Greg Richards- PhD
- Professor at Tilburg University
Greg Richards
- PhD
- Professor at Tilburg University
About
516
Publications
993,276
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19,292
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Introduction
Greg Richards is Professor of Placemaking and Events at Breda University of Applied Sciences and Professor of Leisure Studies at the University of Tilburg in The Netherlands. He has worked on projects for numerous national governments, national tourism organisations and municipalities, and he has extensive experience in tourism research and education. His current research focuses on cultural and creative tourism and the role of events in placemaking.
Current institution
Additional affiliations
September 2013 - present
January 2006 - December 2009
January 2004 - December 2004
Publications
Publications (516)
This paper provides the first definition of creative tourism, and explains the origins and implications of the concept.
Experiences are becoming increasingly important in events and festivals, which are prime manifestations of the experience economy. However, research on event experiences has generally been concerned with economic impacts and visitor motivations . Few studies have attempted to operationalise and quantitatively analyse experiences, and there is no co...
China's pre-pandemic national-level planning advocated a combination of culture and tourism to advance growth in the Greater Bay Area (GBA) mega-region. Culture is seen as increasing regional cohesion, with multi-destination travel products connecting subregions and cities. This paper examines perceptions of progress towards a coherent GBA cultural...
How can small cities make an impact in a globalizing world dominated by ‘world cities’ and urban development strategies aimed at increasing agglomeration? This book addresses the challenges of smaller cities trying to put themselves on the map, attract resources and initiate development.
Placemaking has become an important tool for driving urban d...
Creative tourism has recently emerged as an important area of tourism development, particularly in the Global North. In the Global South, studies of the profile of creative tourists and their motives for partaking in creative tourism are limited. This paper investigates creative tourism demand among South African millennials, analysing what motivat...
Rural and remote areas hold immense potential as hubs of cultural heritage, yet they often face significant challenges such as ageing populations, out-migration, and low incomes. Recognizing these issues, the European Union has prioritized the development of these regions through strategic initiatives like the European
Commission’s Vision for EU’s...
Montréal has a long history of promoting cultural tourism, based on its cityscape and atmosphere, a wide range of activities, events and festivals and the bilingual nature of the city. Montréal sees itself as a 'cultural metropolis' with a relatively high level of creative industries employment, particularly in video gaming, digital arts, augmented...
Virtual reality (VR) is transforming leisure as a digital alternative to traditional (physical) experiences. Yet, few studies have directly compared VR leisure experiences to physical leisure experiences. This experimental study addresses this gap by comparing emotional responses elicited during a physical theme-park dark ride and its VR counterpar...
Lisbon, the 'World's Leading City Break Destination 2024' has seen a dramatic rise in tourism, stimulating a process of internationalisation and economic growth in recent years. This has helped to upgrade the physical fabric of the city, but has brought increasing user pressure and complaints from residents. Artists are no longer able to afford liv...
In a recent post we discussed the decision by the City of Paris to shut its last physical tourist office. In a reaction to that post, Emanuele Panke from the Crocus Project highlighted the issues facing rural and remote areas in terms of providing tourist information and involving visitors. She notes that: "If the same principle were applied in rur...
Business models for cultural and creative tourism (CCT) are a central focus of the CROCUS project. The first part of this deliverable sets out the conceptualization of business models used in the project. The CROCUS project adopts a broad definition of business models, viewing them not just referring to profit
making endeavours by private firms but...
This literature review covers research on cultural and creative tourism in rural and remote areas of Europe between 1989 and 2024. It provides a meta-review, structured review and narrative review of academic research to identify temporal and geographic research trends. It shows a growing focus on rural cultural tourism and intangible cultural heri...
Aquest article analitza els reptes de la turistificació en ciutats com Barcelona i Amsterdam. Forma part d'un número especial de Barcelona Metròpolis que ofereix diferents perspectives sobre els perills de l'èxit turístic. Also available in English: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/387959449_Dynamics_and_challenges_in_urban_tourism
Este artículo ofrece un análisis de los retos de la turistificación en ciudades como Barcelona y Ámsterdam. Este artículo forma parte de un número especial de Barcelona Metrópolis que ofrece diferentes perspectivas sobre los peligros del éxito turístico: https://www.barcelona.cat/metropolis/en/dossier/tourism%3A-the-danger-of-being-too-successful...
A curated collection of sources from the ATLAS Cultural Tourism Project.
