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

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

Cultural Tourism - the Facebook great experiment

A friend from Facebook.com. His wife. And a trip to discover cave churches, fortresses and Thracian tombs. People I didn't know in person. They had different plans - to visit the Ustra Fortress. The hot sun of South Bulgaria and the amazing discoveries we stumbled upon made us change plans. Of course, such spontaneous trips always have some disasters included -  waiting 2 hours to see a monastery which was nothing spectacular, walking hours to see a Thracian sanctuary without the time to reach it high in the mountains. Overall: an exhausting trip of cultural discoveries made out of enthusiasm of people who are only facebook friends. The economic results: more than 500 euros spent in places with low income and high unemployment rate. I hope this cultural tourism helped them. It helped us to transfer our friendship from the virtual space into the real cultural realms. For me, this experiment was great for 2 additional reasons, besides the new-forged friendship: re-confirm my conviction that not wild hidden places are as attractive as the UNESCO over-visited sites, and that cultural tourism is possible everywhere. And the biggest discovery: the Web 2.0. works for cultural tourism, it’s not an illusion. We transferred friendship, knowledge and pleasures from the screen to the real life, and back to the screen for other people to admire and visit these unknown treasures of little known cultures. See the great images on  Klearchos Guide to the Galaxy. This is what I call the great experiment of Facebook. I hope that from the 200 million of users of this social network many will follow our example and enrich their real life with real cultural trips.

Cultural Tourism Promotion – the right way

The year 2009 is the Year of Bulgaria in Russia. The purpose behind this initiative is to promote Bulgarian business, and above all – the Bulgarian tourism in Russia. After the fall of the communism in Bulgaria and the government-contracted Soviet groups of blue collar workers crawling the Bulgarian beaches, the organized visits to the “sister” cities and all kind of other propaganda-in-mind designed tours, the Russian tourists forgot about Bulgaria. Now they are more interested in visiting the prohibited for them before 1990 resorts and cities in Turkey, France, Switzerland and Egypt. This lost for Bulgaria is calculated in millions of dollars, which are very hard to compensate with the budget travelers from UK, Germany and Sweden, counting their dimes to the next welfare check.

It is clear that the wealthy Russians cannot be attracted back to the already ruined Bulgarian beach resorts, to the concrete of Golden Sands, the crowded discos in Sunny Beach and the run-down hotels from communist times Albena. They will continue to relax on the French Riviera, to ski in the Swiss Alps, or to go shopping in the US malls.

Bulgaria hopes although, that both wealthy and curious intellectuals, might return to the country to see the remains of 7 civilizations, which left precious artifacts and impressive buildings across the country. At least, this is the idea of promoting the cultural tourism with the events and exhibitions during the Year of Bulgaria in Russia.

One of these events is the opening today exhibition in the State Museum of the East “Rescued treasures of Ancient Thrace from the Vassil Bojkov collection”. In the most expensive city in the world, few things can impress the local petroleum oligarchs and the visitors from around the world to the ancient capital of Russia. A feast for the eye, the exhibition is featuring treasures of gold, silver, marble and bronze, which visualize mystic rites and secret Orphic rituals. I believe this is the right way to promote cultural tourism among the affluent and well-educated Russians.

For those who don’t read Russian, I have prepared a brief article in English about the exhibition in the context of the history of Thracian Civilization.

Note: All pictures are from the website of the State Museum of the East, Moscow and from the Bojkov Collection catalog. Copyright belongs to “Thrace Foundation” and photographs are published with the kind permission of Mr. Bojkov.

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…

Creative Tourism: Next Stage in the Cultural Tourism Development?

Creative tourism is a great idea, and, it is an alternative to the tired or overwhelming cultural tourism. Personally, I believe that creative tourism is a stage of development of the cultural tourism in the “experience economy”. Therefore it shouldn’t be defined separately.

But I have my second thoughts too. Is it possible that not all cultural tourism destinations can become “creative cities” or creative places?  Is the authenticity of some cultural tourism destinations threatened by converting them into a center for creative tourism? Is sustainability part of the creative tourism?

On the main page “Creative or Cultural Tourism?” you can read what I think about this future development of the cultural tourism.

There are also useful guidelines for cities and places to become creative tourism destinations. I decided to separate the guidelines in individual pages – that makes it shorter and easier to read. Enjoy!

Part one: Overview
Part two: Location | Access
Part three: Human Capital and Attitude
Part four: Target Markets, Strategies, Sustainability and Financing
Part five: Advertising, Promotion and Authenticity

Photo:Haya Sophia, Istanbul. The crowds are so dense, that it is impossible to make pictures.Photography: Stevan Olson

A re-branding of cultural tourism or a new model for it?

