Art tourism: divergent strategies in art museums and destination marketing organisations in North-Western Europe

This study examines whether the visitor experience in art tourism rests on coordinated strategic action between the cultural and tourism sectors, or whether it emerges from parallel and only partially overlapping orientations. Drawing on 31 strategic documents from art museums and destination marketing organisations (DMOs) in North-Western Europe, the study tests the experiencescape expectation of cross-sector coordination, revealing two structurally distinct clusters that reflect divergent priorities. Museums anchor their strategies in cultural preservation – collections, exhibitions, education and partnerships shaped by conventions in the art world – while DMOs prioritise tourism development, marketing and visitor economy goals driven by market-oriented logics. Although strategies in both sectors refer to “visitors” and “partnerships”, the two fields attach different meanings to the terms, with limited cross-sector connectivity. The findings suggest that the art tourism experience does not typically rest on shared strategic foundations: where a shared language exists, it obscures rather than reflects strategic alignment. The study contributes to tourism scholarship by showing that the strategic divergence between art museums and DMOs is shaped by different institutional logics and conventions in the art world, challenging the experiencescape expectation of inherent cross-sector coordination.