Colin Mercer and John Lancaster look at cultural tourism, why it is cropping up on the agenda and what it can offer.
What do we mean by cultural tourism? At heart, it properly refers to a particular, identifiable form of tourism which is beginning to be seen and understood as a tool for improving an area?s image, profile, economy and cultural stock. The hope is that the coherent weaving together of the arts, culture, heritage and tourism (and sometimes, sports, gastronomy, etc) into a viable and vibrant tourism offer, will bring about benefits across the board, be they economic (more visits, more sales, more jobs), creative (the stimulation of new creative activity and product) or social (celebrating inclusion and diversity).
According to the World Tourism Organisation, cultural tourism accounts for 37% of world travel (265 million international trips in 2003) and is growing at a rate of 15% per annum. Research shows that for the European Union, the figures are higher with 45-50% of European holiday destinations chosen by virtue of the presence of heritage sites, cultural events and attractions. This is why cultural tourism is catching the attention of policy makers.
Who are cultural tourists?
?Cultural tourists spend more and stay longer? is the standard bums-on-seats industry refrain on the phenomenon. And it appears to be true. Our research in the Penwith District of West Cornwall, showed that more than 60% of randomly selected visitors, tested on a random sample basis, were going to art galleries during their stay and that 50% of UK and 59% of international visitors indicated that arts and crafts were a key factor in deciding to visit Penwith. Tate St Ives? own research has shown that since it opened, there have been many longer staying and higher paying visitors to the town.
According to our own research and that of people like Melanie Smith at the University of Greenwich1, typical cultural tourists are experienced in foreign travel, enjoy interacting with destinations and inhabitants and actively seek difference and authenticity in cultural experiences. They are generally aged 20-30 or 45-60 years, with better-than-average education and often with above-average income. They normally travel without children and their daily expenditure is relatively high.
Definitions and trends
The best operational definition of cultural tourism that we have come across is from the Western Australia Cultural Tourism Strategy and runs as follows: ?Cultural tourism gives visitors the opportunity to understand and appreciate the essential character of a place and its culture as a whole. Creating a relationship between the visitor and the host community is an important feature.?
Cultural tourism and its various strands and market niches? arts tourism, heritage tourism, creative tourism, festivals tourism, ethnic tourism ? are part of a larger phenomenon known as ?knowledge-based tourism?, in which new consumers want to be involved and to learn new experiences, to interact with the community and to appreciate their destination at more than a superficial level. It is both a significant revenue generator and, wisely managed, an opportunity to uncover, recover or create the diverse cultural resource base of an area.
Maintaining the balance
Creation and consumption, hosts and guests: this is a crucial balance for cultural tourism. The key is to maintain an emphasis on the creation/production end of the value chain or culture cycle while increasing the opportunities for new types of interactive tourist consumption. It is a balance that is often lost in the culture and tourism agendas of regional development agencies, which place most emphasis on consumption and very little on the creation and production of new products and experiences. On these agendas culture is often subsumed within a mainstream and not very imaginative tourism framework.
A more balanced approach recognises that tourism agencies and cultural organisations are essentially in the same game of selling experiences, image and memories. Both can provide benefits to local communities, enabling them to discover and map cultural resources, build social capital and celebrate cultural diversity. One of the results of this is that the traditional tensions between hosts and guests which have marked more traditional tourism strategies are significantly reduced through the levels of interaction and active understanding.
Reaching out
It should also be clear that, if developed along these sorts of lines, cultural tourism has implications for wider policy agendas such as quality of life, social inclusion and the building of social, human, and cultural capital. Setting out your stall simply to capture more of the Guardian or Time Out reading pound can conflict with local and regional policy agendas on inclusion, and miss out on critical communities that need to have a stake in any long-term developments. Aboriginal communities in Australia have benefited significantly by training as guides and interpreters, and generating revenues from the opening up of their stories, special places and artefacts to a wider tourist market. African American communities in the southern states of the USA have benefited similarly from Black Heritage tourism initiatives. The Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras in Australia, now the largest of its kind in the world, has simultaneously brought in a lot of money and helped to profile and mainstream gay issues in public life.
What this demonstrates is that cultural tourism, well managed and in a balanced framework of sustainability, can provide opportunities for significant new revenue streams and provide a catalyst for local and indigenous cultural development.
Joining it up
Given these actual and potential benefits, it is surprising that England has been lagging behind in such developments. Scotland has a cultural tourism strategy, as do Wales and Belfast. At the regional level there is the EMPACT project in the East Midlands, and some moves, as yet lacking shape, in the South West of England. The good news is that things are starting to happen at sub-regional and county levels. We are currently engaged in developing a three-year cultural tourism programme for Essex on behalf of the Essex Arts Officers Group as part of Arts Council England?s Local Government Partnership scheme in the Eastern region.
The major barriers to a wider and more concerted cultural tourism initiative appear to relate to that old problem of lack of capacity or imagination to join things up. Arts people are not, in general, talking or walking with heritage people. Neither of them is talking enough to tourism people ? and vice versa. There are notable exceptions and a momentum is beginning to develop but it will be crucial, for sustainability and success, for these and other stakeholders ? inward investment, economic regeneration, ? to recognise that they are increasingly in the same business: adding value to people and places.
John Lancaster is co-founder of Perfect Moment, a creative sector consultancy based in London and Cornwall. e: john@perfectmoment.co.uk Colin Mercer, former Professor of Cultural Policy and Director of the Cultural Policy and Planning Research Unit at the Nottingham Trent University, is now Director of Cultural Capital Ltd. e: c.mercer@btinternet.com
1 Smith, M. (2003) ?Issues in cultural tourism?, Routledge