Creative tea tourism in Asian tea villages

Tea has a long history connected to many creative pursuits including but not limited to art, literature, story-telling, cultural ceremonies, cuisine and gastronomy. Creativity and related creative activities have been noted as relevant to tourism and hospitality. Tea tourism has been recognized as a niche tourism form both in producing and consuming countries and also as part of tea studies. This paper applies the principles of creative tourism to the niche of tea tourism, investigating the existence of forms of creative tea tourism. The literature on the creative economy, creative tourism and tea tourism provides a context for examining creative tea tourism examples through comparative case studies from rural tea villages in Japan (Wazuka) and Thailand (Doi Pu Muen). A key focus will be on how these communities have creatively developed their tea tourism activities, to address challenges in traditional tea and tourism industries. The relevance of the findings to other global tea producing locales will be identified.