This paper provides an analysis of the challenges of touristification in cities such as Barcelona and Amsterdam. This is part of a special issue of Barcelona Metropolis that provides different perspectives on the dangers of tourism success: https://www.barcelona.cat/metropolis/en/dossier/tourism%3A-the-danger-of-being-too-successful
With growing urban competition, smaller cities in particular face challenges in 'putting themselves on the map'. Richards and Duif (2019) suggest that smaller places can succeed if they collaborate rather than compete, enabling them to 'borrow size' to stimulate development. By collaborating, small cities also have opportunities to 'create size' th...
This volume of papers examines the role of place branding and storytelling in the development of small cities from a range of perspectives. Inspired by the European Capital of Culture Programme in the cross-border setting of Nova Gorica/Gorizia, the contributions examine the potential and challenges of building meaningful places through culture.
Published by the Association for Tourism and Leisure Education and Research, Arnhem, The Netherlands. https://atlas-euro.org/ Abstract This updated and revised third edition of the ATLAS Creative Tourism Bibliography provides an overview of sources in this rapidly developing field of enquiry. In the 25 years since the creative tourism concept was d...
This paper examines the development of gastronomy governance structures in the UNESCO Creative Cities, highlighting the Brazilian city of Florianopolis.
The latest report on the state of gastronomic tourism in Italy - trends, updates and analysis.
The CROCUS Project aims to support the development of sustainable and inclusive Cultural and Creative Tourism (CCT) and cross-border collaboration in Rural and Remote Areas (RRA) in Europe. This deliverable provides a literature review synthesising existing knowledge on the development of CCT in RRA to develop a conceptual basis for our analysis....
This paper analyses the contribution of cultural and creative experiences to rural and remote areas.
This introduction to the book Gastronomy Tourism - Experiences and Innovation provides an overview of Gastronomy as a useful tool for tourism development and marketing. Gastronomic experiences provide a vibrant link between local culture and inquisitive tourists, showcasing the lifestyle and identity of destinations through the mutual enjoyment of...
A review of the work of ATLAS in internationalising tourism and leisure education over the past 30 plus years.
The activity report of the ATLAS Events Special Interest Group for 2023-24.
In 2023 the Bakony-Balaton region of Hungary, with Veszprém's leadership, hosted the European Capital of Culture (ECOC)-a year-long celebration of the area's creativity. The immediate results of the ECOC were very positive. In the first eight months, almost 1.2 million people visited the centre of Veszprém for one of the 1192 events. Across the reg...
Report on the activities of the ATLAS Cultural Tourism Research Group for 2024.
This review of tourism and leisure research and education over the last 30 years examines the trends in the work of the Association for Tourism and Leisure Education and Research (ATLAS).
The Routledge Handbook of Cultural Tourism explores and critically evaluates the
debates and controversies in this field of Tourism. It brings together leading specialists from a range of disciplinary backgrounds and geographical regions, to provide state-of the-art theoretical reflection and empirical research on this significant stream of touris...
The last two decades have been an exciting and richly productive period for debate and academic research on the city. The SAGE Handbook of New Urban Studies offers comprehensive coverage of this modern re-thinking of urban theory, both gathering together the best of what has been achieved so far, and signalling the way to future theoretical insight...
Links to a large number of open access texts, including:
Rethinking Cultural Tourism
Small Cities with Big Dreams: Creative Placemaking and Branding Strategies
A Research Agenda for Creative Tourism
Reinventing the Local in Tourism: Producing, Consuming and Negotiating Place
Event Design: Social perspectives and practices
The SAGE Handbook of New...
This interview covers the role of events in shaping cities, and in particular the transformative power of 'pulsar events' such as the Olympic Games and the European Capital of Culture.
The launch of the CROCUS Project on Cultural and Creative Tourism in Rural and Remote Areas.
Purpose: This paper considers the relationship between urban events and urban public space, asking whether cities have enough space for events, and whether events have enough space in cities.
Design/methodology/approach: Policy analysis surrounding events and festivals in the Netherlands is used to understand the dynamics of urban events, support...
This document provides a summary of publications produced by the ATLAS Cultural Tourism Research Group from 1991 to date. For more details about the group and the research programmes it has developed, please go to:
https://www.richardstourism.com/atlas-cultural-tourism-project
Together with an international group of researchers we have been conducting research on the experience of Carnival around the world since 2015. In a decade of investigation we have collected almost 12,000 surveys with Carnival participants, examining different aspects of their experiences, motivation and behaviour. In 2024 data were collected mainl...
