Holistic Tourist Experiences in Mature Destinations

Tourism is one of the activities that most urgently requires innovation and creativity to keep its constantly booming. The aim of this paper is to figure out how mature destinations and their tourist managers provide innovative and sustainable actions in its daily management. Current demand tendencies require active experiences, that generate emotions, awaken feelings, experience content, doses of pleasure. The so-called holistic visits are composed of elements that offer participation, hedonism, knowledge, local identity, and nostalgia. Pinacoteca a Cel Obert (Open Air Art Gallery) is an innovative proposal of street art, and the case analyzed. This is a project promoted by the Barcelona local Government (Spain), with the collaboration of the merchants' association and with the participation of a cooperative of tour guides (Revivint el Patrimoni). Street art or the artistic intervention into 24 commercial shutters is the essence of this public action which also hides different objectives: the recuperation and embellishment of public spaces to the community, the provision of new cultural and social spaces to neighbors, the boost of small businesses in the territory, and the creation of a new icon or attraction to stimulate and strengthen another area to temporary visitant flows in a consolidated tourist city, as Barcelona is. It is a clear example of reactivation, recovery, urban development, but in this case, taken into account the complicity of the associative fabric and citizenship, under the local government push to empower this community participation to change the urban issues. In-depth interviews to the respective project managers; as well as the guides who execute the itineraries and a satisfaction survey to the visitors who enjoy the tour are used to analyze the viability and sustainability of this meritorious example of collaboration and consensus.