Tourism Geographies Podcast: Recent Episodes
Tourism Geographies
This podcast discusses recent research published in Tourism Geographies: An International Journal of Tourism Space, Place and Environment.
We talk with authors about their research contributions to share the why and how of their research.
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https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2023.2299832AbstractAlthough sustainable tourism research is a rich and diverse field, it still suffers from a few important shortcomings. Negligible attention has been given to various possible pathways to sustainable tourism (as opposed to sustainable tourism as a ‘goalpost’) and there is an insufficient understanding of how the interconnections and interdependencies within tourism as a complex system shape the pursuit of sustainability. What is therefore needed is a sharper focus on the actual processes that must unfold for a transition to sustainable tourism to take place, and a better conceptualisation of the tourism industry as a multi-actor and multi-dimensional socio-technical system. We argue here that the sustainability transitions agenda, which has developed over the last two decades at the interface of innovation studies, evolutionary economics, studies of technology and science, and various other fields, offers a promising way forward for the desired pathway towards sustainable tourism to be comprehensively understood and more effectively followed. In order to set the scene for the individual contributions to this collection, we elaborate on this argument by highlighting the key strengths of the sustainability transitions agenda and identifying their potential to help tourism scholars move the work on sustainable tourism in new, unprecedented, and imperative directions. Our overarching aim is to lay the foundations for bridging the gap between (sustainable) tourism research and the sustainability transitions literature to move this combined agenda forward.
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https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2023.2286304
AbstractBased on the case study of the ‘Arctic’ Village (Mohe, China), a popular tourist site renowned as China’s northernmost point and the best Chinese site to view the northern lights, this article investigates China’s ‘indigenising’ Arctic tourism that transcends conventional geographical boundaries of the Arctic Circle. It introduces ‘awkwardness’ as an empirical affect and an analytical concept to chart the way the village’s tourism practices and perceptions reinforce, challenge, and diverge from the state-centred account of China’s Arctic aspirations and re-territorialising efforts. Under the framework of an ‘awkward’ geopolitics of tourism, three interrelated types of awkwardness are analysed: embodied awkwardness, identity awkwardness, and demonstrative awkwardness. Each concerns a distinct geopolitical facet of village tourism at the spatialities of the body, village, and museum. The main argument is that affective experience not only mediates geopolitical power in tourism practices but also conceptually reconfigures the nexus between tourism and geopolitics across multiple scales. Incorporating awkwardness into tourism studies advances affective tourism and tourism geopolitics by offering an affective lens to reconceptualise contradictions, ruptures, and ambiguities inherent in associating geopolitics with mundane tourism practices and perceptions.
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The Spanish Version starts at 35:47https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2021.1965202AbstractPotential to identify and cultivate forms of post-capitalism in tourism development has yet to be explored in depth in current research. Tourism is one of the world’s largest industries, and hence a powerful global political and socio-economic force. Yet numerous problems associated with conventional tourism development have been documented over the years, problems now greatly exacerbated by impacts of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. Calls for sustainable tourism development have long sought to address such issues and set the industry on a better course. Yet such calls tend to still promote continued growth as the basis of the tourism industry’s development, while mounting demands for “degrowth” suggest that growth is itself the fundamental problem that needs to be addressed in discussion of sustainability in tourism and elsewhere. This critique asserts that incessant growth is intrinsic to capitalist development, and hence to tourism’s role as one of the main forms of global capitalist expansion. Touristic degrowth would therefore necessitate postcapitalist practices aiming to socialise the tourism industry. While a substantial body of research has explored how tourism functions as an expression of a capitalist political economy, thus far no research has systematically explored what post-capitalist tourism might look like or how to achieve it. Applying Erik Olin Wright’s Citation
2019 innovative typology for conceptualizing different forms of post-capitalism as components of an overarching strategy for “eroding capitalism” to a series of illustrative allows for exploration of their potential to contribute to an analogous strategy to similarly “erode tourism” as a quintessential capitalist industry.
