning itself as the number one MICE city in Europe and with brilliant success. Munich, on the other side, another MICE and super economic power city, have chosen the Oktoberfest, the most famous beer festival in the world, to attract tourism.

Are DMOs taking in account what niche they can appeal and deliver this message to the passionate travelers searching creative tourism experiences? Not always. They tend to present the uniqueness of a destination through a complex mix of “everything for everyone”. Event promotion for unique events, such as the Rose Festival in the Valley of the Thracian Kings, Bulgaria, Vienna New Year Concert or Milan Scala opera performances, is a very good approach, but is time limited to the duration of the event.

That is why destinations have to choose a typical characteristic, a mono-interest group of attractions appealing to one passion, one aspect of the city or micro-region/cluster to promote themselves to the cultural traveler. This positioning should fill the gap in the sentence: Our (destination, city, place) is the only one in the world where you can …. (learn how to bind your books with leather, paint on brown ceramics, craft your own cloisonné, etc.).

Peru, as a country, position itself as the only place to learn how to wave their incredible Inca style fabrics, and if you want to learn how to do it, this is the place to go. Chile, on the other side, where the same carpet weaving has the exactly same traditions, does not focus on Inca carpet weaving. Santa Fe is the destination par excellence for crafts related with earth-ware and American folk arts, and is the biggest success for creative tourism in North America. 

Destinations (from countries to small cities), should explore the possibility to brand, position and market themselves focused on these passions, without, of course, abandoning the overall appeal of the place, appealing to mass tourism. How they can do that?

Create

Determine which group of attractions, activities and infrastructure has the most unique potential to develop creative tourism product. For more information how to become a creative tourism destination, check up these articles. Increase market geography by choosing an uniquely global product. If your city, micro-region is too small, extend the region until finding the right unique product. Example: create a cultural landscape of all wine routes in your state (like Virginia is doing it) and package it together under one product: “Virginia wine making”. For certain interests, you will need bigger territory and several destinations under the same product (American Arts and Crafts Movement), for some destinations you will need only one product, like tile painting in Ybor, Florida.

Brand, position, promote, globalize

Create a group of tourism products (programs, projects, developments in the urban structure or the geographic micro-region) and brand it as “The only place where…”

Promote it globally to the niche markets. Maybe in Germany there are not enough potential travelers to go to Iowa City (UNESCO creative city for literature) to learn modern American literature, but for sure worldwide there are enough Kurt Vonnegut enthusiasts who will travel to the “Athens of the Midwest” to create a stable tourism income.

No matter what approach takes a DMO – a geographic or a specialization one, the most important is to show globally that this destination is THE place to create, experience and enjoy creative travel now, only here and to a very specific narrow niche demanding traveler. And, there is an enormous opportunity for DMOs and travel organizations (travel agencies, hotel owners, etc.) to capitalize on any of thee above approaches to destination marketing for creative tourism. In the USA, there is a gap of 67% between the desire to participate in creative activities (Mandala Research) and the real participation. Countries in emerging destinations, such as Chile, Vietnam, Cuba, Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, and all Balkan countries, have unique treasures to offer and shape their destinations in an innovative way to serve the creative tourism. That combined with the fact that they are still in the list “to discover” gives them unique edge to promote creative tourism since the very beginning of destination development – a change to not miss now.

Research based on Mandala Research Report “The American Cultural Tourist”

and the European Traveler Profile Report (download .pdf).

Creative tourism: 5 important considerations for developing creative tourism destinations: 

Part One: Intro

Part Two: Location

Part Three: Human Capital and Attitude

Part Four: Target Markets, Strategies, Sustainability, Financing

Part Five: Advertising, Promotion and Authenticity

iPad = iCulture?

True to its commitment to innovation, Apple launched its new gadget –iPad -  aimed to replace eBook readers, game consoles, and increase the viewing surface for all its wireless apps, previously developed for iPhone. The iPad is also meant to be the media device of the decade, providing content from web surfing to newspaper reading, GPS navigation, and Google maps.

How this will affect the cultural travel?

No Flash
As in iPhone, Flash animations and files will not display on iPad. Tour operators and agencies, who design their websites with Flash will suffer from the lack of visibility and hence, lose their opportunity to reach the higher end of the market and younger generations.
Sites using Java-based animations and youtube.com videos, will prosper.

