Paula Remoaldo (p), Isabel Freitas, Olga Matos, Vítor Ribeiro, Ricardo Gôja, Juliana Alves, Miguel Pereira, Nancy Duxbury

The last decades have showed that a new formula had to be developed to substitute the massified cultural tourism offer that was happening worldwide. In 2000 it emerged a new segment of tourism that can offer tourists the opportunity to co-create and develop their creative potential. We are talking about creative tourism. Nevertheless, until present, has being difficult to have a consensus on the concept.
As it is important to know how networks and platforms are being developed dealing with this kind of tourism, an investigation was carried out between July 2017 and February 2018 to identify and analyse existing practices at international scale. This investigation was done within the scope of the CREATOUR project: Creative Tourism Destination Development in Small Cities and Rural Areas, funded under the joint activities of the Portugal 2020 Programme by COMPETE2020, PORLisboa, PORAlgarve and the Portuguese Foundation for Science, Research and Technology (FCT).
In order to achieve this objective, qualitative methods were used focusing on a content analysis. Research was conducted using Google (web) and a database with 20 items was created. Afterwards, an analysis was made of the initiatives in creative tourism that are being developed worldwide. An in-depth analysis was then carried out concerning the initiatives undertaken by each institution. This approach was complemented with 12 interviews made to the directors of 12 institutions which make initiatives in creative tourism worldwide. The main results show that not all initiatives referred to as "creative experiences" actually have something to do with co-creation and can be considered as such. Some of the institutions have more learning experiences than creative ones. Most of them can be found in southern Europe and existing ones can still be diversified in the future. In the case of southern Europe the Portuguese initiatives proved to be well suited to the characteristics of creative tourism. Concerning the interviews done we concluded that institutions will continue to increase the quality of the creative initiatives, to promote and diffuse culture across the creative initiatives, to improve communication channels and stimulating partnership’s to organize innovative initiatives.

Kajari Mukherjee, Marita Rautiainen (p)

We investigate sensemaking and sensegiving phenomena in a family owned business. We study a Finnish farm, with recorded history going back to 1698, that reinvented itself as a high-end boutique resort. We aim to understand how the strategic change of converting an asset from farming to resort unfolded, using the concept of sensemaking to investigate (a) how family members and ever-expanding list of other stakeholders reacted to changing scenario and gave meaning to the changes unfolding, and (b) the set of choices and consequences adopted to make the change a success across various stages of business development. Current literature in tourism does not address the antecedent and concurrent influences and meaning assigned to events unfolding to explain change and successful implementation of change. The paper aims to fill this gap.
Sensemaking is the process via which individuals, and groups, construct an understanding of issues and events that are novel, non-routine, ambiguous, and potentially disruptive. Sensegiving is shaping how people understand themselves, their work, and others engaged in that work. The relationship between change and sensemaking/sensegiving is recursive.
Family owned businesses are a substantial, if not predominant component of the tourism and hospitality industry in many destinations. A key characteristic of such business is that virtually all aspects of individual, group, and organizational behavior in family business are affected by familial relationships (Dyer, 2003). Chua, Chrisman, and Sharma (1999) argued that the theoretical essence of a family business lies in the vision of its dominant family members.

The concerned farm that we study was owned by a husband-wife team in 1950s. They were innovative and eager to experiment. As many came to see their new farm management techniques, they started rustic cottages to host them. The farm has since moved up the value chain to become a sought after resort. The case deals with how the dominant family member, namely, father of the present owner, convinced his own family to make the move to hotelliering as a parallel activity to farming. Further, he had to convince an ever expanding group of stakeholders, including regulatory authorities and policy makers, over a period of almost two decades to support the initiative (regulations regarding resorts on farmland didn’t exist initially). We create a sensemaking and sensegiving model that explains how the change at every level of the business landscape unfolded.

Oto Hudec (p), Paula Remoaldo (p), Nataša Urbančíková, José Cadima Ribeiro

The European Capitals of Culture (ECOC) is the most ambitious cultural collaborative programme in Europe. During its first 15-year period (1985-2000), ECOC projects were hosted by several national capitals and principal cultural cities in Europe. In the second phase, the programme also began to discover smaller and less well-known cities of interest where results would be more visible and beyond one year. Given there has been such a long period of 33 years since the first designation of a European Capital of Culture, there is an opportunity to evaluate the whole programme as well as individual projects in terms of their regeneration impacts. The paper is focused on the ECOC legacy of two medium-sized cities Guimarães (ECOC in 2012, Portugal) and Košice (ECOC in 2013, Slovakia). The assessment of the ECOC impact of these two cities on tourism and urban development is based on the same methodology, giving the possibility of first-hand comparison and in-depth interpretation.
The cluster analysis of all European ECOC cities identifies clusters on the basis of their mutual similarity. Thereafter, several research questions are studied based on the interview research in the cities of Guimarães and Košice. Although the two cities aimed to take the hosting of the ECOC as a significant tailored point of their development, their legacies have revealed comparatively different in several dimensions. While Guimarães succeeded in enhancing its tourist attraction and visibility, but less in expanding the cultural dynamics, Košice is an example of culture-led development overcoming the provincial cultural offer on the East-European border. Both cities made it possible to achieve a positive impact corresponding to the initial project goals, but reaching somewhat different effects, evident at a distance of several years.