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This review of cultural tourism covers the period 2019-2025, which has seen considerable growth in research output. The literature has been affected by a number of contextual factors, including the COVID-19 pandemic, new technologies, policy shifts and growing attention for intangible cultural heritage (ICH), storytelling and the role of place. The cultural tourism literature is also becoming more fragmented through the emergence of a number of niches, such as gastronomy and contents tourism. Chinese scholars are also beginning to have a major role in the field, stimulated by national policies to develop ‘Cultural Creative Tourism’. This also points to further democratisation of cultural tourism, away from its roots as an elite pastime. These is also growing attention for cultural tourism in rural areas, which has also helped to stimulate research on ICH. Recent research also highlights research gaps, including cultural tourism governance, the impacts of new technologies and social media, and the role of place curation strategies. Future research will need to tackle emerging issues, such as the role of destination coolness, the shift from destination management to place management and the nature of relationships between visitors and residents.
Esta revisão sobre o turismo cultural cobre o período de 2019 a 2025, durante o qual se verificou um crescimento considerável na produção científica. A literatura tem sido influenciada por vários fatores contextuais, incluindo a pandemia de COVID-19, as novas tecnologias, mudanças de políticas públicas e a crescente atenção dada ao património cultural imaterial(PCI), ao storytellinge ao papel do lugar. A literatura sobre turismo cultural está também a tornar-se mais fragmentada devido ao aparecimento de vários nichos, como a gastronomia e o “Turismo Mediático”.Os investigadores chineses começam igualmente a assumir um papel relevante, impulsionados por políticas nacionais destinadas a desenvolver o chamado “Turismo Cultural Criativo”. Isto aponta também para uma maior democratização do turismo cultural, afastando-se das suas origens enquanto atividade de elites. Observa-se igualmente uma atenção crescente ao turismo cultural em áreas rurais, o que tem contribuído para estimular a investigação sobre PCI.A investigação recente evidencia ainda lacunas, incluindo a governação do turismo cultural, os impactos das novas tecnologias e das redes sociais, bem como o papel das estratégias de curadoria do lugar. Futuras investigações deverão abordar questões emergentes, como o papel de“coolness” do destino, a transição da gestão do destino para a gestão do lugar e a natureza das relações entre visitantes e residentes.Palavras-chave: Turismo cultural, património cultural, novas tecnologias, gastronomia, storytelling, criatividade.1.IntroductionCultural tourism is argued to be one of the biggest segments of global tourism. It is also often quoted as being one of the fastest growing tourism markets worldwide, even though evidence for this is lacking (Richards, 2021). It is not surprising, therefore, that cultural tourism attracts a great deal of attention from both policymakers and academics. A recent bibliography lists over 1500 cultural tourism sources (Richards, 2025), with a particularly sharp increase in publications since 2016. As the cultural tourism literature has grown, many studies have also attempted to analyse the cultural tourism literature. This growing body of literature indicates a pressing need to summarise and synthesise the current state of knowledge and the evolution of perspectives on cultural tourism, also in relation to other fields. The standard tool for such a task is a literature review. A recent review of work on Cultural and Creative Tourism in rural areas, for example, identified 13 literature reviews in thefield, all of which had been published since 2018 (Richards et al., 2025). Most of these literature reviews are structured reviews produced in very similar ways. They search sources on WOS or Scopus, or both, and then produce a bibliometric analysis that shows key themes, key authors, countries of publication and universities. It often appears that these reviews actually add little to our knowledge and understanding of the field. In addition, not an overwhelmingly quantitative approach, they often pay little or no attention to the context of cultural tourism. There is precious little mention of policy, of wider economic developments or cultural and social issues that might affect the literature being produced.The current review therefore attempts to do something slightly different. It is not based on a quantitative bibliometric analysis, or algorithmic curation.This approach seeks to avoid the tendency to focus on the quantitative volume of research output and instead identify patterns and important outliers that can provide indications of fruitful future research directions.