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https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2023.2291818
AbstractThe interplay between borders and tourism has fascinated tourism geographers for decades. However, only recently has tourism geographies research on borders mirrored border studies by interweaving tourism with its spatial, cultural, political and economic embedding in order to understand tourism’s socio-spatial place-making and bordering effects. We utilize the highly influential framework for border studies of van Houtum and van Naerssen to reflect on the state of the art of the tourism geographies of borders and make sense of recent developments in the field. The framework focused on the bordering, ordering and othering of society and space, referring, in turn, to creating a sense of boundedness, a process of meaning-making and a process of socio-spatial distinction through the symbolic and material construction of borders. We show that after decades of often descriptive research underpinned by state-centered understandings of how territorial borders have influenced tourism’s growth and development, recent developments in tourism geographies started linking up process-based understandings of borders with reflections on tourism’s place-making role. Our review highlights two important points. First, while massive strides have been made in recent years regarding the process-based understanding of tourism’s constitutive role in bordering processes (and vice versa), the cross-pollination between border studies and tourism geographies research on borders is still incomplete. Second, there is a need to move beyond insular tourism research to see how tourism’s place-making role related to borders and territory manifests in practice. We conclude that tourism is deeply embedded in bordering, ordering and othering society and space, both as an expression and as a driver of, or agent in, these processes, leading to tourism-specific impacts on the spatial environment and to broader socio-spatial (and inherently political) place-making outcomes.
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https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2023.2280172
AbstractDestinations with populations of African descent have continuously experienced negative stereotypes portrayed in traditional Western print media. These narratives have expanded to fake news circulating among individuals online, which calls for new techniques in combatting this issue. As there is limited evidence related to fake news in destinations, this research examines how fake news has emerged as a means of reinforcing negative stereotypes for destinations by examining three cases. It proposes a geographical perspective for understanding the production of fake news in tourism as simulated performances incorporating the setting of the frontstage, gazers and changing identities. These aspects drive the visibility, legitimacy and resistance to fake news, which can affect economic gains and conflicting discourses regarding these destinations. This research moves away from conceptualising fake news as solely narratives, as has been done previously. As a result, it draws attention to the spatiality of the phenomenon, which can provide practitioners with insights for developing and implementing destination image repair strategies. Practitioners should incorporate gazers into their strategies for combatting stereotypes. They also need to carry out continuous and real-time repair alongside bunking strategies prior to and during performances. Debunking strategies should provide contextual data in order to be effective. Alongside the empirical contributions, the research enhances the theoretical underpinning of fake news, social media and generally technologies in tourism through the application of concepts within media and black geographies research. These research areas remain understudied in tourism but can serve as pathways to guide further analyses on race in online contexts.
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Doi: 10.1080/14616688.2023.2290002AbstractThis discussion provides a critical review of gender issues in tourism geographies. It maps historical and contemporary developments and provides a future research agenda that suggests moving beyond binary and Western gender discourses.
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https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14616688.2023.2299845
Abstract
Digital nomadism has become a rapidly growing subject of interest both in the public and scientific domain especially after the COVID-19 pandemic. Conceptual and empirical developments in research on digital nomads show that the geographic perspective on digital nomadism has been very limited. The geographical framing of digital nomadism and publications in the geographical fora are still scarce. Despite the accelerating trend and potential transformative effect on places, the perspective of place (or speaking in tourism terms—destination perspective) on digital nomadism has been very limited, with the major focus being on the travellers and their experiences. In this article, I will discuss the existing knowledge on digital nomadism through a central geographical concept of place. Among other topics, I will show the way place is involved in the production of digital nomadic mobilities, especially in relation to the issue of geoarbitrage and local impact; specifically, the way place is connected to coworkcation and visa policies. I focus on the main research themes in digital nomadism and show the way they inform geography and tourism geographies.
