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CULTURAL MANAGEMENT PROGRAM University of Barcelona
CULTURAL TOURISM conceptualization and research
Tourism is a phenomenon that appears, as a boom, after the Second World War,
during the late 50's,
when it starts to develop itself as a very strong industry.
That, of course, causes a very strong impact at economic, cultural and social levels.
It's a phenomenon that begins to awaken the interest of the Academy,
which begins to focus on the issue of statistics- a very important point within the study of Tourism-
In the 30's, according to the documents of the period,
the concept
of "Cultural Tourism"started to arise a great interest.
This
paved the way, in the late 80's,
mainly, as a result of the first Greg Richards' study about Cultural Tourism in Europe,
As a result of a worldwide petrol crisis that there had been at the time,
Cultural Tourism begins to be perceived as an "aid", a "patina", a "complement"
in case other sources fail.
There were several things that had to be understood.
They had to look for a criteria and develop methodologies,
in order to design specific suitable policies to develop Tourism.
If we go throw that period documentation
we'll see that "Tourism" was the most spoken issue at that time:
by which means they arrive,by which means they leave, and how much they spend.
What they do during the day
remains completely unknown.
Universities are focusing on the issue of Tourism.
They started focusing on Tourism and Hotel management,
but, just recently, they have begun to look at Tourism under another perspective.
Tourism concept is starting to link to other disciplines. Antrophology in Tourism is somehing
that we're already working on.
Also Tourism Sociology, Touristic Geography, etc,
are filds where Universities are starting to focus on
and developing a considerable number of works.
As an example of this, we have the Institute of touristic studies, placed in Madrid,
which is associated with the Ministry of Tourism in Spain,
or Tourespaña in Spain, with branches all around the world,
from where they have generated lots of research.
Greg Richards says in his study that
15% of european tourists
travel just for cultural reasons.
Also, 35%-40% of the worldwide tourists take part in some cultural practice
like visiting museums such as the History Museum, etc.
And between 5% to 6%
are
tourists who focus and spend their time exclusively on
cultural activities,since they only travel for cultural reasons,
enjoying traditional cultural activities but also, more contemporary ones:
what's going on in the city scene.
We created a year ago a focus group in Girona, commissioned by Generalitat, at the ICRPC
The final conclusion was: Cultural Tourists are people who consum Cultural Products.
but there wasn't a typology for identifyng a person as a "Cultural Tourist"
because of two main reasons: one is that most people practice different kind
of tourism throwout life: "Sun and Surf tourism, cultural tourism,rural tourism, urban tourism,
shopping tourism, drinking tourism and many more.
The second reason is that, in a single trip, people often do several things.
They do cultural tourism but also shopping, etc. So we could talk of "Global Tourism".
Cultural tourists naively tend to think that they are different from common tourists.
But the only difference is they enter in a market with a slightly higher level of "dignity"
to show, back home, that they've been tourists, but less tourists than the rest of tourists,
and that they've managed to buy items with a higher critical and aesthetic dignity.
That shows to what extent Cultural Tourists stars a certain form of cretinism
where a tourist tries to redeem from his own truth: the fact that he's just another tourist.
Let's say a "Sun and Surf" tourist has, one day, to deal with rain.
Then, he goes to the Museum and, automatically, due to reasons that are nothing to do with Culture,
he becomes a Cultural Tourist.
Overall,
we are still considered as a sun and surf tourist place.
This, actually, remains the big part.
And, everytime there have been political attempts to change it
business people press the government down: "we are the engine of the economy",
"we increase the GDP" –and that's actually true–.
If you go to Italy or France,
tourist hotel managers
participate 100% on the cultural activities carried in their countries.
They are developers of cultural activities.
In Italy, development agencies are called APIC.
Development starts from the moment a project is presented.
That's quite important.
Cultural and tourist timings are not the same.
But the cultural world isn't aware of this.
Cultural world is, normally, one step behind tourist development.