Integrated iBookstore
Travel agencies, directing their customers to buy books online related to a trip, or many other products that Amazon.com offer, will suffer from the iPad launch, since the myriad of apps and the iBook store are integrated into the new device. Smart tour operators and agencies can serve their patrons by adding a section for the iBook store, in addition to Amazon and Longitude books. Since the project is still not completed, it is unclear which affiliated programs will have iBook and iPad to help small travel agencies to incrementally add revenue and value.

GPS and other apps

Tour operators and travel agencies offering classical cultural tourism destinations will suffer from the introduction of this device. While the iPhone is a locked device, without the ability to connect when you are abroad, unless you spend a fortune roaming,  iPad will come in the end of this month with global GPS and an unlocked SIM card, making it the first global media distribution Wi-FI and 3G device. That means that information will reach the iPad user around the world, making dynamic packaging a breeze.

Only agencies offering emerging destinations or unique experiences, will profit from the iPad. In fewer words, cultural travel will become a global commodity and only the narrow specialized “travel concierges” will survive.

Of course, this will not happen overnight. While restaurant reservation apps for France are abundant and most of the museums in Germany are accessible on an iPhone app, there are few if any applications to help visitors to emerging destination to do what really matters to them: find a great church concert in Prague or research helicopter services to Machu Picchu.  The agencies who cater to an unsophisticated computer user will still get by, until there are no more “blank” spots on the apps map or no more users who don’t feel comfortable to press a button and reserve tickets, hotel and flight for the 1st of January concert in Vienna.

Virtual and Augmented reality
With growing mobile apps for virtual and augmented reality (VR and AR), ancient ruins in Rome (Roma Reborn project) or destroyed cultural heritage sites in Peru will be visible in their glory in a much bigger screen than iPhone or any hand held device. Combined with the hundreds of hotel reservations next to these sites or information from Wikipedia, pictures from Flickr and Picassa and a personalized itinerary app, the iPad will be the Mecca for those who love to explore cultural heritage, history or just enjoy learning while traveling.

Large screen and keyboard
Compared with a laptop, the iPad screen is small. Compared with any wireless handheld device, which has apps to instantly make purchases and download information and entertainment, iPad screen is huge. And of course, there is no electronic reader to accommodate hotel reservation applications or GPS navigation for the Dan Brown “Angels and Demons” in Rome for example. In addition, the device can directly play the movie at a very comfortable size, while the GPS is tracing the route of Dr. Langdon.

So is this Cultural tourism on steroids? Yes, for the sophisticated, freedom-loving buyer, who doesn’t want a travel agency to get in the middle of his/her experiences; but is it the IPad the traveler concierge that will help you arrange a private visit of the Royal stables of Jordan? Not yet.

In the future, I assume that smart travel agents will include the iPad as part of their welcome package, when the prices of the device go down. With step by step itineraries, youtube.com video selection from the visits of museums or monuments, the device can serve as a perfect sales tool and companion for those travel agents who maximize its functionality as a sort of cultural iTravel iAgent. 

Until then, brace yourselves for fierce competition from the friendly Apple store.

Thracian Helmet with Mask

Thracian Helmet with Mask, originally uploaded by The Traveling Frog - Rossitza and Stevan Olson.

Thracian Helmet with Mask: Amazing photo. National Museum of History, Bulgaria

The Cultural Tourism in 2010: Trends, destinations and business outlook

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Global economic and energy responsibility, new and exciting technologies, and drastic transformations in travelers’ profile will continue to shape the cultural tourism in 2010. As 2009 had proven, the cultural tourism is recession-proof. That is logical: cultural tourism exists to satisfy a need for discovery – heritage, new wine region, new old civilization, new artifacts, new exhibition, new concert. Cultural travelers don’t travel because they have 14 days vacation, they travel because they need to unveil something mysterious, something familiar, something…unexpected. They are driven not by prices, but by deep-rooted need for new experiences or nostalgic familiarity. That is why they spend more money and they travel more often. Their travels are longer in time and distance. This pattern will not change in 2010.

What will be different and what will stay the same in 2010?

