Tourism and creative industries in international research experience: a geographical review

Contemporary trends of tourism development make logical conjugation of this sphere with creative industries. Although science pays significant attention to this question, the related information requires regular systematizing, also in particular aspects. The present work aims at conducting geographical review of world-class investigations devoted to the links between tourism and creative industries. Articles on this problematic published in international journals are research base. The bibliographical database “Scopus” and subsequent filtering allows collecting about 130 works. For each of them, the geographical focus via country affinity is established. Moreover, they are categorized thematically, which made it possible to distinguish the principal aspects of studies of the above-noted links and to indicate countries, for which the related investigations were conducted. The obtained results imply that the links between tourism and creative industries have been studied actively across the globe, but with the dominated foci on three sectors (East Asia-Australasia, Europe, and South Africa) and particular countries (the most intensively studied have been China and Indonesia, and a bit less studied have been the United Kingdom, South Africa, and Australia). It is possible to delineate six principal research themes, the majority of which has been developed with wide geographical focus. The links between tourism and creative industries in relation to urban, territorial, and national development have been studied geographically most widely. The undertaken investigation reveals as significant “maturity” of the considered scientific problematic, as, probably, really wide appearance of the above-mentioned links. Filling the established gaps in the scientific knowledge determines perspectives for further investigations, where Russian scientists can play important role.