Biography

Alain Dupeyras is the head of the Tourism Unit at the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Prior to this he was responsible for tourism and leisure investment-related projects at the SME Development Bank in France. Alain Duperyas has received degrees from the School of Hotel Management of Paris and from the University du Maine in Economic Sciences. He graduated from the University Paris I Panthéon Sorbonne, Specialising in Tourism Management and Economics.

New Sources of Growth Through linking Tourism and the Creative Industries

A Lecture by Alain Dupeyras, Head of the Tourism Unit, OECD Centre for Entrepreneurship, SME’s and Local Development, OECD

Thank you very much for the introduction, good afternoon. It is a great pleasure to be here today and to be here on behalf of the OECD. As you mentioned rightly the OECD is an inter-governmental organization based in Paris with 34 member countries, so we are not universal but we are global. We have countries from many different regions of the world. I am mainly in charge of tourism issues within the OECD and the OECD tourism committee, which is the official body of the organization dealing with tourism issues, born in 1948 right after the Second World War, with the marshal plan. So the primary idea of putting tourism in the OECD was really these economic generations for tourism, also the exchange of culture, the meeting point for different cultures to get together and using tourism as a vehicle for that. I think, with this in mind I am very pleased to be here with the Center for Cultural Diplomacy.

So the OECD countries, which are mainly highly developed economies, recognize clearly tourism as an important vehicle in terms of economic growth in terms of job creation, in terms of development, but also in terms of cultural development. Within the OECD we are trying to promote what we call an integrated approach to tourism development, which means linking tourism to many policies including culture. This is why we are here today. It is really to tell you a little bit more on what we are doing in linking tourism and culture and tourism and creative industries. Cultural tourism for many years has been a major source of growth in tourism. For example revenues coming from cultural tourists, usually much higher than the average tourist. We think by linking tourism and culture we can contribute to improve the attractiveness of a place and the competitiveness of a place. We think that tourism and culture do not only serve a visitor economy but also contribute to improve for example the well-being of citizens and also contribute to improve the attractiveness of a place and then to attract investors for example. We are very much interested by these linkages and how in bringing these issues together we can support the whole economy not only tourism but a wide range of issues. How are we moving from cultural tourism to creative tourism? Because this is more or less the subject of my presentation.

Creative industries include a very broad number of industries from design, fashion, gastronomy, literature, architecture, film, gaming and so on. We could have many industries which can be identified as creative industries. They are now providing new markets and they are also diversifying the tourism demands, so I will tell you a little more about this. Traditionally the emphasis was on tangible heritage and it is now being supplemented more and more by new forms of tourism based also on intangible culture and contemporary creativity. Let me just take a few examples to illustrate that type of issues. One is food for example: Food speaks of course for a particular national identity. Cuisine and gastronomy are perhaps one of the easiest way by which culture regains some distinction in the global market place. There are several countries which are using gastronomy as an important vehicle to promote the cultural identity of their country and also to do soft diplomacy in some cases.

Film and film induced tourism are other very interesting examples there for example, New Zealand, which is well known for the Lord of the Rings and its film industry has brought international profile, has contributed to create jobs and has also supported a film induced tourism economy in the whole country. New Zealand has pushed creativity in many places, for example in Wellington, to position the country in the world. Music for example, is another important creative industry, which is taking a bigger role. A recent study from the UK, music noted 6.5 million music tourists going into the UK generating over 24.000 jobs. This is very significant. More and more, this is why an organization like the OECD is also interested in industries like this one. The creative industries have become a significant economic and cultural and social force in our economy, from 2 to 9/10 percent in terms of GDP and employment. They contribute to innovation, to skills development. They are able to contain the cultural identity, but also to enhance cultural diversity. This is very important.

In the work that we are currently doing we have been looking at the linkages between tourism and creativity and the potential benefits that these linkages can bring to the economy and to economic growth. For example it contributes to increasing tourism demand. I can take the example of food festivals, which exist in Italy, in Spain, in France, which stimulates the demand. It diversifies the market, it develops new markets. You can think about literature in Ireland, they have been developing a complete new product on these issues. It supports innovative approached to marketing. A country like Spain has been using the notoriety of its chef like Ferran Adriá or some others, to promote the image of Spain around the world. It contributes to revitalize, to rethink tourism products and for example we see more and more products which are a co-creation for tourists. So the tourist is not only passive and receiving a product, but the tourist is also active; for example in food or different types of issues in contributing to develop something new and here for example in Paris we have welcome city labs which are contributing to this. It contributes to design and develops new creative tourism products. I was mentioning film induced tourism in New Zealand and I think this is a very good case. It also increases the demand for creative products and here for example on fashion and design in cities like Milan and Paris, we clearly observe such issues. So you see we can see a wide range of benefits for many parts of the economy in developing these linkages between creativity and tourism.

Countries and cities are doing quite a lot on these issues; I will just take a few examples. For example Korea, I don’t know if you had a presentation about Korea, but Korea has adopted what we would call an integrated approach to pop culture, including fashion, music, film and cuisine as  tool for soft power to improve Korea’s image abroad and to boost exports and tourism. This has generated very important benefits. The image of Korea has been gaining in notoriety in the recent years and this has been observed for example in the area of tourism with more visits coming from certain source market like the United Kingdom and the economic impact also of this Korean pop culture is also very significant with an estimated generic benefit for tourism of 1.5 billion in 2010 supporting 25.000 jobs. So this is not minor, this is very important. Another example would be Santa Fe in the United States, which has developed creative tourism through a series of creative courses and I was saying the tourist is not only passive anymore, the tourist and the consumer is active and building something with these courses. In Santa Fe they have been engaging local artists and stimulating also the creative participation among residents and visitors, so I think it also brings different communities together. So this has very significantly increased media coverage of a city and this was very beneficial, because nearly 20 million people visit Austin every year. So it is very significant and it generates a lot of added value for culturally related tourism which can be a good chance in terms of jobs for example.