Purpose
This conceptual paper analyses the growth of curation in tourism and hospitality and the curator role in selecting and framing products and experiences. It considers the growth of expert, algorithmic, social and co-creative curation modes and their effects.
Design/methodology/approach
Narrative and integrative reviews of literature on cur...
Gastronomy is an important element of human heritage, as evidenced by the growing number of gastronomic designations in the UNESCO Intangible Heritage List (Richards, 2023). The recognition of gastronomy as intangible heritage that needs to be conserved is important, because gastronomic cultures and traditions are increasingly under threat from glo...
Preface to the book THÉORIES ET PRATIQUES DU TOURISME CULTUREL by Wil Munsters (Harmattan, 2023). This book is a unique introduction to the world of cultural tourism, summarised in ten easy to understand models. Each model is accompanied by an explanation, and each is also applied to a specific context. The text covers a wide range of examples, whi...
Greg Richards thinks more of us should lift our gaze from our narrow academic, business, and local concerns. We should scan the horizons of what we (think we) know, and try harder to understand the primordial instinct we have to travel and the human incentives that drive the tourism industry.
Professor Richards is the subject of the first in a se...
Leisure has an important relationship to time, space, and place. In leisure studies we are used to thinking about time as the basic resource for leisure. We need leisure time in order to be able to enjoy leisure, and so the struggle for leisure time has been an important focus of leisure research. But in addition to time, leisure also requires spac...
A report on the projects, activities and events of the ATLAS Events Special Interest Group for 2023.
Over 150 researchers have been involved in the Cultural Tourism Research Project over the last 30 years. This report provides an update on their activities and links to publications and events.
Expos, festivals and events have become increasingly important as tools of urban developmentin recent decades. The competitive drive to put cities on the global map has led many to adoptevent-based strategies, including the creation of ‘eventful cities’, ‘festival cities’ and ‘eventportfolios’. World Expos have taken on a particular significance as...
Quality of Life (QoL) is an important aspect of place, and an attractive element of places for tourists. This chapter examines the changing relationship between culture, creativity and tourism, charting the rise of new models of tourism that drive more attention to QoL issues. These include the changing nature of mobilities, the broadening scope of...
A review of sustaianble gastronomy developments in countries including Sweden, the Netherlands and Brazil.
En este artículo se analiza la denominada "economía de la experiencia" (Pine & Gilmore, 1999). Las ciudades son cada vez más importantes como escenarios en los que se crean experiencias y se representan para el consumo masivo. En esta economía de la experiencia, la cultura se convierte en una materia prima esencial y el turismo cultural es un eleme...
The Report on Gastronomy Tourism in Italy, now in its sixth edition, aims to
support the work of destinations and industry stakeholders in capturing
the opportunities arising from the combination of food and wine with
tourism. It seeks to develop an offering system capable of meeting the
needs of the contemporary traveller. The report provides an u...
Carnival is not just one of the biggest parties in the world, but also an important tool for social inclusion. Celebrating Carnival together allows communities to define their identities, to reaffirm their connection to place and to each other. Carnival is also an important part of intangible heritage, with customs and traditions passed down from o...
Intangibilisation of culture has pushed gastronomy to the fore as a development tool (Richards, 2021). The growing desire of consumers to literally 'taste the landscape' of the places they visit means that a vast range of gastronomic experiences are being created or co-created around the world. Gastronomy has been valorized through tourism in terms...
City authorities worldwide have sought to rejuvenate and diversify their tourism product offerings by dispersing visitors into less familiar and frequented locales. Despite calls to understand such 'new tourism areas' (NTAs) in urban areas, few researchers have examined visitor responses to the implementation of NTA strategies, particularly outside...
Based on the WYSE Travel Confederation research programme New Horizons, we examine two questions related to youth travel:
• What types of accommodation did young travellers use?
• What activities did young travellers undertake?
This study describes the process of developing a typical dish for a slow city, using the lens of co-creation and coproduction. The slow movement argues that appreciation of local cuisine increases through events and developing slow food practices. Participant observation and interviews with actors involved in the development process revealed the sy...
Creative tourism has recently emerged as an important area of tourism development, particularly in the Global North. In the Global South, studies of the profile of creative tourists and their motives for partaking in creative tourism are limited. This paper investigates creative tourism demand among South African millennials, analysing what motivat...
The Brexit vote in 2016 to leave the European Union eventually led to the UK formally departing on 31 January 2020. Since then, there has been much speculation on the consequences of Brexit for many areas of economic and social life. It took some time for the effects of Brexit to become visible. In 2019, research by StudentUniverse indicated that l...
