Revisiting Tourism and Creativity.

Last year I wrote a post about Creativity in tourism as a marketing "secret" which I submitted for the first ever Tips from the T-List , travel industry bloggers book that was distributed at the first Canada-e-Connect eTourism strategy conference. As luck would have it, I was reminded of this topic by a woman who found me through Facebook and said her boss wanted to talk to me about the article. Furthermore, skimming over the myriad of blog post headlines I review every morning (I follow over 75 marketing and eTourism blogs), I came across one by the folks at TrendHunter (Jeremy Gutsche and Bianca Bartz) about the Top 30 Hip Hotels in 2008. It turns out that Hotel # 30 is the 21C Hotel, one of the hotels I spoke about on that article as a great example of creativity in tourism and the place where my new Facebook contact works. Given all these "coincidences," I decided to revisit this fascinating topic of creativity and tourism.

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Creativity, of course, does not necessarily mean artistic flair or skill. Creativity is the capacity to see things in a different light to address challenges and solve problems or present your offerings in a different (differentiation) and original way. We see creativity these days in many restaurants, from the decor to the meals themselves. Restaurants like Didier in Toronto and Laurie Raphael in Quebec City are very creative eateries for example. Cities themselves are either creative cities or they're not. Just ask Richard Florida the now famous thinker and author, Professor of Business and Creativity; Director, Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto. Creative cities attract not only more creative people but also more visitors. Cities' creativity is expressed of course by a robust arts community and striking architecture (that's obvious in cities like London, Paris and Madrid) but is also expressed in a creative labour force in several sectors like finance (London and New York), high-tech (Sillicon Valley) and science (Tokyo, Boston, Seattle, Amsterdam).
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Our map of global innovation clearly shows a world composed of innovative peaks and valleys. The leaders - the tallest spikes - are the metropolitan regions around Tokyo, Seoul, New York, and San Francisco. Boston, Seattle, Austin, Toronto, Vancouver, Berlin, Paris, Stockholm, Helsinki, Osaka, Seoul, Taipei, and Sydney also stand out. Richard Florida "Who's Your City?" p 25

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What, if any, is the relationship between creative cities and tourism? Is there an opportunity for Canadian Tourism here? Should city destination marketing take Florida's creative cities' work into consideration? The answer to the first question will take some thought. Intuitively we can definitely conclude that there is a strong relationship between creative cities and tourism. Arrivals data would confirm that some of the most creative cities in the world are also the most visited. London, New York, Paris and San Francisco are indisputably some of the most poputlar destinations in the world. Closer to home in Canada Toronto and Vancouver draw a significant portion of all visitors to Canada. The other side of the coin is that the top creative cities are also top generators of travelers since these cities not only concentrate creative knowledge workers but they also concentrate wealth and populations. Destination marketers spend millions of dollars on marketing research that they use to create advertising campaigns. It would be very interesting to know if and how Mr. Florida's work could be applied to destination marketing. Maybe I'll ask him.

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Getting back to the beginning of this post I leave you with a video (remember the long tail of tourism?) Here again is the 21C Museum Hotel, enjoy:

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Bon voyage everybody,

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Jaime Horwitz

www.cactusrock.com

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