Baby, JibinBarbieri, CarlaKnollenberg, Whitney2024-04-262024-04-26https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14394/49535<p><strong>Jibin Baby</strong> is a Postdoctoral Research Scholar in the Department of Parks, Recreation, and Tourism Management at North Carolina State University. His research focuses on the agritourism sector, emphasizing the visitors’ motivation and behavior. He has research interests in festivals and events, risk management, and optimism bias.</p> <p><strong>Carla Barbieri</strong> is a Professor in Sustainable Tourism (North Carolina State University, USA) where she leads the “Agritourism & Societal Wellbeing” lab. She investigates the economic, socio-cultural, and environmental impacts of agritourism at the farm household and society levels. She also studies the sustainability of niche tourism.</p> <p><strong>Whitney Knollenberg </strong>is an Associate Professor in the Department of Parks, Recreation, and Tourism Management at North Carolina State University. Her research focuses on tourism leadership and the influence of policy, planning, and partnerships in sustainable tourism development.</p>Tourism destinations are developing competitive advantage through Creative Tourism (CT) by designing inventive ways to stimulate tourists' senses. CT allows visitors to personalize unique and authentic experiences through enthusiastic participation in cultural activities. Agri-food tourism (agritourism, culinary tourism, craft-beverage tourism) shares elements with CT in several ways. This study seeks to identify the elements of CT and indicators of memorability associated with agri-food tourism and to compare them across the three types of agri-food tourists. Data will be collected from survey panels among the three agritourist types and control group (beach tourists) following an experimental design based on hypothetical travel scenarios. The study findings will help advance the scholarship of CT and the destinations' readiness to welcome tourists seeking authentic and memorable experiences. Identifying which CT elements are more memorable can help destinations to increase their competitiveness as memorability entices intentions to revisit and refer the destination to others.event