Cultural Tourism Destinations 2010

Close to home destinations for the fiscally conservative and green conscious traveler will continue to be more and more important. Instead to visit Paris, London or Madrid, spend insane money and pollute the air with enormous kerosene emissions, the North-Americans will fly, take the train or the shuttle to NYC or Washington, DC to view the European Art in the Metropolitan Museum and the Smithsonian. Not that the visitations to the Louvre, the British Museum and El Prado will decrease – they will continue to augment thanks to European travelers, local public and new travel generating markets, such as Singapore, Thailand and Malasya (see news about ATOUT France).

Emerging destinations

Emerging destinations will be found close to home or very faraway for the more and more curious and always discovery-seeking cultural tourism traveler.

Destination with exotic cultures in Central Asia (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia), the Caucuses (Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan) and the Balkans (Greece, Turkey, Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia, FYR of Macedonia, Serbia) will be the next big discovery and magnet for those who want to see it all.

With Istanbul being European Cultural Capital for 2010, Turkey will attract many tourists from around the world, not only history lovers, but also modern art, design and visitors to the great events planed to celebrate the culture of this millennial city.

Central and Eastern European destinations will offer a more economic alternative to the Western overpriced destinations, with similar cultural experiences: Czech Republic, Slovakia, Poland, Russia and Hungary offer the same 19th century grandeur and thriving modern art, with the spicing of local exotics and lower prices, compared to France, Britain, Italy and Spain.

Austria, Monaco and Switzerland, on the other side, are very well prepared to continue the tradition of luxurious and exclusive cultural tourism for the seekers of elegance and familiar Western culture settings.

In spite wars, politics and all kind of negative propaganda, Iran, Syria, and Lebanon will continue to attract the history lovers. Even Iraq will join the group of Middle Eastern cultural destinations for those who take risks or belong to the region. Dubai and the rest of the UAE, with their efforts to add cultural experiences to their super-luxurious offer, will remain a focal point for tourists from the region and the world.

Emerging destinations in North Africa (Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria) will continue to be the favorite destinations for lovers of the exotic Arabian cultures, without  the security risks of the Middle East.

Latin America’s Peru and Guatemala, will continue to attract both North-Americans and Europeans with their endless cultural discoveries found in pristine and undisturbed nature.

China and Vietnam, together with Cambodia and Bhutan will be the next big thing in for lovers of Asian cultures and exotic experiences.

Traditional Cultural Tourism Destinations trends

Damaged by the image lacking authenticity and being extremely expensive, France, Italy, Spain, Austria and Britain will extend their cultural tourism offer to micro-regions with specific local charms and will target niche cultural tourism generating markets. Big magnet cities, as London, Paris, Madrid, Vienna and Rome will be replaced with the cultural offer of Sicily, Loire Valley, Toulouse, Andalusia, and Catalonia, and villages around Salzburg.

Portugal will continue to grow its cultural offer and extend it beyond Lisbon, stressing the charm and history of little villages and religious centers.

Cultural tourism trends 2010

Creative tourism

With the engagement economy growing in full speed, expect significant growth in creative tourism offers across the globe. Cultural tourists are no longer satisfied observing cultural heritage and events – they want to participate in the creation or development of local cultures. Travel programs including carpet-weaving classes, painting on ceramics, or volunteer archeology travel will thrive on an unprecedented scale.

Responsible and eco-conscious travelers

Cultural heritage warnings and nature destruction around cultural heritage sites will have an enormous impact on the responsible traveler. Awareness and change of attitude will influence destination choice towards cultural attractions, which are non-destructive, eco-friendly and responsible towards the local cultures.

Major scandals about artifacts obtained by illegal antiquities trade will continue to damage important museums as Getty, the British Museum etc., and will be the cause of decreasing visitations. Responsible travelers will sign up more and more for initiatives such as this one of the of the World Monuments Fund to take a pledge for sustainable tourism (http://www.wmf.org/action/sustainable-tourism-pledge) or sign up for volunteering travel to save antiquities from looting and overcrowding with tourists, as SAFE/Saving Antiquities  for Everyone is promoting .

Religious travel

Political tensions will continue to damage travel to Israel and Mecca, but newly discovered or marketed routs, such as the route of St. Paul or the Santiago de Compustela route will thrive. Paganism travel related to old pagan cults, dedicated to different deities, will be the new trend for many emerging destinations and become a significant part of religious tourism.
 
