Creative Tourism: An Endogenous Approach to Developing Culturally and Environmentally Sustainable Tourism

Abstract

In this current era of globalization most of the destinations across the globe have started to look like the mirror images of one another. Destinations visited by tourists are very easily interchangeable as tourists always seek novelty. Creative tourism brings out the uniqueness of a destination by focusing on its quaint culture and heritage and stressing on co-creation of tourism products and services. This form of tourism provides a very deep and engaging experience to the guests. Local community is the most important stake holder in this form of tourism as the whole concept of creative tourism revolves around them. Keeping in view the rich cultural diversity of the Himachal Pradesh, a hill state of India, the paper has attempted to find out the present status of creative tourism in Himachal and to what extent it has been practiced and promoted among tourists visiting the State. Through this paper an attempt has been made to gauge the awareness level of tourists about creative tourism in Himachal and also to evaluate their willingness to participate in this form of tourism. It has been deduced from the survey of tourists that majority of the tourists would be very keen to participate in this form of tourism.

Keywords: Destination, Creative Tourism, Sustainable, Community

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