Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
Milica Ilincic
Introduction
All forms of tourism in essence provide experiences. The very desire for experience, or
tourism (Richards, 2011). However, different people seek different kinds of experiences. New
and become more than disconnected observers during their travels. Many of them seek
participative, authentic experiences which allow them to feel the spirit of a place and achieve
a deeper understanding of its specific cultural features (Landry, 2010). Such a trend in tourist
demand encouraged the emergence of new form of cultural tourism, known as creative
tourism. It is described as tourism which allows visitors to develop their creative skills by
taking part in interactive learning activities typical for the destination they are visiting
(Richards and Raymond, 2000). Besides these changes on the consumption side,
professionals from cultural sector and destination managers are also trying to find new
approaches to interact with visitors (Richards, 2010). Destinations are slowly moving from
exploration of high cultural resources, such as monuments and museums, towards utilization
of intangible creative resources, incorporating everyday life and popular culture into tourist
products. Intangible cultural assets are becoming key for achieving uniqueness and
differentiation from other destinations (Richards, 2010, 2011).
The growing importance of the creative sector also stems from the notion of the experience
economy, which points to the shift from delivering goods and products towards production of
engaging and memorable experiences. Pine and Gilmore (1999) state that people do not
seek experiences for mere consumption, but what they actually want is to gain something
from them, to be affected and changed by these experiences. The outcomes of tourist
experience are becoming more important than the experience by itself and some authors
(McIntosh, 1999; Sharpley and Stone, 2010) even argue that the beneficial experiences
gained by visitors are in fact the core product of tourism. Thus investigation of tourist
perspectives in order to comprehend the nature of their experience and personal value
attached to it is a fundamental task in the study of tourism (McIntosh, 1999; Chan, 2009).
The nature of creative tourism experience is recognized as important topic, but it is still
scarcely researched and the need exists for exploration of effects and value of creative
tourism from tourist point of view (Richards and Wilson, 2007; Richards, 2011).
This study tries to address the stated gaps in the literature and to provide understanding of
creative tourism experience from the consumption side. The objective is to identify the
outcomes of the creative tourism experience that are most important to tourists and most
valued by them. The research explores the influence of motivation, as well as emotive and
psychological processes, experienced by tourists in their interaction with the setting of
creative activity, on the creation of such beneficial outcomes.
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Tourist experience is the central offering of tourism and its core product. However, it is even
more important to look beyond the tourist experiences and into the benefits tourists gain from
behaviour is normally goal oriented and activities are undertaken in order to attain something
from them (McIntosh, 1999).
Beneficial experience was first discussed in the leisure and recreation literature. From the
mid-1990s onwards the concept has been widely applied in different fields of tourism and
benefits-based models have been utilized as a means for greater understanding of related
tourist experiences. According to the model four levels of demand for leisure and recreation
are recognized: motives for undertaking certain activity (Level 1), in a specific setting (Level
2) which are connected to the experience gained in such setting (Level 3) and with the final
benefits coming from the satisfying experience (Level 4) (Beeho and Prentice, 1997;
McIntosh 1999; Kang et al. 2012). The model is graphically presented in Figure 1.
Activities
Setting
Experience
Benefits
Source: Beeho and Prentice, 1995, 1997; McIntosh, 1999; Kang et al. (2012); Shin et al. (2012)
Prentice et al. (1998) and McIntosh (1999) recognize that benefits-based management
compared to traditional activity- and experience-based management approaches, goes
beyond onsite individually realized experiences and looks further into beneficial experiences,
which are potentially longer lasting and possibly detached from the site. It is focused on
understanding such outcomes and providing opportunities for their occurrence.
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Cognitive
benefits
Insight into local
cuisine and
culture
Cooking skill
developments
Affective benefits
Future sharing of
the experience
with others
Reflective
benefits
Learning
traditional
approach to local
cuisine
Social
benefits
Spending time
with others
Among the cognitive benefits two are noted as the key ones. These are gaining an insight
into the local cuisine and culture as well as tourist cooking skill development. The term
interaction and by seeing how the dishes are made by locals. Tourists stated that the class
provided them with different kind of experience from typical tourist activities, such as
sightseeing and visiting museums and galleries. The experience gave them the opportunity
makes their experience memorable. Insight gain is seen as important theme in the works of
McIntosh and Prentice (1999) and Chan (2009) as well. Active preparation of traditional
dishes allowed participants to gain certain new cooking knowledge and skills that they will be
able to use in the future, or as one informant stated:
Personally I have been to Spain every summer vacation, every year for the last 15
years, but we never used to make this paella ourselves. Also the omelette [tortilla], we
buy it pre-made. So now we can actually make it. (Informant 24)
Thus, indeed creative tourism provides tourists with deeper insights into the destination
culture, as well as with certain level of skill development (Richards and Wilson, 2006, 2007;
Smith, 2009).
What is important is that the culinary activity gave tourists the opportunity to share their
experience with others in the future, with their families and friends. Respondents mentioned
that not only they have developed certain cooking skills but what is more important they are
able to use these skills to recreate a small part of the Catalan culture for their friends at home
and bring them the taste of the country. One of the participants explained:
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understanding with locals for transformative effects to happen, were seen as important in this
study.
However, no deep personal transformation came from the studied culinary experience nor
came from experiential learning and emotional engagement, rather than factual learning.
Thus, as noted by McIntosh (1999) beneficial experience can be potentially divorced from the
site and be longer lasting, particularly the cooking skill development and future sharing with
others. However, it seems that the cooking activity did not provoke greater transformations of
tourist personality. This is probably due to the nature of this particular creative activity, being
time limited and more structured. However, as stated in the literature (Landry, 2010),
transformational effects might in its simplest form include cooking the meal learned from
locals. Though skill development, learning and insight might lead to enhancement of tourist
personality, this was not widely mentioned by the class participants. Only the possibility of
changing travelling practices in future by attending cooking classes for gaining greater
gastronomic knowledge was mentioned by a few participants. These claims, however,
cannot be confirmed as such investigation goes beyond the scope of this study. Thus identity
building, so often mentioned in creative tourism literature (Richards and Wilson, 2007;
Richards, 2011), did not emerge as a significant theme. Nevertheless, cultural insight, skill
and knowledge gain are still important and are to some
personal growth (Landry, 2010).
Furthermore, some of the tourists reporting three types of thoughtful benefits also stated
experiencing enjoyment and having fun with others during the cooking, thus attaining social
benefits. Therefore, it seems that creative tourists can be mindful and mindless at the same
time (Chan, 2009) and that interaction with other tourists and entertainment did not decrease
tourist engagement with the activity but actually enhanced it and contributed to the overall
experience. It can be concluded that a strict distinction between mindless and mindful
participants cannot be made as tourist can have characteristics of both, as well as move from
one type to another during the activity.
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