Cultural tourism: where are we now, where can (should?) we go?

This was the closing address at the International Conference on Culture and Event Tourism: Issues and Debates. 26 cultural tourism themes emerged from the conference papers and a number of thinking points were presented to the conference attendees: the diversity of research undertaken on cultural tourism, that some of the areas are not obvious choices, that a rich tapestry of research approaches exists, but that a cautionary note was made to delegates not to reinvent the wheel and move beyond the need to define cultural tourism and focus on how to operationalise it. Discussion also focused on the case for and against 'case study research' with perhaps the need to undertake more comparative research. Five broad statements were made regarding where the field currently sits: 1, making the argument for cultural tourism as tourism, 2, the coalescence of thinking between culture and heritage, 3, culture as fundamental to the overall tourist experience, 4, coming to terms with the reality that culture is not a major element of the visitors experience, and 5, a shift of research away from the iconic to the normal everyday products and experiences. The last element of the plenary closing address noted a number of possible future areas the field needs to move toward: understanding of the role of culture in the context of globalisation, research that focuses on the management of cultural resources, research across the traditional disciplines and mixing methods as to how we do our research, and finally, researching cultural tourism in the contexts of the external shocks affecting it.