Cultural Events and Cultural Tourism Development: Lessons from the European Capitals of Culture

Abstract

One of the major forms of cultural tourism development undertaken throughout Europe has been the staging of a growing number of cultural events. The event of European Capitals of Culture (ECOC) is probably the best example of the new trends of cultural tourism in Europe, which is therefore used in this article to demonstrate some of the key issues surrounding the event-led strategy for cultural tourism development. Based on case study, historical approach and document analysis, this study reviewed systematically the cases, documents and literatures of ECOC over a 20-year period. The research findings point to a number of ways in which the ECOC constitutes a boost for the development of cultural tourism in terms of realizing experience economy, enhancing city image, facilitating urban regeneration, promoting cultural production and consumption, as well as establishing partnerships.

Reconfiguring the public and the private: Noc-Noc arts festival, Guimarães, Portugal

“…While its origins were purely cultural (Liu, 2014) and in the first years the event was 'used as an opportunity to reinforce the status of prestigious European cultural centres' (García, 2005: 843), the ECoC evolved, especially after Glasgow 1990, and it has since been viewed as an attractive catalyst for cultural regeneration, city branding and visitor attraction (Campbell, 2011;García, 2005;Palmer, 2004). The impact, successes and failures of the programme have been scrutinized in various contexts and case studies.…”

“…The remaining 14 million were used in promotion, marketing and expenses (see Liu (2014) on the constantly growing operational and capital expenditures of the ECoC). Public investment reached 42 million euro and was mostly about establishing new cultural buildings and requalifying public space (see Table 1).…”

The moderating effect of tourism by-products on the relationship between tourism core products and destination image (Sarawak, Malaysia)

“…A vast resource like museums, musicals, parks, theaters that come in bundles that popularize Brussels as a cultural city. Brussels is claimed to be the fourth most visited cultural cities in Europe and currently is the first ranking as the cultural city destination among the European cities (Liu, 2014;Richards, 2001). In the case of Sarawak, Hamzah (2004) and Bojei and Sahari (2015) stipulated that history (e.g.…”

Kaliningrad Architectural Landscape as a Tourist Attraction

“…When studying urban tourism, researchers focus on event or cultural tourism. Event tourism as a special form of cultural tourism is considered to be a means to solve problems of differentiating the tourist product and overcoming seasonality in the conditions of steadily increasing competition between cities [19]. For the Kaliningrad region, of special importance is the experience of neighbouring countries.…”