An article in New Mexico Business Weekly says that the “Creative Cities” program of UNESCO is a new model of tourism. Is it really that or a new branding of the same old cultural tourism that attracts 40% of all travelers to hundreds of destinations worldwide with the only dream – to satisfy their cultural needs? See why I have my doubts…

Cultural Destination Symbols

Are destination symbols obsolete or they are still part of the branding of places and tourism attractions? How they are chosen and are they corresponding to the real essence of the place? I am asking myself this question ever since Bulgaria decided to throw millions of dollars to “find” the symbol of the country (http://www.bnr.bg/RadioBulgaria/Emission_English/Theme_Lifestyle/Material/Madara_horseman_national_symbol.htm). The goal for this exercise were not clear – on one hand, these symbols would represent Bulgaria as travel destination, on the other – they would be printed on the reverse side of the Euro coins in 2012. Now the idea is that each region in Bulgaria must find its own symbol. Each 1000 sq meters (roughly each 1000 sq yards) have to have its own symbol. A total of 110 symbols for cities, towns, micro-regions and various places.

The symbol frenzy contaminated dozens of companies sponsoring the campaign. Is this part of the national strategy for tourism development? You would say – yes – if not, who is making all these efforts? No. If you read the dozens of pages of empty wishes declared as “Strategy for tourism development of Bulgaria for the period 2008-2013” you will not find any trace of idea about gluing a symbol to each 1000 sq meters.

Big cities, as Paris, London, New York and the like have symbols – the Eiffel Tower, the Big Ben, the Statue of Liberty. And not because somebody voted for them. It happened  because of the million visits, million photos made of these monuments, published for the last 100 years, and millions of dollars spent on destination advertising. A symbol of a tourist destination comes naturally. It doesn’t appear because of nationally organized voting campaigns.

Even more, when a city or a place symbol is well known, it extend its influence beyond the initial intent of place branding and become symbol of a country. This is the case of the Statue of Liberty, which became a worldwide symbol of the “USA”, not only of NYC. Taj Mahal is not associated with any city in India, but it became its symbol and the most visited building. Some symbols are only country symbols – like the Pyramids, which are perceived as a symbol for Egypt, not for Giza. Most of the countries concentrate their cultural destination branding around already known symbols, they don’t try to create new ones, since this is a double edge sword. A newly coined symbol can be created by branding specialists and tourism destination consultants and be on target about representing the essence of the place, city or country. But still this will be a “We say” brand, not “they feel” brand. Specialists normally don’t have the tools to create an emotional branding – they go after the established rules.

For new countries, like Canada, well thought symbols are chosen to represent the Tourist board or any governmental body dealing with the tourism issues. The symbol (the leaf) of the country doesn’t provoke any emotion. But the branding is helped by the slogan (Keep exploring), which is right on the buck to attract adventure travelers - the target market for the Canadian tourism. I still believe that Canada is an greatly successful exception for artificially created symbols. Normally, professional branding symbols are used only for country advertising and destination branding by official organizations. Sometimes they don’t mean nothing to the 1.4 billions of users of Internet and almost 1 billion of travelers per year worldwide. For this vast amount of human masses, buried under tons of information, the only symbol, which could “cut through the noise”, is the symbol they have grasped intuitively, not the one which is imposed to them by advertising.

Unfortunately or fortunately, Bulgaria is not a vastly advertised country. Its monuments and cultural heritage sites, are unknown to the global public, although the Bulgarians believe that everybody should know something about the Rila Monastery or the Tryavna Woodcarving School. So for my friends, the Bulgarians, choosing the symbols become a huge fight what should be more important – the monument of this region or the fortress of the rival neighbors. They somehow don’t realize that these fights are irrelevant. The country is almost completely unknown to biggest markets for cultural tourism – the Americans and the Canadians. In China, India and Russia (the countries that will climb on the top 5 list of world cultural travelers in the next 12 years), Bulgaria is known only to the old people, still believing in communists solidarity. So why on earth this is a BIG DEAL to chose the symbol of Melnik or the one of Lovech? Isn’t enough first to popularize the country with the rose symbol and then to worry about the 110 micro-regions? Are the Bulgarians impatient to wait until the visitors and the history find and promote what they mostly like in our country? Or are we afraid that somebody before us can grab a symbol and claim it as its own, as Turkey claimed the tulip symbol – a flower mostly associated with Holland?