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https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14616688.2023.2275731
Abstract
In marking 400 years since the first enslaved Africans arrived to Jamestown, United States in 1619, the Ghana government through the Ghana Tourism Authority initiated the Year of Return 2019 (#YOR2019). The goal was to unite Africans in the diaspora with those on the continent, especially in Ghana, through a year-long calendar of commercial and commemorative slavery heritage tourism activities ranging from visits to slavery sites, healing ceremonies, theatre and musical performances, festivals, investment forums and relocation conferences. When a destination tourism product is rooted in a less-than-desirable past, how is ‘balance’ achieved between commercialization and commemoration? In exploring this conceptual question, we developed a methodological innovation utilizing the social media platform Twitter for data collection. Using a social media crawler coded in Python programming language, we scrapped tweets from the accounts of the Ghana Tourism Authority prior, during, and after the YOR2019 based on hashtag searches. After data cleaning, 1010 tweets were inductively analysed using NVIVO qualitative data analysis software. The findings revealed three emergent themes along a commodification-commemoration continuum: (1) the eventification and festivalisation of slavery heritage tourism, (2) celebrity co-production of YOR2019 experiences through social media and (3) pivoting from a predominantly slavery heritage destination to a destination that focuses on other touristic and business travel. Ultimately, YOR2019 marked a significant push by Ghana to move into a ‘Beyond the Return’ phase that pivots away from slavery heritage towards a more well-rounded tourism product for roots, leisure, and business travellers. The research established that commodification in slavery heritage tourism does not inherently destroy cultural meanings but provide new commemorative meanings for a new generation of Black travellers searching for more than just their roots.
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https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14616688.2023.2280690
Abstract
This study was prompted by a lack of empirical research addressing the overlap between sense of community and eudemonic well-being components, the limited attention paid to immigrant perspectives in well-being studies, and the presence of under-researched type of festival and population. To address these gaps, this study aimed to identify the dimensions of sense of community and the well-being outcomes of diaspora festivals. The study targeted an understudied group and its festivals: those of the Ethiopian diaspora community in the United States. Guided by the constructivist grounded theory method, the study obtained data through guided interviews, and simultaneously analyzed them to construct six domains of a sense of community applicable to diaspora festivals. The six elements of a sense of community were a sense of belonging, a sense of togetherness, serving the community, recognition, social support, and connection with diaspora, and comprised at least one eudemonic well-being component. Engagement, positive relationships, finding meaning in life, and a sense of achievement, were inherent in more than three of the six domains of a sense of community. Other well-being elements such as physical health and spirituality were evident in one domain. In conclusion, this study offers theoretical contributions to festival tourism, community psychology, human/tourism geography, and positive psychology research in multiple ways.
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https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14616688.2023.2290662
Abstract
This research brings an original anthropological approach to the understanding of how the tourism industry negotiates the construction of elusive, magical geographies. Fairy tourism or ‘fairy hunting’ has been acknowledged since the nineteenth century, but is largely overlooked in tourism literature, despite increasing exposure to fairy motifs through multi-media platforms, including films, gaming, and literature. This study examines fairy festivals using a theoretical framework based on the novel concept of ‘liminal affective technologies,’ (LATS), that are designed to enhance transformative potentiality. An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis method is used to analyse how fairy festival producers generate approximations of Fairyland. To create fairyscapes, their organisers devise LATs, such as situating the events in places that are bucolic, mystical and connected to local folklore, and staging workshops, music, and activities, such as wish-making, using fairy-themed motifs, to reinforce the magical narrative. Yet several festival producers ‘toned down’ the troublesome or Pagan elements of the fairyscape, explaining the surreality of their events to visitors as dreamscapes.
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AbstractSurfing ecosystems—surf breaks and their surrounding areas—can provide multifaceted benefits, including support for tourism industries, personal and social wellbeing and shoreline protection. Previous research has predominantly concentrated on quantifying direct expenditures, sidelining non-market values, and failing to consider the interactions between multiple ecosystem components. To address these gaps, this paper provides a review of key principles of environmental economics and natural resource management in relation to surfing ecosystems. We examine how the value of surfing ecosystems can affect (and be affected by) factors related to environmental sustainability, tourism demands and economic development. We propose a novel framework for characterizing the values of surfing ecosystems and conducting economic assessments, based on six main features: (i) surf breaks, (ii) surfing resources, (iii) surfing ecosystems, (iv) economic values, (v) economic valuation, (vi) equity and sustainability. This structured approach may serve to improve decision-making processes concerning environmental changes that impact surfing ecosystems, including tourism management plans and environmental regulations. Our study aligns with broader global initiatives to better account for ocean-based values and support sustainable, nature-based tourism.
