Culture and tourism

Cultural tourism is one of the largest and fastest-growing global tourism markets. Culture and creative industries are increasingly being used to promote destinations and enhance their competitiveness and attractiveness. Many locations are now actively developing their tangible and intangible cultural assets as a means of developing comparative advantages in an increasingly competitive tourism marketplace, and to create local distinctiveness in the face of globalisation.

Publication

The OECD Tourism Committee has completed the study “Increasing the Attractiveness of Places through Cultural Resources”. The final report and case studies are summarised in the publication "The Impact of Culture on Tourism" (published January 2009). Eight case studies from OECD countries and several multilingual translations have made available free of charge on the publication webpage "The Impact of Culture on Tourism ".

Events

To disseminate the outcomes of the cultural tourism study, two follow-up seminars have been organised.

Culture and Tourism: A Strategic Partnership

23-24 January 2009, Mexico City (Mexico)

While in Europe as a whole culture has always played a leading role to attract visitors, there are countries in other regions that have only recently incorporated culture in the development of tourism products and in their promotion strategy – and still others which have yet to start in this direction.
For this reason, in launching the OECD study in Mexico, several world class figures in the area of culture were invited to reflect along with tourism industry experts on the role culture is increasingly playing in the development of tourist destinations.
This event of 300 participants, included a study visit to Michoácan State, the subject of a Mexican case study on culture and tourism.

Available documents:

 Agenda

Opening remarks by Sergio Arzeni, Director of the OECD Centre for Entrepreneurship, SMEs and Local Development

A New Design for Tourism: Culture, Tourism and Creative Industries; Driving Forces for Local Development

26-27 February 2009, Bregenz (Austria)

The main focus of the seminar was to discuss a number of long- term challenges identified in the OECD study, including the integration of cultural, tourism and national/local development strategies.

Trends and developments were examined and successful international, national and sub-national case studies presented to the 70 participants. 

Overall, the seminar contributed to the dissemination of the results of the OECD study and continued to enrich the discussion process in this field.

Details of the seminar are available at www.vorarlberg.travel.

For further information, please contact the OECD Tourism Committee.