The city of Berlin is also very supportive of creative networks, but it is quite different. Berlin has 10 years of experience in developing that sort of networks. The approach is much more modest. It is a different approach. It is mainly based on the networks which exist on a number of small groups which exist in the city and Berlin has been building on its strengths, for example the electronic music scene and this is quite successful in making Berlin a dynamic city, a creative city, a city of the future and this progressively is also transforming the whole city. We can have many examples. I have recently seen something on television about Detroit, which was a city more or less abandoned for part of it given the crisis and creativity is giving the city new boosts in some areas with local artists or artists coming from elsewhere, revitalizing the area. I think this is really something that I think is very interesting to keep in mind and to try to support. That being said, in the work that we are doing, we know that there are a number of important challenges if we want to generate more added value and growth from linkages between tourism and the creative economy. This relationship between creativity and tourism for example or culture is not yet very high on the policy agenda, so I think this is why it is important it is high on the policy agenda of a limited number of countries, like the UK, like Indonesia, a few countries like this, but not so much globally. I think this is why it is important that organizations like the OECD and others try to create awareness on these issues.

So the linkages remain underdeveloped despite what we has been said on the importance of these linkages and so the full potential is not completely exploited. Also each of these creative industries is working in what I would call a silo, not together, but in a separate fashion. And one of the difficulties we have is both tourism and creative industries are very fragmented. Tourism is a compilation of different industries and the same is true with creative industries. Bringing all of this work together and to generate added value is difficult, because you have to bring wide range and diversity of stakeholders together.

With this in mind we are thinking that there is a need for governments at national, regional and local level and for different stakeholders to take active policies in order to generate value and to make sure that this potential is developed. So we need to push for new models of creative tourism which can create these new sources of growth and deliver this added value, increase tourism demand, diversify tourism supply and driving innovation. We need to develop this integrated policy approaches, which need to deal with intangible and fragmented nature of creative experiences, which can link the various actors and resources and support tourism’s creative development. We also need to think about the governance model and how all of this is taking place and how we can ensure the structure that can support this development. We have different models on the table. Very often what we observe is that we have a private sector led model like the creative tourism in Barcelona. We have some public sector led models, like in Shanghai for example. We have public sector enabled models like in creative Australia, so we have different models. But what is important very often is that public authorities very often can provide an incentive and can provide for example the funding to support the projects. Given the multiplicity of actors it is very important that there is a clear set of rules for the various partners and very often the creative content and the creative experience itself will be developed by the private sector. We are finishing some work and we will do a publication in fact on the subject which will be released around June and also we will do a policy workshop in September to promote the main messages. In the preliminary policy orientation that we are developing we think that there is a need for all actors I would say. Of course we are mainly speaking to governments, but also all actors to work actively to develop creative content.

Developing creative content is key to creating interesting and engaging content to link creativity. To some extent it is very similar to food or so, but we need to find ways to link creative tourism experiences to a place, because otherwise they may be consumed indifferently of a place. We need to work on creative branding and storytelling and creative tourism offers a very good opportunity to develop story telling about the issue. Some countries for example like Nordic countries have been doing it very well around food issues, promoting stories, which are very appealing for the tourists and that support a high quality tourism experience. Because the tourist is not there to consume a hotel room or a seat in a plane, but he is looking for an enriching tourism experience and this is where I think creative tourism can bring a lot and by developing this story telling about some of its products you can really raise the demand, increase your revenues and make sure that the economy grows and the added value is there. We need to develop new sources of growth from creativity by developing new products across different boundaries as I was saying we need to go beyond this fragmentation in order to create a different atmosphere and a modern city as a tourism product. Knowledge and skills are definitely very important, because for some of these issues we need to have people who are knowledgeable enough to support this storytelling, to tell more about the tourism experience or to ensure that the tourists are participating in a product and this requires specific skills, because it is more than just giving something to a tourist, but it is bringing the tourist, visitor, consumer in being part of a product, being part of a development and this is much more delicate to achieve.

We also think this world of creative tourism offers a big opportunity for stimulating local development and regeneration and here we need to work with regional and local authorities to exploit this potential. So as you can see to conclude, all these policy issues are very interlinked and I do not think we have to work in isolation, we have to work in combination in order to stimulate this, linking tourism, culture, creativity, innovation and so on in order to ensure that this will happen. So as I said we are finalizing a report on this issue which will be made available before the summer, we will do a policy workshop later on and all of this material will be available to you if you want to learn more and the OECD is also working on many other issues. Just to conclude tomorrow I will launch this publication also in the ITB and this is about tourism, trends and policies and one of the issues that we are addressing on policy issues is that this is becoming more and more complex. Some years ago, ministers were mainly focusing on promotion, for example, if you go back twenty years ago. Nowadays ministers have to connect with a number of other ministers in their government if they want to ensure that the range of policies which affect tourism is contributing to its best to support the performance of the tourism industry. So tourism is becoming a more complex domain to develop and here we need I think in this area the issue of culture and tourism, and I think creative tourism is a very good demonstration of this.