Wine tourism

Expect more travel to local hidden wineries in the United States and Southern Europe, including emerging destinations. Organically and eco-responsible, local wine producers will see an increase of cultural tourists. Wineries with rich history, story telling and a combined offer of antiquities, impressive local culture, crafts and arts will attract the discovery-demanding cultural tourist.

Hopefully, a better overseas marketing will attract more tourist to the European Wine routes beyond France, Spain and Italy to extend to the origins of wine making: Bulgaria, Greece, Georgia.

Business travel extensions

While business travel is ditching with head spinning speed due to fiscal responsibility and new virtual meeting technologies, the few travelers who must travel for business will use the occasion to extend their trip few days and see the local cultural offers. That combination also will help the decision making – if there is a short weekend trip to a cultural destination, the business travelers most likely will decide to go to the business trip versus business meetings set in purely industrial/working atmosphere destinations or videoconferencing. 

Luxury cultural travel

As in 2009, prices for private visits to museums, small yachts to archaeological sites and specialty designed tours for individuals with a vast array of cultural interests will continue to grow. Recession and fuel prices do not affect those luxury travelers who seek unique cultural experiences – at home or abroad. Just the opposite – more cultural sites and monuments are discovered yearly, more affluent travelers try to be the first to visit the newest and the closed to the general public place or event.

Niche cultural travel

Dark tourism, archaeological tours, special events tours will continue to grow, since neither the economy nor the energy concerns will stop the travelers obsessed with a hobby. And it is logical: if your only chance to discover the next Thracian treasure will be to pay $ 10,000 to participate in the excavation of a Thracian Tomb, or if you want to be on the Vienna Concert on January 1st, the money, distance and carbon emission footprint will not matter – what will matter is the experience only.

The business of Cultural Tourism in 2010

Technology impact on cultural tourism

Technology enhancements of the visitor experience through virtual and augmented reality will attract more and more travelers who want to immerse themselves in a different culture or historical time.

Social networks, photo and video sharing sites will continue to expand information for faraway destinations, thus increasing the reach of the cultural tourism geographies.

Travelers blogs, rating sites such as tripadvisor.com, virtualtourist.com, or gotsaga.com will proliferate and thanks to user generated content and many of the emerging destinations will start to play bigger and bigger role in the global cultural travel.

More and more OTAs will add cultural tourism to their offer, as did expedia.com.

Mobile technologies combined with geospatial data available through iPhone or other mobile apps will permit travelers to design themselves their own cultural tours and thus cut off the intermediaries. A great example for that is the recent agreement between UNESCO and Google Earth to provide a World Heritage layer in the application, which will compliment National Geographic layer, Roma Reborn project and other similar layers, and thus help individual travelers to create their own itineraries.

Consumer demand changes

The consumer demand for authentic experiences and for more creative activities while at a destination will pressure change not only the geographies of the cultural tourism, but also the relationships local community- visitors. Expect these relationships to become closer and closer and have a positive impact on both sides of the equation.

Personalization and tour design tailoring to these demands will shape the overall higher expectation towards tour operators and travel agencies.

Cultural tourism Tour operators and travel agencies in 2010

Big touroperators, such as Abercrombie & Kent  and Cox & Kings will loose ground to small boutique travel agencies who can provide concierge type of services - custom tour design, unique destination knowledge and local support throughout the travel.

Mono-destination tour operators will continue to thrive, due to their in depth knowledge and local focus, which will help them to cut through the noise of the enormous cultural travel offer on the Internet.

Specialization, concierge services and extremely detailed and greatly designed tours will help tour operators to survive during 2010. That will sometimes enforce elimination of destinations or adding new ones following the trends of emerging markets and creative tourism increase.

Boards of tourism, DMOs and other macro-destinations bodies

With the increasing demand for unique experiences, boards of tourism, country ministries of tourism and DMOs will be forced to re-examine and correct, if necessary, the brand image and presence on different markets. Emerging destinations will have to come up with strong country branding for cultural tourism in order to be able to compete. Destinations such as USA and Spain, otherwise great tourism destinations both in their financial and number of tourists numbers, will have to do more about country branding for cultural tourism outside of their territories to attract more visitors to their endless cultural attractions and events.

