In this paper we argue that present economic, social and environmental
challenges of the world economy call upon new tools for achieving a nation's
international competitive advantages and sustainability, respectively. In the age when
the developed economies have to compete on the strength of their skills base, and
when art and culture play an important role in moderating a technocratic vision of the
world, culture-based creativity is gaining in significance. Due to these changes and
sustainability concerns, cultural tourism is looking for new forms. One of them is
creative tourism, which offers self-development possibilities and co-creation
experiences to tourists. In the paper we introduce several demand and supply
challenges for contemporary cultural tourism as well as several demand factors for
culture-based creativity and sustainable development in contemporary societies. By
developing a model of sustainable creative tourism, we show how to achieve a suitable
balance between the economic, social and environmental aspects via creative tourism
development. In the empirical analysis we show that international competitiveness of
travel and tourism industry is not only closely linked to its sustainability but it also
depends on several other aspects of individual economy's competitiveness and has to
be discussed from the systemic point of view.