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https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2023.2290009
Abstract
Issues with social and ecological sustainability in tourism should be seen as the result of widespread neoliberal policy making. This has led to tourism strategies that focus largely on growth of visitor numbers and spending. This paper investigates the transition to alternative strategies based on degrowth and regeneration, applying doughnut economics to urban tourism development. Action-oriented workshops were used as a research method. The workshops were offered to Destination Marketing Organisations (DMOs) and municipalities of seven cities in the Netherlands. Drawing from this method, this paper aims to investigate how and to what extent the doughnut economics model can be applied to an urban tourism context in order to facilitate a sustainability transition and what barriers are encountered in doing so. It also sheds light on the role academia can have in instigating change in practice. The results show that the doughnut model can be used in an urban tourism context to help DMOs and municipalities rethink their current strategies and replace them with more sustainable ones. However, even though the workshops made the majority of participating stakeholders question growth-based tourism strategies, neoliberal thinking often (unconsciously) prevails. The biggest barrier was found in the cultural dimension, underlining the argument that a sustainability transition in tourism can only happen if the mindset of the individual people in the tourism system changes (Grin et al., Citation2010; Loorbach et al., Citation2017). Future research could benefit from innovative research methods, for example by incorporating design thinking, to further facilitate such a transition in tourism.
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https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2023.2291821AbstractThe blue economy is formally recognized by the United Nations as a term that aims to develop a comprehensive understanding of economic activity that takes place within or through ocean and freshwater bodies of water. Optimally, the blue economy subscribes to sustainable economic principles and a set of guidelines to ensure the protection of all marine and freshwater resources and ecosystem services. All marine forms of tourism, coastal tourism and freshwater tourism activities are part of the blue economy and has made a significant contribution towards sustainable economic practices in these spaces. However, there is a lack of consensus about what the blue economy is, how it should be measured and how to regulate sustainable performances across multiple diverse sectors of activity. This presents tourism scholars with an opportunity to make a contribution to the development of this concept and to ensure that tourism related activities are sufficiently accounted for in the planning and policy development of blue economies around the world.
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https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14616688.2020.1867887AbstractA healthy diet is vital to sustaining tourist mobility. In cross-cultural mobility, tourists must face strange local eating environments in tourism place and the complex health problems that these environments may cause. Existing research on tourist food consumption and health mainly addresses health from a biomedical perspective by emphasizing food nutrition and hygiene. We adopt an assemblage approach to understanding health as a relational outcome determined by multiple material, psychological, and cultural dimensions. Using Chinese outbound travel to Spain as a case, we explore how psychology, dietary habits, and cultural beliefs interconnect with the foods in novel cross-cultural environments to generate healthiness. A semi-structured interview method was used to collect data in Barcelona and Madrid. We construct three formulas to illustrate the health assemblages in tourists’ food consumption. In the food-psychology assemblage, tourists believe that low-risk foods are healthy. Neophobic tourists avoid tasting novel local foods due to unknown health risks, whereas neophiliac tourists show fewer similar health concerns. In the food-dietary habits assemblage, healthy dieting is the habitual and comfortable diet. Tourists with Chinese dietary habits are uncomfortable eating novel local foods. Cosmopolitan tourists, who incorporate various food habits in their diet, switch freely between different foods to obtain health. In the food-cultural beliefs assemblage, traditional Chinese cultural beliefs of yin-yang balance affect tourists’ health experience through diet. Tourists carefully choose local foods to achieve a cold-hot balance to keep health. These three health assemblages indicate that food health in tourism is a relational result of multiple dimensions.
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Abstract
More and more research has been conducted to examine individuated, affective, and embodied themes related to heritage landscapes. Following this recent trend, the paper analyzes how tourists experience heritage landscapes to retrieve positive feelings from the past and thus seek inspiration for a better life. Specifically, this paper has two objectives. First, it examines the embodied interactions between tourists and heritage landscapes in Lijiang Old Town, a well-known cultural heritage site in Yunnan, China. Studying these interactions will add substance to the affective aspect of heritage landscapes, showing the cultural value of heritage to individuals who live in a speedy world. Second, this paper attempts to understand the complex feelings developed by tourists towards heritage landscapes. We find that leisurely tourists attempt to enjoy heritage landscapes in order to counter their hectic pace of life in China’s big cities. They engage in either strolling in the town to decode the cultural values of heritage landscapes or staying put to immerse themselves in a heritage aura, for the purpose of relaxation and slowness. All the positive feelings in the town can lead to selftransformation and even spiritual rejuvenation. By apprehending heritage for inspiration, a situated and relational picture of tourism consumption unfolds to highlight how tourists develop a subjective sense of and feeling about heritage..
