Surfing the Creative Wave

Abstract

Creative tourism experiences constitute clear examples of the experience economy principles. They address new tourists' necessities. They can activate tangible and intangible resources, contribute to the development of local skills while offering the chance to engage with the overall social agents of the tourism system addressing key tourism challenges of the 21st century. Over the past few years, surf tourism has aroused the interest of many people, and surf tourists are increasingly more experienced, demanding and seeking a wide range of engaging experiences. To connect surf tourism to creative tourism, the authors developed a model focused on a creative surf experience. The chapter presents several contributions to the development of creative experiences of surf tourism where surf destinations can focus on and develop a greater audience that searches for such experiences.

Creative Tourism Consumption: Framing the Creative Habitus through a Bourdieusian Lens

“…Creative tourism business models have evolved from basic, small-scale creative experiences to platforms of creative communities, incorporating principles from the experience economy, linking tourism to creative economy businesses and activities, thus giving rise to global networks centred on the sharing economy paradigm [15,18,20,22,23] With the three key elements of creative tourism experiences, namely participation, knowledge acquisition and the experience of the local life [5,24], new forms of cultural mediation have emerged and been developed by new cultural intermediaries [25] such as "lifestyle entrepreneurs" [14,26] "switchers" or "curators" [19] influenced by the cultural and creative industries [27,28] with ICTs and global virtual platforms giving rise to creative tourism 4.0 [18].…”