In the last two decades, creative tourism has evolved as a burgeoning field, encompassing a wide range of concepts and practices, in different places around the world. From the very beginning, however, creative tourism has aimed to contribute to sustainable development and increased community wellbeing, as an alternative to mass cultural tourism. With this review article, our main objective is to identify and analyze a body of literature that specifically addresses creative tourism in islands, contributing to fill a gap in the knowledge since no reviews with this focus have yet been undertaken. Our aim is to provide a critical overview of creative tourism experiences at island destinations worldwide, addressing the plurality of empirical contexts and methodological approaches found in academic research. This review highlights the key trends in creative tourism, pointing out two distinct approaches: creative tourism in urban contexts, based on creative events, “cultural clusters” or Cultural and Creative Industries (CCIs), versus community-focused small-scale tourism experiences in rural contexts. This paper also provides an opportunity to assess the evolution of sustainable creative tourism approaches in islands.

As strategies for the development of creative tourism multiply in contexts ranging from global cities to small communities, the need for a clearer conceptual framework, capable of better differentiating existing approaches, has become more evident. Building upon existing knowledge on cultural and creative tourism, and on a prior review of the literature on creative tourism on islands, this paper proposes a typology of creative tourism initiatives, and after examining this new categorization, develops the concept of sustainable creative tourism. Through highlighting the need for creative tourism developers, policymakers, and practitioners to deepen their engagement with more holistic and integrated approaches oriented towards sustainable development in all its dimensions (economic, environmental, social, and cultural), the authors systematize a set of international principles and policy recommendations meant to promote sustainable creative tourism development strategies, duly adjusted to different places and realities, with an emphasis on vulnerable islandscapes.

As the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic was felt worldwide, the tourism sector was forced to seek ways of reinventing itself. Two decades prior to this crisis, in varied rural areas and island contexts, small-scale, community-based creative tourism had appeared as a sustainable place-making solution to foster place vitality, competitive distinctiveness, regenerative development and destination resilience. From an island perspective, this article presents the theoretical framework, methodological approaches, and empirical practices of the Creatour Azores project, which was carried out in the North Atlantic archipelago of the Azores from 2019-2022. Given this timeframe, the investigators and pilot projects that implemented this research-practice project were confronted with the COVID-19 pandemic, which accentuated the isolation and remoteness that tend to characterize islandscapes, especially peripheral islands such as the Azores. At the same time, however, this devastating global pandemic, which impacted the tourism sector especially, ended up offering unexpected opportunities along with special challenges, seeming to underscore the relevance of studies focused on the isolation and remoteness that characterize islandscapes. After describing the project methodologies and practices, as well as the adjustments adopted due to the pandemic, this article considers future possibilities for creative tourism on islands, in general, and in the Azores.