Creative tourism implies new experiences for promoters, tourists and communities, as new modes of collaboration, partnership, and organization. Despite being an expanding offer and targeting niche markets, creative tourism is already recognized by the different ways of producing and consuming tourism experiences and for its ability to add value in the territories where they take place. The development of this type of experience in small cities and rural areas not only gives centrality to sustainability issues but also makes it important to observe and discuss the potential impacts of these experiences in this kind of territories. There are few studies that attempt to measure the impacts of creative tourism activities in accordance with the principles of sustainability, or that seek to develop analytical models appropriate to the particular characteristics of small cities and rural areas. Within the scope of the CREATOUR project, we started to develop a theoretical and methodological framework, aiming to propose a more integrated model, recognizing the several dimensions of sustainability and the specificities of the territories involved and taking into account the different actors involved in creative tourism. In effect, impacts assessment of creative and touristic activities on territorial development has been frequently centred on traditional quantitative methodologies and is often mostly based on its economic dimension. The multidimensional contributes of these activities for territorial development, considering their global outcomes in terms of economic, social, environmental, cultural and institutional benefits, are often underestimated, not only due to a frequent feeble ideological and conceptual openness, but also as consequence of the methodological difficulties that are associated with this evaluation of impacts. Drawing upon a literature review on the different territorial impacts that the implementation of initiatives linked to creative tourism can have in placemaking, capacity building and local animation, particularly within the context of small and medium-sized cities or rural areas, we aim to develop conceptually and to test an assessment framework for creative tourism impacts on cultural and creative dynamics in those areas. The theoretical framework will be confronted with qualitative information collected in the scope of the research project CREATOUR – “Tourism Destination Development in Small Cities and Rural Areas”, a consortium project that aim to combine interdisciplinary research and demonstration activities to build an integrated approach to creative tourism in small and medium-sized cities in Portugal. Assuming this research project, involving 40 creative tourism projects all over Portugal, as case study, the impact assessment framework was co-constructed and discussed with the pilot-cases in this project’s idea-labs, which were designed in order to support those organizations to develop their creative tourism offers in four Portuguese regions. Based on the data gathered from the CREATOUR pilot initiatives, this communication will present the analysis of the perceptions that the different pilots have about the various effects of the implementation of these exploratory experiences, considering the objectives that they established for their realization. This analysis is useful to reflect on the particularities of this type of exercise and to improve our model for impacts assessment. The final goal is to propose a more robust toolkit for impact assessment to be presented to all partners interested in developing or updating their creative tourism projects.

CREATOUR project

Creative Tourism,Impacts Assessment,Territorial Development,Culture,Portugal,Low density areas