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

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

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

Cultural Tourism and Emerging Destinations in the 2009 European Commission Report

A Gallup survey , commissioned by Directorate General Enterprise and Industry, was conducted among 27 000 European citizens with the purpose to collect their “views, details of holidays and travel in 2007 and 2008 and their plans regarding holidays in 2009”.

In spite of the financial crisis, 62% of the Europeans who traveled the last year, will travel in 2009, with 28% undecided and 19% who don’t plan to travel.  When it comes to the financing of their main holiday, 41% of the Europeans who plan to travel in 2009, say that they will not have any problems in finding the money, 38% say that they will have to save more money, but they still will take a vacation.

Culture, heritage and entertainment are the most important factors while choosing a destination: local environment (the overall attractiveness), the cultural heritage (24%) and entertainment (15%). Read more…