Creative Tourism: the creatour recipe book

How do you catalyse and develop a creative tourism ‘sector’ in non-metropolitan contexts? This is rarely addressed in the creative tourism literature – there are still many gaps in our knowledge about creative tourism development, its evolutionary dynamics, and strategies for sustainable approaches. With this as its context, the CREATOUR project brought together teams in five research centres1 and 40 pilot organizations2 to promote, learn, and develop a variety of place-specific, small-scale creative tourism initiatives throughout the Norte, Centro, Alentejo, and Algarve regions of Portugal. Launched in November 2016, CREATOUR: Creative Tourism Destination Development in Small Cities and Rural Areas (www.creatour.pt) is a national, 3.5-year, research-and application project to develop and pilot an integrated approach for creative tourism in small cities and rural areas in Portugal.3 The project interlinks interdisciplinar social science research with entrepreneurial and community-engaged practices in creative tourism. On the research side, the project aims to examine and reflect on the creative tourism activities, including development dynamics and patterns, reception experiences, and community impacts, using methodologies and theoretical perspectives from the fields of tourism, culture, and local/ regional development. On the practice side, it aims to catalyse creative tourism offers in small cities and rural areas in Portugal, inform and learn from their development, and link them with each other through the development of a national network. This network-in-formation offers not only visibility through critical mass, but also support through research, co-learning, and capacity building. The project also aims to inform policy development relating to creative tourism. The CREATOUR project considers creative tourism as a bridge between culture and tourism and as a strategic area for mobilizing endogenous cultural resources for local sustainable development – with initiatives that are envisioned, designed, and embedded locally … and connected nationally