CREATIVE TOURISM: AN ENGINE OF INNOVATION AND ECONOMIC GROWTH IN TODAY'S WORLD

In the field of economics, creativity represents the ability to produce work and to perform new, unexpected, original, but at the same time appropriate and useful, beneficial activities. The importance of creativity lies, for example, in innovations, new discoveries, creativity can lead to new directions in art and the like. If we apply creativity to tourism, the result can be an increase in the attractiveness of a specific place or the entire (creative) tourism region. The main goal of the presented article is to map the use of creativity in selected companies and institutions of the travel industry in Slovakia, to identify the strengths of the use of creativity and at the same time, in connection with the revealed shortcomings, to identify areas in which improvement and development of the potential of creative tourism is possible. To achieve the main goal, the article will use the primary data obtained through sociological inquiry in the form of a questionnaire among companies and institutions of the tourism industry in Slovakia and among their consumers. The analysis showed that there is no significant difference in the intensity of the use of innovation and creativity between the studied areas in Slovakia. It has been confirmed that tourism companies and institutions do not have enough financial resources in Slovakia to further develop creativity. The last finding was the creation of own innovations by tourism companies and institutions, not taking them from abroad, or from other businesses.