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AbstractTechnological developments over the last two decades have allowed researchers to employ advanced tracking technologies to collect high-resolution spatial and temporal data. Despite the extensive use of these technologies in tourism research, they have not yet been applied to the existing indicators of tourism demand. The current paper aims to fill this lacuna, proposing the use of tracking technologies to measure tourist activity in destinations and, in particular, extreme conditions such as tourist saturation and overtourism. It introduces a new index for tourism demand, the Intensity-Density Index (IDI), based on high-resolution data in time and space. After presenting an overview of the common indicators for measuring tourism demand, the most common indicators, the Tourism Intensity Rate (TIR) and the Tourism Density Rate (TDR), are calculated twice, using traditional methods and advanced tracking technologies. The second calculation is based on a unique survey conducted in Israel between 2015 and 2017, which included some 3,000 tourists whose activity in the destination was documented entirely on a national level and at high resolution. Finally, the methodology for calculating high-resolution (HR) indicators using GPS data is presented, resulting in the IDI. Advanced tracking technologies’ use in calculating the IDI not only helps present tourism activity more accurately in terms of time and space but can also be applied in tourism management to serve as a tool for effective planning.
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AbstractGiven the presence of societal scale risks such as pandemics, war, climate change and artificial technology, the future of tourism will operate increasingly in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) world. As such the present course of tourism research is unsustainable. In this paper, the authors draw upon the evolutionary paradigm in futures studies to identify a series of historical turning points in the development of tourism futures research. These include forecasting tourism demand using quantitative methods; the appointment of the world’s first tourism scenario planner; the establishment of the European Tourism Futures Institute; the creation of academic credibility through the Journal of Tourism Futures; the effect of COVID-19 on tourism research; and finally, the accelerator effect of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on our consciousness and awareness of the future. In conclusion, the authors offer a series of futures turning points identifying the direction of tourism futures, scenario planning and foresight within the realm of tourism research.
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https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2024.2305869
Abstract
Examining the contemporary movement of Black Travel, the special issue explores the intersection of racial inequities, Black belonging, and tourism, drawing inspiration from articles published in the special issue “Unpacking Black Tourism”. The collection critically analyzes historical and contemporary dimensions of Black travel, challenging traditional white-centric narratives in tourism scholarship. It highlights the emancipatory and community-building aspects of Black tourism, emphasizing its role in joy, discovery, and resilience against racialized oppression. Addressing the historical neglect of racial inequity in tourism scholarship, this special issue responds to critical moments spurred by the Black Lives Matter movement, extending the political and racial reckoning into tourism scholarship and practice. The state of society is explored in the context of the ongoing global reckoning with systemic racism, connecting legislative efforts to suppress discussions of critical race theory with challenges in the travel and tourism industry. Methodological frameworks are critically analyzed, advocating for the incorporation of Critical Race Theory and counter-narrative storytelling in tourism studies thereby challenging Eurocentric ideologies and advocating for justice across tourism scholarship. The state of praxis addresses challenges in researching Black tourism and the erasure of Black voices, highlighting Tourism RESET, a collaborative initiative focused on race, ethnicity and social equity in tourism. Contributions to the special issue showcase theoretical, methodological, and political explorations of Black tourism, emphasizing intersectionality as a common theme. The manuscript concludes with a call to action, urging academia to challenge dominant ideologies, adopt anti-colonized pedagogies, and embrace diverse perspectives for a more inclusive understanding of tourism and our world.
