Creative tourism strategies are often adopted by destinations as a result of its appeal to policy makers, without a serious assessment of tourists’ needs. Although there are significant cultural and heritage resources in and on the periphery of the Kruger National Park (KNP), these resources seem to be inadequately harnessed. The aim of the article is thus to explore the potential of creative tourism as a medium to harness cultural and heritage resources in the KNP by measuring the importance of local community (cultural tourism) elements to tourists when visiting the KNP. Convenience sampling is used to distribute questionnaires to tourists, and 201 responses are used in the data analysis. The results indicate that respondents have a neutral opinion regarding the importance of local community aspects, and recommendations are made to exploit the untapped potential for creative tourism. This study adds to the current debate on creative tourism by assessing its role in protected areas.

由于对决策者的吸引力，目的地常常采用创新的旅游策略，而没有认真评估游客的需求。尽管克鲁格国家公园（KNP）周围有大量文化和遗产资源，但这些资源似乎没有得到充分利用。因此，本文的目的是通过测量访问KNP时当地社区（文化旅游）元素对游客的重要性，来探索创意旅游作为利用KNP中文化和遗产资源的媒介的潜力。便利抽样用于向游客分发调查表，数据分析中使用201条回答。结果表明，受访者对当地社区方面的重要性持中立意见，并提出了建议，以开发创意旅游业尚未开发的潜力。这项研究通过评估创意旅游业在保护区中的作用，增加了当前有关创意旅游业的辩论。