Social Innovation and Cultural Tourism: A Review of Co-Creation Strategies for Sustainable Tourism

Introduction

Culture and heritage are part of the essence of every human group. However, neither one nor the other has always been equally valued by society, which leads to problems for their conservation, for their transmission to future generations and for their enhancement through activities such as tourism. In more recent history, the value of culture and heritage has almost always been granted, or at least ratified, by governmental bodies at different levels. The consolidation of a certain approach that we can call “top-down” makes the identification of the population with its history, its culture, and therefore its heritage, less efficient. Local governance processes have not always considered culture as one of its objectives, so it has not always been correctly used for the development of local societies.

The author understands social innovation from a territorial orientation, i.e., as new social, organisational or institutional arrangements or configurations established to modify social relations, to transform a framework of action or to propose new cultural orientations in a territory (Klein et al., 2009; Lévesque, Fontan & Klein, 2014; Klein & Pitarch, 2020). The territorial development process is stronger if it is the product of an innovative process that involves the local population and all internal and external stakeholders with an interest in the territory. “Bottom-up” development, based on participation and dialogue between citizens and between institutions, the enhancement of endogenous and exogenous resources, as well as the consolidation of shared leadership and the co-construction of knowledge that allows for seeing emerging development options, generate a more solid social capital, positive synergies between different sectors and sustainable and integrated development.

The concept of social innovation is closely related to notions such as solution and transformation, which ultimately means policy and practice with the capacity to influence action for a new, fairer, sustainable and ultimately free and responsible society (Pitarch-Garrido et al., 2019). In terms of tourism, it is especially important to guarantee an attractive, authentic and respectful experience for tourists, which is increasingly demanded and valued.

Today, the notion of cultural heritage refers to all assets, whether man-made or natural, tangible or intangible, without limit of time or place, collected or inherited by previous generations and preserved for transmission to future generations. It is noteworthy that it emphasises the value given by the subject within a community (which links it directly to the aspects of social innovation mentioned above), as an integral part of a social group that appropriates the elements that form part of its culture and history, but from the present moment on. This is a new categorisation of heritage as memory and the importance of cultural diversity as an unequivocal notion associated with it (Alba-Pagán & Pitarch-Garrido, 2018).

Social innovation, and the consequent co-creation process, makes the heritage and culture of each territory available for the creation of value and facilitates new business opportunities and novel concepts, especially in tourism. Some of its results have great indirect potential. An innovation process from the grassroots, from society, can offer new ideas, which are especially useful for the creation of future tourism products and services linked to heritage and local resources.

For the tourism industry, tools and content co-created through so-called social innovation processes, with a bottom-up perspective, are fundamental in adding value to the world's tourism destinations. This is important because the current crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has irreparably affected the tourism sector, making it less competitive, globally and locally.

The tourists of the future will be more informed and specialised (Kuzior, et al., 2021; Wachyuni & Kusumaningrum, 2020). They will be looking for unique experiences, or at least experiences that cannot be easily replicated elsewhere. Cultural tourism is unique to each territory or destination and is capable of attracting a more informed, interested and spending tourist. In areas with competitiveness problems, and with an interesting heritage, tourism is the engine of development. However, there is also the danger of overstepping the limits and breaking the difficult balance between profit and saturation, which is why control, sustainability and local citizen initiative guarantee an adequate enhancement of heritage for visitors. Sustainability is, then, a key concept (Kuzior, et al., 2021; Ribes & Baidal, 2018).