Past, present and future of the creative tourism in Portugal: Analysing actors and connections dynamics

Abstract

Creative tourism aroused as a new model of cultural tourism able to leverage some economic, social and cultural dynamics in territories. It is a form of tourism built from the opposition to the mainstream forms of tourism (e.g. mass tourism), further from the main touristic routes and focused in very specific experiences and products, based in the endogenous place and community amenities available. As such, creative tourism has a sustainable ground, intending to promote and value the local identity and resources of places and communities, representing a form of additional income to them, and at the same time, being able to open these territories to the world, respecting the environmental, social, cultural and economic pillars of sustainability. The CREATOUR project – an incubator and multidisciplinary collaborative research initiative have been aiming to develop a network of creative tourism initiatives in four Portuguese regions – has been promoting the implementation of 40 creative tourism pilot initiatives, in small cities and rural areas of Portugal, since 2016. This communication intends to contextualize the creative tourism activities in Portugal before, during and after the CREATOUR project implementation, from an actor/network perspective. Thus, the analysis presented results from a Social Network Analysis combined with Actors Strategic Analysis, based on the content analysis of 100 interviews made to the 40 CREATOUR pilot initiatives promoters, between 2017 and 2019. The results of the analysis undertaken are crucial to identify possible future pathways for the development of a formal creative tourism network in Portugal, by pinpointing actors centrality, its connections dynamics, and common goals and challenges they face towards this objective.