Living the creative life: evidence from “lifestyle entrepreneurs” engage in creative tourism

Abstract

The creative consumption of tourism has directed tourism agents towards cultural products, services, and experiences contributing to the lifestyle and identity expression of both consumers and producers as co-creators. Traditional cultural mediators have changed cultural and creative capital acquisition, denoting diverse social agencies and originating different forms of mediation marked by new technologies, and new virtual networks playing a relevant part in creative tourism contexts. New cultural mediators correspond to entrepreneurs whose lifestyle is prioritized by the privilege of pursuing non-material gains and pleasant activities instead of professional goals. Few studies have tried to know who these people are, what motivates them to be involved in the creative experiences they offer, and what they learn from the co-creation processes. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to filling in these gaps in creative tourism studies the authors applied qualitative and quantitative techniques to analyze the life trajectories of “lifestyle entrepreneurs” engaged in creative tourism experiences. Findings show that creatives are not always connected to creative jobs, their motives for engaging in such experiences are seen as an economic supplement and the exchange of learning and personal skills are present in such experiences. These considerations contribute to better design creative experiences.