Last month, I have been visiting my friends Anne-Laure & Julien in France while learning how to prepare oysters for dinner … Yum!

Basically, it’s a simple technique and one that you can easily watch & learn in just 34 seconds (the time it took showing my efforts on YouTube): Check us out cracking up oysters in my friend’s kitchen near La Rochelle on the Atlantic Coast in France!

Have you tried your hands at opening oysters before? It’s worth the effort - and learning how to do it takes only a short time. So much more fun though, than simply ordering them in an (expensive) restaurant … and good fun for everybody watching, too!

“Vergessen Sie Trends! - Forget about trends”, was a rather bold welcome greeting by one of the most renowned future research professionals from Germany supposedly talking to us about … TRENDS & “Future Living”!

Here’s to Matthias Horx, who we had the pleasure of listening to during an engaging conversation in front of the Wirtschaftskammer Niederösterreich audience in St. Pölten, Lower Austria last Monday, February 13, 2012.

And I must say this: I was rather surprised, and often amused, by learning what interesting peer groups we had in society. Or have you heard of “helicopter mums”, “Latte Macchiato families” and “Super Grannies” recently? ;)

MEGA-Trends: Ubiquitous, Resilient, Slow

What are the Mega Trends of present-day society?

… however small the actual percentage of creative travellers may be, there is definitely a growing demand, and a growing interest, for creative tourism.

Only recently, we have been visiting the Austrian National Tourist Board (ANTO) in Vienna for a presentation talk with some of our members from Kreativ Reisen Österreich: Kunstmuseum Waldviertel (Creative Art Museum), Die kleine Werkstatt in Waldviertel, Lower Austria, TALCUS offering stone carving workshops in Styria, Lucie from Shopping with Lucie! in Vienna, Hotel Am Konzerthaus who have developed a creative Swarovski city experience package, Altenmarkt-Zauchensee and their .NATURA.in di Berg Creative Weeks during the summer, plus Künstlerdorf Neumarkt an der Raab (an artists’ village dedicated to creative exchange among guests and (inter)national artists offering workshops, too).

The feedback from our colleagues working at the ANTO holiday service office is: “People are looking for (what they call) ‘the special thing’ (about Austria). They want to know where to go in order to find hidden gems and unique experiences.” This is where creative activities such as those offered by Creative Tourism Austria stand a chance to meet this very demand by (inter)national travellers.

Umbria, located in the central highlands of Italy, squeezed in between its well-known neighbours Tuscany and Rome, has a lot to tell its visitors. Alright, there are other regions, too, that specialize in olive oil production, truffle hunting, medieval festivals, cooking lessons or ancient crafts workshops. But where else can you experience all these, within a few kilometres from each other, in a truly Italian local kind of way? The secret triangle for creative tourism experiences in Italy lies between or near the towns of SPELLO, BEVAGNA, FOLIGNO & VALTOPINA.

Supported by an international EU project on developing socio-cultural tourism in rural areas of Europe called CULTrips, the local organizers or “greeter guides” made it a point to welcome us as pilot travellers to experience this form of interactive, meet-the-locals kind of tourism.

WHAT A GREAT IDEA :-) This form of travelling should actually be offered all over Europe. Here’s what we experienced in the course of just three days !

I would like to discuss a brand new article on the relationship of tourism and creativitiy that Greg Richards of Tilburg University has sent me after being published in the Annals of Tourism Research, Volume 38, 2011.

Fortunate enough to know him personally since the 2010 International Creative Tourism Network Conference, Greg really knows a great deal about research in cultural and, more recently, creative tourism. “Creativity”, he says, is about to “transform traditional cultural tourism”, bringing about “greater involvement with the everyday life of the destination”. Arguably, it is an “escape route from the serial reproduction of mass cultural tourism, offering more authentic experiences” that are “co-created between host and tourist”.

What do you think? Have your say here and read through a brief summary of this article!

I recently attended an amazing travel blogger conference in Innsbruck full of twitter, WiFi & iPad hungry people passionate about their blogs and the myriad of possibilities offered by networking in this community. What a great experience!

