Towards a research agenda in creative tourism: a synthesis of suggested future research trajectories

Abstract

Creative tourism is a young and dynamic field that has already spawned a wide range of topics for investigation, theoretical reflections, methodological frameworks, and empirical approaches. While creative tourism does not fit well within traditional tourism research paradigms, we are observing a growing range of disciplinary and theoretical perspectives brought to creative tourism, including many researchers from outside the tourism field, producing an interdisciplinary nexus. In this closing chapter, the editors provide an overview of the main themes for future research that have been suggested in this volume and point out potentially fruitful future research avenues within the tourism field and related to it. Accordingly, they have organized the chapter into nine thematic areas: The creative tourist, creative tourism experiences, creative supply, marketing creative tourism, the development of creative tourism experiences and destinations, assessing creative tourism development, the role of local communities in creative tourism, placemaking through creative tourism, and creative tourism networks and platforms.