The purpose of this study is to discuss the notion of innovation laboratories as a platform for tourism development in cities with a focus on creative tourism. The literature review contemplates conceptual aspects of innovation laboratories and creative tourism, proposing the interrelationships between the concepts. The narrative review technique w...
International youth travel poised for continued stability and growth in volume and expenditure
WYSE News | March 8, 2023
https://www.wysetc.org/2023/03/international-youth-travel-poised-for-continued-stability-and-growth-in-volume-and-expenditure/
Youth travel has long been considered a significant segment of international travel, both in ter...
Purpose:
This study aimed to determine the motivations of a select group of South Africans in terms of their potential engagement with cultural tourism; more specifically, the study set out to show whether these motivations influence the cultural activities that the tourists want to participate in and whether their interest in specific cultural a...
The UK Supreme Court recently banned visitors to the Tate Modern art museum in London from using the viewing gallery because of an injunction from the neighbours. What does this say about the limits to the tourist gaze, and power relations in cultural tourism?
Physical leisure events support enjoyment, social cohesion and identity formation, but Covid-19 forced events to go digital. This project aims to assess the effects of the digital shift, comparing the experience of offline (or physical) events, online events and hybrid events. Leisure experiences and event outcomes will be measured through surveys,...
This paper reviews the development of the global digital nomad market since the Covid-19 pandemic, paying particular attention to the growth of digital nomad visas, now available in 50 countries around the world.
Datas importantes Envio de resumos antes de 15 de fevereiro de 2023 Para mais informação, visite os websites da ATLAS ou CultSense Como as viagens podem promover a sensibilidade cultural? Em um mundo pós-pandêmico, as viagens e o turismo recuperaram a popularidade. Essa recuperação da popularidade traz uma pressão renovada sobre os anfitriões e loc...
¿Cómo pueden los viajes fomentar la sensibilidad cultural? En un mundo pospandémico, los viajes y el turismo han recuperado popularidad. Esta recuperación de la popularidad conlleva una presión renovada sobre los anfitriones y los lugares locales debido al aumento del número de visitantes. ¿Puede la sensibilidad cultural ser una herramienta para mi...
Call for papers for IPPA session of the UNESCO Chair on Creative Economy and Public Policies: governing through alternative economic models and creative policy solutions. June 2023, Toronto, Canada
Based on research conducted for the UCLG Committee on Culture, an extension of the analysis of the links between culture, creativity and tourism in the city of Lisbon was made post-Covid-19. Prospering is based on the sustainability of the cultural ecosystem of a city/territory. The loss of heritage, memory, identity and knowledge that allows peopl...
Conference in Rotterdam, 14-15 June 2023
Bridging Cultures through Travel: From theory to practice
Conference by CultSense Project & ATLAS SIG Cultural Tourism
Erasmus University Rotterdam, Netherlands
14-15 June 2023
Call for papers
How can travel encourage cultural sensitivity? In a post-pandemic world, travel and tourism have been regaining popularity. With this regained popularity c...
How can travel encourage cultural sensitivity? In a post-pandemic world, travel and tourism have been regaining popularity. With this regained popularity comes a renewed pressure on local hosts and sites because of increasing visiting numbers. Can cultural sensitivity be a tool to mitigate tensions between hosts and visitors? For the last two years...
Experience is a central concept in hospitality, tourism, leisure and events, both for academic researchers and industry professionals. Emotions are a core element of experiences. Virtual reality technology has various applications within the hospitality, tourism, leisure and events sectors and is considered a substitute for many real experiences, t...
English is increasingly the dominant language of academic scholarship. This means that much research produced in other languages is overlooked, a tendency strengthened by the growing power of global publishers and university ranking systems. This initial scoping study provides an exploratory review of non-English scholarship in the field of event m...
This survey is part of a worldwide research programme conducted by the Association for Tourism and Leisure Education (ATLAS). The aim of the study is to find out more about visitors to cultural events and attractions, their motivations, activities and impressions. For further information about the survey please contact: Richards.g@buas.nl.
A report on then activities and publications of the ATLAS Events Group for 2022.
Objetivo. El objetivo del artículo es analizar la producción científica sobre turismo creativo indexada en la base de datos Scopus e identificar brechas, tendencias y futuras líneas de investigación.Método. Se empleó el método bibliométrico para el mapeo del estado del arte e identificación de tendencias, brechas y futuras líneas de investigación....
