Creative connections? Tourists, entrepreneurs and destination dynamics

Creativity is one of the more recent ideas of a range of concepts put forward to capture how culture affects the dynamics of economic processes. In the case of tourism, creativity brings together three interrelated aspects of destination dynamics. Firstly, the intensification of the experience economy and commoditisation of the social; secondly, the individual’s capacity and responsibility to innovate and respond to societal changes; and thirdly, the socio-spatial embeddedness of economic activities. We argue that it is crucial to deal with these issues as interrelated rather than separate entities, in order to better grasp destination dynamics. To accomplish this we approach creativity as a relational process. This paper explores tourism encounters and their creative capacities, focusing on the connections between tourists and tourism life-style entrepreneurs and what such relations may imply for tourism destination dynamics in rural areas. Its unifying thread is a story of a life-style entrepreneur in the Strandir region, Northwest Iceland. It is argued that while many of the activities of life-style entrepreneurs may be regarded as creative, this is not necessarily a key to commercial success.