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AbstractThis paper offers a multidisciplinary overview on the concept and reality of affective and spatial atmospheres. Initially, the paper provides a synopsis on the disciplinary origins of the concept in philosophy, cultural geography and architecture, and then outlines how tourism research has more recently started adopting the atmosphere perspective. Research on spatial atmospheres has primarily been concerned with collective affective phenomena in space, but has also been characterised by inconclusive debates regarding where transpersonal affect ultimately emanates from (quasi-objective environmental origins vs relational body/’Leib’-centred origins). While these are important debates which have implications, the practical and empirical operationalisation of the atmosphere concept is just as relevant. This holds particularly for tourism, where providers try to engineer desired moods and ambiances. The paper concludes by identifying current gaps in the literature and outlines future directions for research into atmospheres, in the tourism field and beyond.
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Abstract
Second homes are essential resources for tourism and recreation. Climate change is projected to transform tourism geographies and threaten economic and recreational activities. Based on building and housing register data and national models for climate change hazards, this paper investigates whether second homes in Denmark are potentially affected. Five different hazards are used to describe climate risk based on the RCP8.5 scenario: sea level rise, storm surge events, coastal erosion, flooding from watercourses, and terrestrial groundwater. It is estimated that between 2020 and 2070 a significant number of second homes will potentially be affected by one or more of these hazards, with terrestrial groundwater being the most frequent. GIS-analysis shows the detailed geographical distribution of the affected second homes, while regional grouping highlights the most affected regions. A compound risk analysis demonstrates that a significant proportion (approximately 25%) of the Danish second homes will be affected by either one or more hazards. The analysis thereby highlights how amenity rich geographies are threatened by climate change, which could cause these areas to become risk prone. This provides a background for discussing the implications for land use policy of transforming geographies. The article highlights a need for strategic planning and active engagement with second to protect the recreational potential of second homes and local economies in coastal zones.
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AbstractConcerns about the effects of climate change have led to an interest in identifying ways to foster sustainability transitions. In the Global North, a key approach is to eventually eliminate dependence on carbon emitting energy while moving towards renewable sources, including wind power. Since wind farms require vast amounts of land, inevitably this explains the presence of such installations in many rural regions. This situation has alarmed various stakeholders, including those involved in tourism, who see such developments as threats to idyllic notions of rurality and, by default, to the transformation of the countryside for visitor experiences. Through a series of case studies in rural Sweden, we explore the attitudes of tourists towards the presence of wind farms in the landscape. Overall, study respondents recognize the need for such installations since most accept the necessity to embark on sustainable energy transitions. In this way, they understand that many parts of rural Sweden are transforming into spaces where sustainable energy future must be negotiated. Ultimately, sustainability transitions lead to the rethinking of conventional perceptions around rural space and tourism. We suggest that geographical research on sustainability transitions in tourism should account for conceptions of rurality that involve assemblages of imagination, place framing, and power relations in sustainability transitions. This conceptualization is necessary for achieving just and sustainable energy futures.
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AbstractThis paper rethinks tourism and its spatial implications under the terms of the Anthropocene. This rethinking recognises our intricate dependencies with each other and the places and spaces we make in the everyday. The paper argues for the need to create thick and rich stories, stories which can counter the current dominant consumptive desires. Herein stories of ‘earthly attachments’ and ‘conviviality’ are proposed, centred on care, responsibility and reciprocity. The place of tourism geographies is arguable in valuing multiple perspectives from the more-than/non-human world and the other in their myriad manifestations and geographical variability. Realising the virtual potential of earthly attachments, makes each and every place rich, meaningful and a source of inspiration for us all. Telling stories thereof, enlivens the senses and thereby offers a way to penetrate the desiring machine of consumptive capitalism which at current animates our needs and wants and is leading to the climate catastrophes of the Anthropocene.
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AbstractOne of the last decade’s major challenges faced by tourist cities has been dominated by the increasing tourism flows that have harmed the quality of life of residents, the neighbourhood’s sense of belonging, and the stakeholders’ concerns regarding reliance on tourism. However, tourism mobilities are not the only drivers of structural change in cities. The advent of temporary residents, digital nomads, international students, short-stay expats, and creative workers have shaped the way cities have evolved together with tourism mobilities. This paper will present research conducted in the Vila de Gràcia neighbourhood in Barcelona, which has undergone a thoughtful transformation in terms of tourism-oriented businesses specialisation, housing market prices, sociodemographic changes, the use of public space and nightlife leisure. Gradually, the Vila de Gràcia neighbourhood has become an emblematic area of leisure and tourism consumption experience in Barcelona. Based on ethnographic fieldwork begun in 2017 and in-depth semi-structured interviews with lifelong and new residents, the research analyses residents’ attitude toward touristification processes related to social discontent, nightlife noise, the rise in housing market prices and overcrowding.
