Fashion tourism

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Fashion tourism is a niche market segment evolved out of three major sectors: Creative Tourism, Cultural Tourism and Shopping Tourism. Fashion Tourism can be defined as “the interaction between Destination Marketing Organizations (DMOs), trade associations, tourism suppliers and host communities, with people travelling to and visiting a particular place for business or leisure to enjoy, experiment, discover, study, trade, communicate about and consume fashion.”^[1]

International cities are increasingly using the cultural industries for the development of tourism and other industries to boost their economic fortune and to position themselves in the global market. There is often no need for cities to specialize in any new activity but rather to diversify their economy and it is in this context that fashion tourism has been adopted and promoted in cities such as Antwerp,^[2] London,^[3] and Tokyo.^[4] Fashion is a global industry and many capital cities have press-grabbing trade activity at least twice a year, e.g. London through its London Fashion Week, and this is often the starting point for many DMOs to take fashion seriously as a new anchor for their tourism industry and visitor economy. They are consciously pushing fashion week trade events into the public eye to raise their city's fashionable credentials and encourage visitors to consider travel to their city.

In 2023 Kogan Page published a critically acclaimed book which covers fashion tourism and shopping travel, "Leading Travel and Tourism Retail", which researched in depth the fashion tourism post-COVID.