The Caribbean, with its unique landscapes, its rich traditions and its locals’ friendliness, has been inspiring the most outstanding artists and creative people for centuries.
It is therefore the best place for creative tourists to discover and experience the local culture while participating in a wide array of authentic activities.
From naïve painting classes and Carnival crafts workshops to Creole cooking lessons, passing though aromatherapy workshops or music and dance residencies, the travelers can live the Caribbean culture through a wide array of unique experiences.
The demand for this new tourist trend has been growing considerably in the last years, resulting in the emergence of new management models.
This was the issue of the workshop on creative tourism presented by Caroline Couret, director of the Creative Tourism Network® within the SOTIC Conference of the Caribbean Tourism Organization, held last October 22d in Curaçao.
In her presentation she exposed to Ministers and experts from the Caribbean, the high potential they have to satisfy this new tourist demand and develop new business opportunities for private and public sectors.
For most of them, it first deals with being aware of the intangible resources they have, and how they can attract new tourists.
It then relies on the capacity for the local entities to work all together in order to create a branding based on creativity. This bottom up approach enables involving the local communities and empowers them through the tourism. They are no longer the intermediary between the tourists and the heritage; they ARE the heritage, contributing this way to locals’ self-confidence and increasing interest for their own culture.
Thus, the creative tourism offers those destinations the opportunity to diversify their tourist offers without any investment, but just by optimizing existing tangible and intangible resources.
The Caribbean is much more than a postcard. It is a mosaic of cultures, languages and people in a paradisiacal environment. Added to the fact that the creative tourism perfectly combines with other segments like the linguistic, culinary, MICE, single, seniors among others, this could be one of its main strategic development for the next years.
Indeed, at the end of the workshop most of the Ministers already had new creative projects on mind!
The Caribbean is much more than a postcard.
It is a mosaic of cultures, languages and people in a paradisiacal environment.
