یک مدل «تجربه خلاق» در گردشگری خلاق

This study explores the essence of ‘creativity’ in ‘creative tourism’ from a tourist perspective. Creative tourism is receiving an increasing amount of attention, although the concept remains rather vague, and more research is needed. Data was collected using in-depth interviews with tourists and observations at four ‘Creative Life Industry’ sites in Taiwan. Grounded theory approach was employed, and the findings show that ‘outer interactions’ and ‘inner reflections’ construct the model of tourists’ creative experience. The former refer to tourists’ interactions with ‘environment’, ‘people’, and ‘product/service/experience’, while the latter refer to ‘consciousness/awareness’, ‘needs’ and ‘creativity’, and these dimensions ‘interact’ in tourists’ inner-self throughout the experience. Moreover, ‘consciousness/awareness’ is a prerequisite for ‘creative experience’, differentiating it from other types of experiences.

The concept of creative tourism has been developed for a number of years in many countries, including New Zealand, Austria, Spain, Canada, the United States and Taiwan. Although different places have their own definitions of creative tourism, there are commonalities among them, such as ‘active participation’, ‘authentic experiences’, ‘creative potential development’, and ‘skills development’ (Richards, 2011). These experiences are mostly related to everyday life, and the ‘creativity-base’ of creative tourism includes traditional crafts/handicrafts-making, gastronomy, perfume-making, porcelain painting and dancing (Richards & Wilson, 2006). Even though creativity is seen as the base of creative tourism, the creative factors of creative tourism systems remain unexplored. Furthermore the current definitions of creative tourism are all supply-led, such as by tourism boards, service providers, and various industry practitioners, without considering the tourists’ viewpoint although tourists are seen as co-creators of the experiences. While it is undeniable that a supply-led perspective is important in this context, as most of these creative tourism businesses are operated by creative people such as artists, ‘lifestyle entrepreneurs’ or ‘cultural creatives’ (Anderson, 2009, Binkhorst, 2007, Maisel, 2009, Peters et al., 2009, Prentice and Andersen, 2007, Ray and Anderson, 2000 and Raymond, 2007), the views of consumers should not be ignored (Maisel, 2009, Maitland, 2007 and Raymond, 2009). As Kaufman and Baer (2012) ask, who decides what is creative? In fields such as psychology or design, creativity is always seen from the artist’s perspective. For example, how artists develop their artworks (Mace & Ward, 2002), the development of measurements of artistic creativity (Nelson & Rawlings, 2009), or the creative process of designing new products or new activities. However, these assessments of creativity are expert-based, and may not applicable for ordinary people, especially as these studies often examine artistic creative dimensions that are unreachable by lay people, such as tourists, who just want to enjoy something that is original or authentic in common life settings and related interactions. Although tourists are seen as playing active roles in co-creating their experiences while on vacation, industry practitioners still take the lead when it comes to designing and providing such activities (Raymond, 2009), with few studies considering what tourists actually want in this context. For example Maitland (2007) studies the roles of tourists and residents in creative cities, while Maisel (2009) acknowledges that many tourists desire experiences that are small, intimate and on a human-scale. Therefore, there is a need for more sophisticated analysis of creative tourism that draws on the tourist’s perspective, especially with regard to what exactly makes creative tourism creative, how is it different from other types of tourism, what are the basic building blocks of creative experiences, and how do these elements interact in creative tourism systems? This study thus aims to construct a model of ‘creative experience’ in creative tourism from the tourists’ perspective. By knowing how the creative process has been constructed, tourists can maximize their creative experience by searching for what they want from the range of creative tourism experiences on offer. Besides, industry practitioners also need to know more about the key elements that can increase the level of creativity in the creative experience process. Since there are relatively few studies examining these issues, the current research aims to address these gaps in the current literature.

As a conclusion, this study contributes to ongoing efforts in tourism research to understand the essence of creativity in creative tourism from the perspective of tourists. The literature on creativity, experience, and learning was reviewed to better understand the conceptual underpinnings that clarify the relations among these concepts. Qualitative data was assembled and analyzed based on the principles of grounded theory. Outer interactions and inner reflections were used to construct the model of tourist’s creative experience, with the former referring to tourist’s interactions with the environment, people, and product/service/experience, and the latter to consciousness/awareness, needs, and creativity. Based on this, recommendations were provided in order to make creative tourism more creative, as defined by tourists. From an academic perspective, this study contributes to the literature on creativity in tourism systems, and it develops a model of creative experience from the tourists’ viewpoint. In order to have creative experiences, creative tourists must first have self, social, cultural, or environmental related consciousness/awareness in their minds. In other words, the same activities experienced by creative and other tourists will have different outcomes, with the former more likely to have creative experiences. For tourists who are not aware/conscious of these issues, once their consciousness/awareness has been evoked during the experience, they will become creative tourists and also have creative experiences. The uniqueness of creative tourism is thus the consciousness/awareness of the issues evoked by each activity. From a practical perspective, this study has some implications for practitioners and policy makers to consider with regard to the allocation of resources. For example, some respondents mentioned that it is difficult to find creative tourism businesses that really provide the experiences they are looking for. Perhaps some entrepreneurs have simply transformed their traditional business to what they claims to be a creative business, without really considering the contents and qualities that actually reflect the uniqueness of what they are offering. For instance, many enterprises located in the same region provide similar experiences, such as pottery-making, as the region is famous for this. Therefore, practitioners should think about the key success factors that can differentiate their businesses from those of others. While this model of creative experience is particularly suitable for on-site experiences, it can be applied in other tourism sites where the industry practitioners wish to provide creative experiences for tourists. However, in order to identify the significant elements of a specific activity/site, further investigations should be conducted on a case by case basis. Moreover, while there are five categories of everyday creativity (Ivcevic & Mayer, 2009), most of the creative experiences identified here are focused on on-site experiences, such as crafts, cultural refinement, and interpersonal creativity. In contrast, self-expressive creativity, such as travel writing on blogs or sharing experiences on social-networks, also has the potential to expand this creative experience model, although they are not examined here. Perhaps further research may focus on these off-site experiences.