Photo: Istanbul Museums of Archaeology. © 2008 Stevan Olson

Country Branding From A Global Cultural Tourism Perspective

A comparison between different countries based on Future Brand Country Branding Index (CBI) and the Anholt-GfK Roper Nation Brands Index  (NBI)

Finally my (im)patience is generously rewarded: the Country Brand Index of Future Brand is here. That, on the top of the 2009 edition Nation Brands Index (NBI) by Anholt-GfK Roper, made me jump of joy. They encompass information, which will be my  “food for thought” for the weeks to come. You might say that I am partial to the CBI, since I was one of the experts for the 2009 edition. In fact, I will try to prove that I see objectively both Indexes as sources of very valuable information. This combined  “sea of knowledge” for professionals like me, is precious when it comes to create strategies for tourism development and destination management.

Both in NBI and CBI confirmed that the undisputed winner is the United States of America, thanks to its charismatic President Barack Obama. As per the geographies of the top 10 countries, in both indexes the winners are the European Countries: five out of 10 countries in the CBI are in Europe, and 6 out of these taking the highest positions in the NBI.

Otherwise the two Indexes vastly differ in their methodology, results and approach. Nevertheless, I am happy because in spite of their dissimilarity, they have one goal in common: to serve as a departing point for increasing countries’ brand equities. Both Indexes are the most valuable resource for policy makers, DMOs and travel companies in their efforts to convert their countries in more profitable destinations. I will continue to post my views and analysis from the global cultural tourism perspective on this blog. For the moment, I have in mind 6 parts, which are:

Part Two: Economy and Country Branding
Part Three: History, Arts & Culture and Country Branding
Part Four: Countries Tourism Brand Aspects
Part Five: Country Brand Trends – detected common trends and differences
Part Six: Conclusion: The overall value of the Country Brand Index and Nation Brands Index for cultural tourism strategists, destination management and travel practitioners

The information used in this reports comes from copyrighted materials by Future Brand and Anholt-GfK Roper.

To download the Country Brand Index Executive Summary, please click here or visit the official Index website.

To download the Nation Brands Index, please click here or visit the official website of Simon Anholt

A slide share presentation on the main findings:

Country Branding From A Global Cultural Tourism Perspective

View more documents from Rossitza Ohridska-Olson.

The Good, the Bad and the Unusual: the new Strategic Plan for Cultural Tourism Development in Bulgaria

As a consultant on cultural tourism for the travel industry and a macro-strategist in this field, I always applaud when governments are thinking strategically about this industry. That is why I was extremely excited when during the last month the Bulgarian parliament approved the Strategic Plan for Cultural Tourism Development: Стратегически план за развитието на културния туризъм в България (you can download the original version of the Executive Summary, if you read Bulgarian).

Only the fact that the country spent more than $1.2 million (!) of dollars and three years to elaborate a document of 300+ pages is admirable. For the moment (or for the last 3 years) there is not an English version online, so here I will summarize the Executive Summary of Strategic with my comments.

Please note that this is not a scientific paper – I might write one on a later date. The purpose of this analysis is to help my clients – tour operators and other consulting firms, who contact me when they have to deal with Bulgarian cultural tourism issues. Needless to say that this is my personal opinion and doesn’t reflect any governmental or institutional position on this matter.

For fast viewing, here are the 4 sections of my analysis (click on the link below to go directly to the page) :

The good
The bad
The unusual
Conclusions

The INTELLECT Institute

When I came up with the idea of creating an organization aimed to contribute with new technologies and marketing to the field of culture, my idea was that this institution should be in a form of public-private partnership. More than a year trying to involve governmental bodies showed great interest and little action. That is why we (friends and business partners) created an international private non-for-profit organization. The name is The INTELLECT Institute, which stands for Institute for New Technologies, Intelligence and Communications of Culture.

The mission of the Intellect Institute is to research, preserve, enhance experience and promote culture through scientific research, high technology solutions, best business practices, sound marketing and communications systems, and international tourism.

The INTELLECT Institute primary goal is to assist disadvantaged communities, organizations and individuals involved in research, preservation and promotion of the cultural heritage and living cultures, enhancing their capacity for productive and sustainable business operations.

Before the INTELLECT Institute has its own website and blog, I will use the Cultural Realms blog to post updates. All comments and suggestions are welcomed. You can start by reading the document, which outlines the mission, goals, strategies and structure of the INTELLECT Institute and add your ideas. Until the membership structure is defined by the Executive Board, everybody is welcome to join, as long as he or she shares the mission and is willing to contribute time and dedication to achieving the organization's goals.