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Abstract
Events have long been occasions to bring people together, with this congregative function contributing to their potential to shape and define place and space over time. Events are uniquely able to both reflect contemporary residential identities as well as shape future ones. Event studies have hitherto focused on festivals, mega-events, sporting events and a broad exploration of sustainability’s three pillars. However, it remains a young field of study, ripe with opportunity for in-depth exploration in a plethora of topics. This research note proposes several promising avenues for generating knowledge and practical insights in the future. These include examining a wide range of events and their connections to identities, a deeper dive into sustainability concepts, resources and security, stakeholder roles, exploring the effects of events on residential populations and legacies, as well as the implications of technological advancements.
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AbstractAlthough nature-based recreation areas are among the most popular tourism destinations in the U.S., African Americans are far less likely to visit them compared to White Americans. This paper offers a critical analysis of the phenomenon often labeled Black under-participation or under-representation (BUPR) in nature tourism. First, I use the concept of the White racial frame to unpack the White centrism and normalism embedded in the notion of BUPR and explain how it erases Black Americans’ historical relationship with nature while concealing centuries of Black exclusion in great outdoors. Second, I use the notion of the White-Savior Industry Complex to critique diversity initiatives of public park and tourism agencies, namely lack of strong sense of ownership in their historical Black exclusion. Finally, I make three recommendations for rectifying the enduring racial oppression in nature tourism.
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AbstractIf you possess a smartphone and use applications that are functionally bound to location, you are familiar with locative media. This genre of digital platform enables navigation and wayfinding, as well as promotes and rewards exploration. Surprisingly, the touristic significance of this has been seldom investigated. This article unpacks the capacity of TripAdvisor to facilitate and limit spatial exploration by analysing its non-digital antecedents, including travel agencies and guidebooks, attending to the dual governance they enact. It is argued that TripAdvisor acts as a geo-pastoral technology which orders the conduct of spatial subjects – both mobile and mapped – and the environments in which they move about and operate. This Foucauldian-Latourian framework is elaborated with findings from an ethnographic project exploring the social life of TripAdvisor within a literary-inspired touristic scene in Edinburgh, Scotland. In doing so, it positions this concept as a tool for analysing how human social actors become involved with locative media platforms in their efforts to navigate environments characterised by the now mundane dynamics associated with algorithmic governmentality. The modes of governance identified through this genealogy have ontological implications for how we research, teach about, and manage hospitality work, tourism services and geographies in the digital age.
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AbstractProvocatively drawing inspiration from an episode of the Netflix series Black Mirror and China’s Social Credit System this article critically examines the politics and practices of datafication, quantification and qualification associated to the Airbnb platform. It first explores some of the ideas and ontological claims that endorse Airbnb’s digital infrastructure. Secondly, it looks at how the company’s use of data management and metrics has become increasingly instrumental in maintaining control over hosts and guests and obtaining desirable and profitable outcomes. It does so by unpicking various applications and technologies used by Airbnb to monitor, record and measure the behaviour of hosts and guests. Drawing on in-depth interviews with Airbnb hosts and their participation in forum discussions the article discusses how people understand – and resist – Airbnb’s ‘ranking logic’ and the ways in which their Selves and their homes should be rated and ranked and put into circulation as ‘value’ by the platform. In particular, the article argues that, through the review and rating system incorporated in the platform, both guests and hosts actively contribute to the production of a set of constantly changing hierarchies that represent the driving force of Airbnb as a biopolitical social regulator.
