Culture and tourism: a framework for further analysis

It is argued that the current state of studies of the relationship between culture and tourism is unsatisfactory. Cultural tourism is considered as an entity, though, in practice, it covers a diverse range of activities. In addition, tourists are not often segmented according to the importance of culture in their decision to visit a destination. The paper develops a four-part classification of cultural tourist according to cultural interest and examines this in the context of one element of culture only: the performing arts. Data from a range of existing audience and tourism studies are examined and it is concluded that the current structure of surveys does yet not enable the identification of the classification developed except in the broadest terms. The implications for tourism studies and for marketing of the performing arts are discussed.