New Cultural Mediators, Cocreation, and the Cultural Consumption of Creative Tourism Experiences

Abstract

Creative tourism has been a proficuous ground for the implementation of ICT's (Information and Communications Technology) strategies and the so-called creative industries. New cultural mediators are changing tourism consumption. Postmodern consumers have brought new perceptions to cocreation processes through user-generated content, eWOM (Electronic Word of Mouth), peer-to-peer exchange, collaborative economy, SoLoMo (social-local-mobile) tourists, among others. Booktubers and music fans/consumers in Chile constitute examples of diverse consumption through virtual and physical mediation, as capital construction enables social practices. In this exploratory study, the authors discuss how creative experiences are being consumed through cultural mediation made possible by technological developments. The creative tourism network website is analysed in the light of postmodern cultural mediation and capital construction.

Review of the theoretical underpinnings in the creative tourism research field

“…The points made at various moments of this text help to establish not only connections between tourism and other social sciences but also to map links between social, cultural and economic phenomenon. New cultural intermediaries (Carvalho et al, 2018) use the internet to overcome the classic tourism economic value chain, directly contacting local community agents for tourism purposes (Richards, 2016).…”

“…The innovation consisted of bringing tourists closer to the production process through the observation of artisans´ work or for tourists to learn some production techniques for themselves (Richards, 2009). Although creative tourism is a recent area of study, there are some examples despite the scarce literature reviews carried out in the field of creativity and tourism (Richards, 2011), creativity, tourism and cities (Richards, 2013b) and cultural capital in the field of creative tourism (Carvalho, 2014;Carvalho et al, 2018). It is possible to verify that the growth in the number of publications about creative tourism happened in 2012, according to the Scopus database (Maldonado-Erazo et al, 2016).…”

“…A detailed reading of the main works on creative tourism will show special attention to changes in consumer's choices coinciding with post-modern (Thompson, 2000) forms of cultural consumption in tourism, creative industries and the role of the ICT. Here, specific issues have been receiving more attention from research, including: cocreation (Binkhorst & Den Dekker, 2009); creative tourism and the creative industries (Campbell, 2011;Marques & Borba, 2017) products, services and experiences design (Richards, 2016;Richards & Wilson, 2006); authenticity and local uniqueness in creative events (Carvalho et al, 2015, Richards, 2010a, 2015b; the necessity for skills development on the supply and demand sides as the development of cultural capital (Carvalho, 2014;Richards & Wilson, 2006; the impact of cultural industries on tourism (Richards, 2012;Smith, 2016) and the role of new intermediaries in creative tourism (Carvalho, Costa, & Ferreira, 2018;Richards, 2016) among others.…”

“…The goal of this paper is to pinpoint these themes, their main contributions to the development of creative tourism as well as their applications and connections to new and broader issues in tourism like sustainability and territorial authenticity (Citarella & Maglio, 2014;Korez-Vide, 2013;Molina, 2016;Ohridska-Olson & Ivanov, 2010) and new cultural and tourism intermediaries as well as cultural capital development (Carvalho, 2014;Carvalho, Costa & Ferreira, 2018).…”

Co-creating Experiences in Cultural Events: The Case of Three Portuguese Festivals

“…Events are an important motivator of tourism and figure prominently in the development and marketing plans of most destinations (Getz, 2008(Getz, , 2022. Events, festivals and the arts are inextricably linked to tourist activity (Gelder and Robinson, 2011;Smith, 2016), consisting of a form of tourism that attracts thousands of visitors offseason and tourism income, encouraging economic prosperity, development and regeneration of venues, enhancing pride of the locals and their culture while promoting destinations through media exposure (Carvalho, Costa and Ferreira, 2015;Richards, 2015;Richards, Marques and Mein, 2015;Richards, King and Yeung, 2020). In the discourse of value creation and co-creation, Ramaswamy, (2009) sees events as an 'engagement platform' due to their capacity to unite organisations with desired stakeholders under processes of co-creation.…”