The ATLAS Events Experiences Project has been conducting research on Carnival, comparing the experience of Carnival in different places, and analysing the meaning of
Carnival in contemporary society. Covid-19 provided a new research question: what
happens to communities when Carnival disappears? This paper reviews the results of surveys in Brazil a...
There is a growing debate about the use of creativity for sustainable development, particularly in terms of increasing the creative potential of cities. However, studies based on the experiences and perspectives of leading authors in this area are limited. Greg Richards is a long-standing researcher on the application of creativity in various socio...
Greg Richards in discussion with Frederic Dimanche, Director of the Ted Rogers School of Hospitality and Tourism Management at Toronto Metropolitan University, Canada. A session organised during the Ontario Culture Days 2022 to discuss current and future trends in cultural tourism.
This paper provides an introduction to the special issue of the Journal of Policy Research in Tourism, Leisure and Events on Festival Cities and Tourism. It provides a contextualisation of the conversations surrounding the relationship between cities and their festivals during the Covid-19 pandemic. Focussing on the ‘festival city’ of Edinburgh, we...
This interview presents a conversation between Greg Richards and Jorge Piqué on the development of creative districts and their links to creative tourism. The discussion ranged from the genesis of creative districts and creative tourism to contemporary challenges of creative place-making. It includes a consideration of the development of cultural t...
This paper presents a conversation between Greg Richards and Jorge Piqué on the development of creative districts and their links to creative tourism. The discussion ranged from the genesis of creative districts and creative tourism to contemporary challenges of creative placemaking. It includes a consideration of the development of cultural touris...
The growth of 'mass cultural tourism' has been stimulated by the growing numbers of tourists consuming cultural attractions, particularly in historic cities. Whereas in the past destinations had the challenge of trying to sell themselves to visitors and generate interest among a broad public, just before Covid-19 the challenge became trying to mana...
The Covid-19 pandemic has hastened the shift of leisure experiences from physical to digital environments. What effect does this have on our experience of leisure events? This paper examines the theory and practice of leisure experiences in events, and speculate on the likely implications of growing digitalisation of events for audiences and organi...
This paper analyses the evolution of cultural tourism from the Grand Tour to the present, paying particular attention to the emergence of "Cultural Tourism 4.0" as a hybridised, creolised form of cultural consumption.
Expos, festivals and events have become increasingly important as tools of urban development in recent decades. The competitive drive to put cities on the global map has led many to adopt event-based strategies, including the creation of 'eventful cities', 'festival cities' and 'event portfolios'. World Expos have taken on a particular significance...
As Richards (2021) has noted, one of the most significant changes in the field of cultural tourism has been the shift from tangible to intangible cultural heritage (ICH) as targets for tourism experiences. The continuing imbalances in the UNESCO designations for World Heritage means that many areas of the world remain without significant cultural h...
The line that joins.
Cultural manager, journalist and entrepreneur, specialized in
transnational cooperation and european projects. Has developed
cultural initiatives in cooperation with over 25 countries in Europe
and the Middle East.
A vision for the future created from the inside
out could be limited in scope and capability, due to being
ti...
Cultural Tourism is a key sector of the global tourism market, accounting for just under 40% of all international travel (UNWTO, 2018). Cities have played a central role in the recent development of the cultural tourism market, particularly as the focus of cultural consumption has shifted from high culture (Culture 1.0) to popular or everyday cultu...
We will compare measurements of online, offline and hybrid Carnival experiences using the Event Experience Scale (EES).
This chapter reviews the past thrity years of research on events and festivals from the perspective of the ATLAS Events Group, including the work of the ATLAS Event Experiences project.
Cultural festivals can attract cultural tourists, extend the tourist season and add vibrancy to the cultural scene. However, there is relatively little research on how festivals affect tourist experience of the destination or outcomes such as satisfaction or repeat visitation. This study used the Event Experience Scale to measure tourist experience...
Questions
Questions (2)
We have been doing research on the development of hostels, and we are particularly interested in the development of 'art hostels', which seem to be present in many countries.
The furthest we came was a hostel in Buenos Aires that dates back to 2002. Does anybody know of an earlier one?
A recent paper by Yeung and Thomas (2021) on journals in event management opens up an interesting debate on the role of journals as academic fora. They demonstrate that event management publishing is dominated by a handful of influential journals, which are in turn dominated by a few, predominantly English-speaking institutions and academics. How can we ensure that these journals help to stimulate debate rather that limiting it? How can we open up the debate to new and critical voices, particularly from other language areas and backgrounds? See some initial thoughts in my commentary on Yeung and Thomas, and let's open up the debate.
