Creative Tourism: An Innovative Shift of Cultural Tourism

Abstract

Cultural tourism has been growing due to an expansion of cultural tourists. Not only are upper and middle class tourists interested in cultural tourism, but lower class tourists are also interested in cultural tourism. However, regarding cultural tourism in these days, tourists are not interested in seeing and learning things as passive tourists; they want to actively participate in creative activities to verify their creative potential. They want to live everyday life with community people. This is an opportunity for places without structural capital, but possess cultural capital to leverage cultural resources to lure tourists to come to their places. Cultural capital includes everydayness of living, traditions and customs, handicrafts, performance, cookery, games, sports, and other activities. To develop a place to be a destination for creative tourism requires an integrated task force consisting of the public sector to set policies and support the development and promotion of tourism, the private sectors to invest in the creative industry, local creative
experts to teach and lead creative activities. They must regard creative tourism as heritage tourism to sustain the community authentic culture.