The notion of cultural tourism is anthema to many arts practitioners. Cork's selection as European Capital of Culture for 2005 is an apportunity to challenge such preconceptions, argues Karen Fricker

Ask someone who works in the arts about cultural tourism, and you'll probably see them recoil in disdain. Those who work on the tourism side of things will probably get a tired but determined look on their face. And those involved in either field are likely to shrug their shoulders as they contemplate what seems like a fairly obvious concept. Tourism that focuses on culture: well, that's really all tourism, isn't it?

Unpacking such preconceptions was the agenda of a one-day symposium on the value of cultural tourism last week, sponsored by the Woodford Bourne Cork Midsummer Festival at Cork City Hall.

Cork, of course, has a vested interest in investigating cultural tourism at present: the city has recently been named European Capital of Culture for 2005, an initiative that is part of the worldwide move towards specialised, "niche" travel and tourism. While the panel discussions, which featured cultural tourism experts from Britain as well as Irish arts and tourism professionals, ranged widely into theoretical issues, the focus swirled constantly back to the challenge that the host city faces. It has to find a way to transform what Joe Gavin, Cork city manager, frankly called a place that has "not seen itself as an urban tourist destination" into a cosmopolitan metropolis that will engage its local population and entice visitors from across the rest of Europe.

Inspiration and provocation came from discussions about Belfast, which is currently bidding against 12 other UK cities to be European Capital of Culture for 2008. Northern Ireland's forward-thinking policies on cultural tourism only draw attention to the gaping lack of anything similar in the Republic.

But back to definitions - and best to break apart the two parts of the troublesome concept that is "cultural tourism". Tourism is easier, so let's start there. We all know what tourism is: it's travelling for pleasure or enlightenment, and it's widely believed to be the world's largest industry. In 1999, travel and tourism accounted directly for 4.4 per cent of the world's total GDP and, including its related industries, employed 8.2 per cent of the world's population.

The 20th century saw a radical expansion of tourism as air travel became widely available, and with that expansion came diversification. As sociologists Scott Lash and John Urry have written, 21st-century tourism is "segmented, flexible, and customised". We now have adventure tourism, eco-tourism, and package tourism so high-end it doesn't look or feel like package tourism any more (museum trips to sites of antiquity and Guardian-sponsored holidays to villas in Umbria).

The latter are prime examples of what we now know as cultural tourism. While, in its broadest definition, all tourism is cultural - every time we travel, we encounter aspects of a different culture, even if it is just the inside of a hotel room and a beach front - it's now accepted that cultural tourism per se is travelling with the specific purpose of experiencing artistic or heritage attractions. The aim is to better oneself as well as just "get away".

Cultural tourism is a booming business: a November 2001 report for the UK's Local Government Association classed it "a major growth area of the European tourism market", which accounted for more than a quarter of all EU international tourism. Statistics for 1998 indicate cultural tourism is worth nearly £5 billion sterling a year to Britain alone. This is inevitably having a profound effect on the cultural as well as the tourism sector - everywhere you look, examples abound of cultural practices shifting to attract the potential tourist spend.

For example, Variety has a report this week about Harlem Song, a $4 million musical revue opening in July at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem, the historic centre of New York's African-American community and - remarkably - the city's second most popular tourist destination. Harlem Song's producers include the former owner of the Grey Line coach tour company, and long before the show opens, it has been marketed to the Grey Line and other tourist providers.

"When tourists come to New York from out of town, they see a Broadway show and go to Harlem. This is a way to do both," a producer told Variety.

Such cunningly practical examples aside, however, it's hard to ignore the fact that the cultural and tourist industries have a lot of difficulty getting along. As Doireann Ní Bhriain, arts consultant and chairwoman of the Cork symposium, put it: "Cultural tourism leads to shivers and the turning up of noses in certain sectors, particularly the arts."

This response stems, essentially, from the fact that people who consider themselves cultured often feel they're "above" tourism. Despite its ubiquity and complexity, tourism is still widely associated with cheap charter flights, loud Americans in trainers, and the half-timbered Burger King in Stratford-upon-Avon - that is, the tacky, the overrun, and the commercialised.

At the Cork symposium, Coventry-based arts consultant Richard Hadley outlined some of the reasons why the arts and tourism can't see eye to eye. Tourism speaks the language of business: it is interested in "branding" and "products"; it focuses on established, flagship arts organisations rather than the maverick and the up-and-coming; and it needs advance information in order to sell cultural events to potential international audiences.

But artists are usually more focused on their work than on audiences. Under-funded and over-stretched arts groups often don't have the time or the staffing levels to think beyond the show or exhibition in hand, and they simply don't like to think of what they do as a "product".