No matter what is the reason behind the campaign, I consider it a huge waste of money. First, because Bulgaria already has a symbol for its tourism – the rose. Second, because the country is so small, that mudding the waters with another 110 symbols will confuse even the Bulgarians, leave alone the foreign visitors. And third – because these symbols have to come naturally, not as a local initiative.  Symbols appear by themselves as for example the Loire region’s symbol -  the famous castles, or the Moscow symbol - Kremlin. Visitors have the talent to see what is more prominent and spread the world. Now with the Internet, this becomes even easier. If you receive 10 images to your iPhone from 10 different friends who have visited Paris and all of them are sending you the Eiffel Tower photo, why should you wander what is the symbol of Paris?

How symbols can continue to be relevant in an era of overwhelming information? Should we, the gurus of tourism theory and branding decide what is important for a destination? Or should the local citizens decide if some monument or feature of the place should be relevant to the fairway visitors?

I believe that a cultural destination symbol should be the most popularly attractive building or feature for a place. No matter if the local citizens agree or not that it represents the essence of the place. The efforts of state or country agencies and tourism boards should concentrate on popularizing the unknown places as part of the big picture and first brand them with the country or region symbol. Once an unknown destination starts to be popular as a notion, as a word-of-mouth topic, then the people will find the symbol.

This way the symbol will become part of the emotional branding of a destination, the “gut feeling” for a place, globally transferable and marketable much easier through social networks. 

The Orangefest – an event rebranding dilemma

BBC published a curious and funny news about the Orange Walk and called it Orangeman slams cultural tourism  (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/7503644.stm). I was not surprised to see that politicians are (miss)using the notion of cultural tourism for their purposes. This is an old communist trick that I have “enjoyed” during the 30 years living in the Eastern Block. What I was surprised to see this type of propaganda rising head in old Ireland, in a very funny situation.

A religious order is objecting to event re-branding of a 4 centuries old tradition. Who made a bigger mistake? The Orangemen or the members of the ruling DUP? Of course, this time – the politicians. If they wanted to use the Belfast Parade as a tourist attraction, why they first didn’t consult with the “famous” Orange Order and get their blessing to reshape it accordingly to their idea about cultural event? Simply because, nobody is paying attention to the Orange Order, an obsolete and pompous institution, claming to represent the conservative cultural values of the country. As John O'Dowd put it very well: "Nobody listening to the speeches of Order leaders today can conclude that the Orange Order is a religious and cultural body - it is not."

The Order is Protestant, anti-Catholic organization, which since 1700s plays big part in dividing the country, not uniting it. Then, why re-brand the Belfast parade to relate to this order? I guess the intentions were to make the parade look and feel more peaceful, civilized and to attract more tourists. As Northern Ireland's first minister Peter Robinson said: "There is no good reason why Northern Ireland should not become a magnet for those around the globe who are interested in cultural tourism." He was right about the destination perspectives and opportunities and wrong about the way to achieve the goal. Because you cannot re-brand a controversial event, on which even the retailers refuse to work in objection to the parade. Much less you can create a positive cultural tourism experience in the midst of local animosities.

The Russians did the opposite to the Irish – and they succeeded better in creating a new cultural tourism product. They admitted that their 70 years communist experiment was horrible. There was a consensus that all conflicts belong to the past, to the museums, and hence - they are exhibits, cultural attractions. They opened the doors to the Lenin’s office, the Stalin bunker and dozens of “attractions” which still cause terror to the survivors of this era.

The new Russians didn’t try to dress in flowers the nightmarish experiences – they even made them look more horrible than they ever were. Why? Because this was the image about the USSR during seven decades. So instead of fighting with the established brand, even when this image was created against their will, the Russian marketers started using it to the fullest extend.

After 18 years of perestroika, oligarchy mafias and times of quick petroleum buck, they even restored the 9th of May military parade in 2008. Why? Surely not to showcase their war trinkets, about which every military intelligence knows more than everything they can demonstrate in 4 hours, but to sell more Coca Cola around the Red Square, more hotel rooms and more tickets to the Kremlin. It was a brilliant combination between imperial uniforms fashion show, an air show and brass band marching bands concert. Isn’t it a tourist attraction? Of course it is, unlike the times when the parade was shown on the Western TV programs to incite fear and justify the arms race.\

So why re-brand the Belfast Parade, symbol of sectarianism and extreme nationalism? I would advise the Northern Ireland tourism experts to drop the re-branding idea and to let the parade as it is – an old custom, of which the political connotations will disappear with the democratization of the society, not with the renaming of the event. In the meanwhile, old fashion-dressed Protestants will march on the streets, and, if the retailers don’t go on strike, a lot of beer, hotels and meals will be sold to the curious camera-happy tourists.