Resumen de Could Viana do Castelo, a coastal city in Northern Portugal, design cultural tourism more creatively?

Carlos Fernandes, Alexandra Correia, Susana Rachão

• Viana do Castelo, in the North of Portugal, is a cultural seaside city making an effort to develop tourism in order to diversify its local economy. It is often argued that carefully planned tourism could provide the additional income as the result of tourism supply diversification. Potential opportunities are usually dependent on a destination’s capacity to offer iconic year round attraction(s), consistency in the organization of events throughout the year and be creative with its natural and cultural resources. To attract more tourists, culture needs to be the driver for enhancing creativity, particularly by maximizing spaces as well as a mix of tangible and intangible heritage to meet the lifestyle needs of tourists. There is increasingly a need for destinations to provide new ways for complementing the tourist experience. The aim of this paper is to conduct an exploratory analysis based on the specific context of this coastal city to identify ideas which could be applied to design a more competitive cultural tourism destination, in line with the changing patterns of consumption by more discerning culturally motivated tourists.