The changing contexts of cultural tourism

The evolution of cultural tourism from an elite to a mass phenomenon can largely be explained by the shift in culture from the ‘Culture 1.0’ of patronage to the ‘Culture 2.0’, stemming from the expansion of the cultural industries and ‘Culture 3.0’, linked to the co-creation of postmodern culture. The decline of high culture as the arbiter of meaning under Culture 1.0 necessitated a progressive shift in the location and quantity of cultural tourism experiences. The cultural tourist left the museum to enjoy heritage centres, cultural festivals and events, street art and everyday life. The growth of the experience economy and the cultural and creative industries created a range of new cultural tourism experiences, and the global branding and McGuggenheimization of culture. The declining power of the narratives of high culture, the nation state and the cultural producer created room for the cultural tourist to co-create their own tourism experiences. The role of the new cultural intermediaries also shifted from staging experiences and guiding the tourist to facilitating and enabling experience co-creation. The curator has moved out of the museum, as everyday life becomes a form of ‘art’ that needs curation. The tactical tourist and the creative tourist became the trend-setting vanguard of cultural tourism development, colonizing the new spaces of urban and rural cultural tourism. Small cities emerged to challenge the Culture 2.0 hegemony of the metropolitan centres, with new museums and events aimed at a global audience. The fragmented cultural landscape began to be reinterpreted through events, which became the connecting hubs and nodes for the global cultural audience. These new articulations challenged long-established hierarchies of culture and geography and led to a range of novel outcomes of the cultural tourism practice.