While the divide between the two fields was often evident at the symposium, an admirable hand across the water was offered by Frank Donaldson, senior tourism officer of Cork Kerry Tourism, who noted that the two sides "need better communications" and stated firmly that tourism and the arts in Cork need to have a serious "meeting of the minds" soon to plot the course towards 2005.

Donaldson also brought along, however, some disturbing statistics from a January 2002 Bord Fáilte survey of international visitors to the Republic. While 46 per cent of those surveyed said that culture and heritage were "very important" considerations in their choice of Ireland as a destination, only 6 per cent said they came to Ireland specifically for the traditionally defined arts (museums, art galleries, theatre). This represents, in Donaldson's words, "a failure of the arts, and a major challenge". The reason for such statistics stems partly from the amorphous definition of Irish "culture".

"We know from research that there are four prime attractions for Irish tourism," says Niall Reddy, acting chief executive of Bord Fáilte. "We call them the four Ps: people, place, pace, and products. By products, we mean activities like golf, boating, traditional music, dance, and so on. When you look at those four, it's hard to divorce 'culture' from any one of them.In a way, it's sort of difficult to have a policy on something that is in a sense so diverse and so much a part of everything we do."

BUT research and comparison indicate that Ireland needs to get a policy on that "something" - and quickly. It is striking that, while the European Union considers cultural tourism an important area to focus on and while most other EU countries have adopted specific directives on cultural tourism, the phrase barely figures in the policy documents of either the former department of tourism, sport and recreation, nor of Bord Fáilte itself. No specific research into cultural tourism appears to have been undertaken by the Government. An April 2002 report on the creation of a new Irish Tourism Development Authority (which will absorb Bord Fáilte and CERT, the tourism training body) anticipated that the authority would have "key relationships" with the then departments of tourism and of education and science, but there was no mention of the then department of the arts, heritage, Gaeltacht and the islands.

That the arts and tourism have now been brought together in the new Department of Sport, Tourism and the Arts is, of course, a highly positive sign that a rapprochement between the two fields must be on the way. If we're looking for models of cultural tourism policy, we might check in with that of our friends in the North, as articulated at the Cork symposium by Fergal Kearney, cultural tourism officer for the Northern Ireland Tourist Board (NITB).

Before 1998, said Kearney, Northern Ireland had no cultural tourism policy, and he frankly characterised the attitude of the NITB as one of "apathy, ineptitude and inertia" as it faced the challenge of trying to attract visitors to an area dogged by 30 years of sectarian violence.

In 1997, with the prospect of peace looming, the NITB and the Arts Council of Northern Ireland co-commissioned a study on the cultural sector and tourism. This found that there was basically no communication between the two sides, and that there needed to be. Thus was born Kearney's position.

He argues strongly that, given the North's ongoing "image problem", one of the key ways to attract visitors is to emphasise its culture. "We are not mainstream. Coming to Northern Ireland requires a special motivation. What we are marketing is the special experience of Northern Irish culture, which is small-scale and intimate, and in which the arts can play a major role."

Re-visioning a new Northern Ireland is very much the spirit behind "OneBelfast", the city's impressive bid for the 2008 Capital of Culture title. The bid puts an emphasis on children, indigenous industry, and the breaking down of existing barriers, both real and conceptual. The ambitions of Imagine Belfast, the company behind the bid, are high: the overall budget for the lead-up and the capital year itself is a whopping €229 million (£147.5 millon sterling) and, according to its spokespersons, the company intends to realise its plans for the year whether or not the European title is won.

Its chances are looking fairly strong. As of January this year, William Hill and Blue Square bookmakers made Belfast their favourite to win the UK bid (though a BBC poll in April found Newcastle/Gateshead the popular favourite, earning 17.5 per cent of the votes, with Belfast trailing at only 4.6 per cent).

The budgets for Cork's year as Capital of Culture are considerably smaller. Liz Meany, Cork's culture officer, says the city is currently working with a €13.9 million budget, though it is hoped more can be raised in private funding. The spirited discussion at last week's symposium tended to focus on the city's deficiencies: the near-dereliction of inner-city areas, gross under-funding of major arts organisations and, as Cork poet Tom McCarthy memorably put it, the city's "perverse pride in hiding itself".

But these very problems mean that Cork has everything to play for in 2005. The obvious and inspiring example is the transformation of Glasgow, which was European City of Culture (as the initiative was then called) in 1990. Due largely to its well-conceived programme for that year, a run-down, post- industrial city has been turned into the third most popular city destination in the UK, with culture at the forefront of tourists' reasons for visiting.

Cork clearly needs a dose of what has been dubbed "the Glasgow effect". What is necessary now is a compelling central idea for its Capital of Culture year, and a strong director to take it forward (an appointment is anticipated in the next few months). It will be fascinating to see if cultural tourism can change Cork's future.