A rough guide to cultural tourism

Cultural tourism is creating something of a buzz at the moment. A recent memorandum of understanding between Arts Council England (ACE) and Visit England shows that the smart money is on developing cultural destination brands for locations across the country. As Paul Williams, a business and tourism academic at Staffordshire University recently noted, cultural tourism “should be recognised as one of the largest and fastest growing segments in the global tourism marketplace.”¹ Yet if cultural tourism is so popular, how much can we say we understand it? Is it really about culture? Or is it just another way of describing destination marketing? For us, cultural tourism is in fact simply about people and place. It’s about the shape that a destination occupies in the minds of prospective visitors – and whether we can, over time, mould that shape into something of our own making.

If we are to court cultural tourists, the first thing we must do is change their perception of a place. Perhaps a particular location is not currently on the cultural map, or it has a poor public profile or stereotypes it wants to shake off. Whatever the reason, changing the shape of that brand – by focusing on cultural tourism as a strategic priority – takes time, long-term commitment, strong leadership and the ability to work in partnership with public and private-sector organisations, which may have very different goals. It also requires a continual programme of authentic, high-quality cultural events, festivals and exhibitions, that are in turn supported by fantastic venues, and that are all rooted in place. It means that everyone (more or less) is saying the same thing about the chosen destination; it means putting individual needs to one side and understanding that the only brand that matters, in the eyes of the tourist at least, is the destination brand.

It requires a continual programme of authentic, high-quality cultural events, festivals and exhibitions, that are in turn supported by fantastic venues, and that are all rooted in place

This is perhaps the most exciting aspect of cultural tourism – the destination. Of course culture and tourism matter. But the joy of cultural tourism is in its unique fusing of the two, and the fact that the demand for such a fusion comes not from one sector or another, but from the market. Many cultural tourists, for example, probably do not think of themselves as such. They simply choose to visit a destination on the strength of its cultural offer, motivated by the desire to encounter new experiences and create new memories. We all have mental checklists of places we want to visit, and while culture plays a major part so too does the ‘wraparound’, the independent boutiques and bars, markets and restaurants, the one-off festivals and tourist attractions, the built environment and places to stay. It is this complete package that consumers are looking for and that cultural tourism providers must make sure they can offer.

The pay-off is worth far more than increasing numbers of visitors and visitor spend. Creating the sort of partnerships that delivering a convincing cultural tourism strategy requires can mean leveraging additional support from private-sector partners. Working together can maximise limited budgets – resources can be pooled, organisations can collaborate on product development, marketing and programming. And ultimately, if cultural tourism can be made to work it can raise the profile of a destination. It can shift stubborn stereotypes. It can create new, positive perceptions of a place – and if you need convincing take a look at Liverpool, post-2008. Never has a city used culture better in order to raise its national profile.

There is a downside which comes about precisely because of the fusion of two sectors. We are working in unchartered territory, somewhere between culture and tourism. Cultural tourists, for example, are niche markets that do not easily fit into established market segmentation models, whether that is ACE’s Audiences Insight or the Arkenford modelling used by tourism agencies.

At Creative Tourist, we have developed our own market segmentation model tailored to Manchester. It is an approach that has allowed us to focus on the needs of the market. What this means in practice is that we have taken an edited approach to the city’s cultural offer, selecting only those things that have direct appeal to our target market. It is not democratic (which means that robust partnerships are even more important), but it is an approach that works, and ensures that we produce original digital content and campaigns on our consumer website.

We were born out of Manchester Museums Consortium’s (MMC) desire to raise the cultural profile of Manchester, and to work in a genuinely collaborative way while doing so. MMC is made up of nine of the city’s leading museums and galleries, and works in close partnership with Marketing Manchester and its tourist board, Visit Manchester. This close relationship took time to mature, but was always ambitious and willing to take risks. One such risk was the creation of Creative Tourist, a joint marketing and product development project. Spotting a gap in the city’s marketing and communications, a website was set up, with an online magazine and associated seasonal marketing campaigns, as a mechanism to reach out directly to cultural tourists. The project was always much more than a digital marketing initiative as it was also a vehicle for collaboration between venues at all levels (from directors through to front of house staff). We have brokered relationships between public and private sectors, developed staff training programmes, such as the Cultural Concierge scheme designed to improve the visitor welcome, and new products, such as the annual Manchester Weekender. We have demonstrated the importance of strong and strategic leadership from within the cultural sector, and the ongoing need to build and nurture business partnerships.

Although cultural tourism is creating something of a buzz at the moment, having worked in it for so long we can see well beyond the hype. We can see the potential of making real and lasting change by working between sectors and by working across sectors – but ultimately by working together.

Helen Palmer and Susie Stubbs are Directors of Creative Tourist.
www.creativetouristconsults.com
www.creativetourist.com