Facing the challenge? Creative tourism in Croatia

Abstract

In the last decade, creativity has become a buzz word in developmental context, from creative industries, creative classes, creative economy, creative cities, creative business, creative governance to creative tourism. Creative industries have often been used in the context of creative cities’ development creating their image internationally especially through tourism. In order to attract visitors, a new type of tourism has been developed: creative tourism. The article questions its definition as it also questions the need of cities to be re-branded through creative tourism. Two Croatian case studies are featured as to re-think the position of creative tourism in local development: the city of Dubrovnik which relies on heritage as it main resource and the city of Zagreb which still needs to define its main tourism resource but has a lot of potential in cultural/creative industries. The article argues that creativity does not always mean introducing new types of trendy developments in the destination but rather knowing how to develop new development models which suit the local context.