Travel Bloggers Unite Conference, Networking and Niche Blogging

Certainly it was all very worthwile, and for me running a niche blog about interactive, creative travelling, a must in terms of linking up with other like-minded travellers and bloggers. In addition to interesting panel talks, finally meeting conference organiser Oliver in person ;) and congratulating each other on our many initiatives with regards to travel blogging, I also attended an “iPhoneography Tour” run by iPhone travel expert Kirsten Alana. It was an amazing tour, and I have certainly never looked at Innsbruck from this angle despite many visits in past! In less than an hour, I learned how to make the following collage on my iPhone and essentially took part in a creative photography workshop - only that this time, it was offered by an American in Austria specifically for people travelling with an iPhone! Well, the world is growing smaller and more interesting by the minute, isn’t it :-)

Blogs these days abound literally everywhere. They are important marketing tools as well as perfect means to enhance customer-client relationships. This is especially true in the “people’s industry” of tourism. The Austrian National Tourist Office, for instance, reports live on its weblog about the latest trends and developments on holidays in Austria.

Similarily, the blog of the Austrian travel platform UrlaubUrlaub.at offers interesting insights and further details with regards to the travel destinations offered on its main webpage. This is also true for the “Social Travel Guide” Tripwolf: Their blog has even offered me the possibility to keep my friends and family updated on my round the world trip by posting regularly in the category Weltreisefieber.

Readers or subscribers to RSS feeds are thus permanently up to date with the latest developments, trends and hot deals in tourism and travel - and of course to have their say in forums, by posting comments, etc. Blogs may not (yet) trigger immediate buying decisions, they do however exert a strong influence on these decisions, either positively or negatively. Consider blogs an important strategic PR tool for clients to directly access, and discuss, your products, experiences and offers.

As for “our” field of interest, creative tourism, we had a look about what’s been going on internationally in terms of creative tourism blogs. Here are some (exciting) new results. Essentially, we found that creative tourism is already being discussed in many ways! A good example of this is our own national tourist office’s recent newsletter reporting on creative tourism development in Austria.

Here, we have compiled a short however by no means exclusive list of well-known creative tourism blogs internationally.

All over the world, creative tourism is developing fast and in a myriad of ways - no matter how professional or informal the network and setup.

I have recently travelled in over 10 different countries around the world and found a lot of creativity, ingenuity and happiness in the people that are lucky enough to enjoy a more interactive, engaging kind of holiday.

Above all, the message is that you see eye to eye with the locals who, in turn, take pride in their own heritage, be it a dance in southern Peru with all the adjoining traditional costumes, a cooking class of typical, Chilenean food or a dot painting workshop with an Aboriginal community in the heart of Australia.

Travelling around the world has many virtues for today´s society. One of them is for visitors to interact with, and understand the merits of a particular country´s host culture. In doing so, I recently went to attend a (free) creative workshop in the city of Santiago held at the Centro Cultural, organised by the Fundación Artesanías de Chile.

Classes typically run for about an hour and a half, after which visitors are able to take their own little piece of crafted souvenir with them. Not only do you appreciate the skills being taught to you, it is an understanding on the entire cultural and historical context of the people teaching there. The local artist spoke to us entirely in Spanish, but a local guide or instructor was present to help out with an English translation. We felt very safe, and happy to work in this public spot in the centre of Santiago.

The city of Cape Town consists of over three million inhabitants, out of which two thirds live in so called townships. Over a recent visit to these thriving communities, some of which are very poor still, I came to observe that creative tourism could be a real development option for certain parts of these communities. Particularly, given the fact that tourism is already set up there and working for the local community who are offering day tours for visitors and providing inspiring examples of socio-economic development there.

People from the township called Langa presented us with a craft market showing hand-crafted wire work, beads and wooden carved masks. It might only be a small step to incorporate visitors in this process, i.e. finding a community hall of some sort and offer a one or two hour interactive workshop of making these crafts together with a small group of local producers and visitors. The socio-cultural aspect would be satisfied in terms of visitors and locals meeting on equal levels, the culture behind the art work being explained, and the locals could be provided with an additional source of income: They are able to charge a higher price for the value of the tuition and the souvenirs people get to take home with them, naturally hand-made in South Africa! A great opportunity for a change for the better.