Cultural tourism storytelling in Flanders: the story behind the stories

摘要

The explosive growth of information and communication technologies, major demo-graphic changes, and rapidly changing tourism markets and tourist interests are pro-foundly changing the traditional domestic and international tourism landscape in Flanders and elsewhere. This broader socio-economic context, together with a certain dissatisfaction (especially among younger people) concerning the heavily commercialized hospitality industry, has given rise to the organic growth of innovative, experiential, and often highly personalized forms of tourism, created by a diverse group of people – from professional tourism service providers to amateurs – with diverging interests and motivations. This exploratory research analyzes why and how these novel forms of tourism have arisen in Flanders, how widespread they are, and what the implications are of these trends for existing service providers, tourism policy, and destination image building.The focus of the study is on cultural tourism storytellers who, by narrating tourism tales, create or reinforce as well as contest existing imaginaries of a destination, its culture, na-ture, people, heritage, and so on. These individuals or groups – whether they are estab-lished or new, small or big, traditional or innovative, institutionalised or independent, private or public – play a crucial role not only in the destinations’ image building process, but also in the tourist experience of a place. It is believed, assumed, or even hypothesized, that passion, creativity, and a never-ending process of innovation turn satisfactory tourist experiences into unforgettable, once-in-a-lifetime experiences. Genuine passion is the sto-ryteller’s added value to the tourist experience and can turn a nice sight into a must-see attraction. Hence, policy makers should facilitate an environment in which passionate, creative, and innovative storytelling initiatives can flourish. Therefore, the perspective of this study is neither descriptive nor conceptual, but (policy) action-oriented. The focus is on the ‘magic of the place’ and the ‘chemistry of the encounter’, on understanding the how and why of bottom-up forms of cultural tourism storytelling, and on the way policy makers can offer a suitable framework that allows such innovative initiatives to incubate, be stimulated and – to a certain extent – directed (but not regulated).Creative storytelling is an important but little researched field to test the importance of innovation in tourism. How exactly do tourism intermediaries (including tour guides and other storytellers) realize the travel dreams of tourists, skilfully mediating the gap between expectations and actual experience? Ethnographic research indicates that they not only play an instrumental role as socio-cultural intermediaries in replicating officially sanctioned images and stories of a destination; they can also contest and ingeniously alter tourism imaginaries. As cultural brokers, they can facilitate the contact between tourists and local culture or make access and dialogue difficult.The market of people and organisations telling and selling stories about a destination is diverse and continuously growing, in great part thanks to the Internet. Many players have their specific motivations to operate within the tourism storytelling market. Some of them are profit-driven, other storytellers can be marked as passion-driven. From a tourist experi-ence perspective, this passion, which is often reflected in the personal touch of the narra-tives, seems to be crucial. Both the specific character of this service ‘sector’ as well as its significant importance for the tourist experience, is what makes the study of how storytel-ling functions and grows extremely interesting and relevant for tourism policy makers.