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Abstract
Welsh and coal heritage may seem synonymous in the context of Welsh identities. One of seven national museums, Big Pit and its associated memory work reflect and shape the intertwined dynamic discourses of Wales and coal for visitors. We explore these discourses through a mixed methodology, highlighting the changing and transcalar nature of Wales itself, particularly the devolution of the tourism, heritage, and culture sector in 1997 from the UK Government to the Welsh Government. How have the discourses of National Museum Wales and Big Pit shifted in conjunction with devolutionary power transfers? This paper reflects upon the complicated and fluid discourses of Welshness within the museum’s landscapes. Migration, the dialectic of capital industrialization, and the romanticization of the banal activity of work are all central to these discourses at the Big Pit. Transcalar relationships of tourism and heritage fuel and challenge these discourses as the Big Pit sits on the edge of a UK National Park, on the European Route of Industrial Heritage, and as a central institution of the Blaenavon Industrial Landscape UNESCO World Heritage Site. These interscalar and geopolitical relationships of memory, heritage, and tourism emerge from our multisensory analysis and speak to questions echoing across the United Kingdom and other multi-nation states navigating spatial and temporal shifts in the geopolitics of their tourism sectors. All industrial heritage sites navigate national identities in overt and covert ways. The relationships between resources, heritage sites, the state, and visitors shape the landscapes of industrial heritage sites and their embeddedness into community and national narratives. As Big Pit has transitioned from a small industrial heritage site managed by the UK-overseen National Museum of Wales towards a major tourist attraction and equal member of the seven-site Welsh-overseen National Museum Wales, we identify geopolitical shifts in coal and national heritage.
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Abstract
The concept of ‘overtourism’ has boomed in the past five years as the latest term to refer to anti-tourist sentiment in tourist hotspots. News media’s widespread use of the term suffers from conceptual slippage and a tendency to incite moral panic. However, a deeper theorization of overtourism as embodied, place-based social conflicts shows that this phenomenon is not about absolute visitor numbers or particular tourist activities, but rather about the connection between place, class and the political economy of tourism. Drawing on Urban Political Ecology and qualitative case-studies of freedom camping in two urban areas of Aotearoa New Zealand, we examine how social conflicts between tourists and hosts erupted in poorer urban areas as NIMBYism in privileged areas with greater access to state resources pushed freedom campers out. Both hosts and tourists are agentic in these encounters. Locals frustrated with tourist behaviour they deem visually invasive and physically polluting ‘police’ freedom campers, ranging from facilitating formal police action and governance regulation to vigilante behaviour. Freedom campers subvert these acts of policing, often through the very rules and technologies that are in place to regulate and monitor them. At the heart of these issues is a problem of neoliberal governance which stresses tourism’s ‘economic benefit’ to the
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AbstractThis article examines social disadvantage in tourist sites through the lens of labour geography by focusing on the residential trajectories of a sample of workers in Barcelona (N = 8,651) over a decade (2008–2019). Contrasting with the common view that tourism growth brings prosperity to local communities, it suggests instead that buoyant destinations may be prone to leaving their workforces behind. Path analysis modelling reveals that tourism sector workers are at a higher risk of residential displacement. Our analysis unearths stratifications in such results, pointing to different tactics to cope with housing market pressure depending on sex, age, and nationality. Residential displacement and the self-imposed devaluation of housing conditions are introduced in this paper as key avenues leading to social exclusion. In this sense, we contribute to the concern of critical tourism geographies with the inequality and disadvantage ingrained in tourist space production, bridging to the domain of labour geography and social mobility. The city of Barcelona offers a template for other urban contexts that have been reliant on tourism as a major driver of economic growth in recent decades. Following the call for closer attention to labour in the debate on transitions to sustainability in tourism, our results hint at future research avenues that extend their interpretation.
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This book presents fresh contributions from various disciplines, capturing the diversity of backpacker contexts, types and form. It aims to make sense of current research in order to understand backpacking's future, and produce new directions for conceptual, theoretical and methodological development and future research.
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AbstractThis study addresses the gap opened up by the increasing attention in evolutionary economic geography (EEG) studies on the role of the state in economic path creation. The study links the path creation notion of trigger events with political economy perspectives to investigate the role of the state in destination emergence. We offer insights into understanding how the state utilises trigger events for new path development through the case study of Unity Park in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. A qualitative research approach is adopted that involves key informant interviews, analysis of policy documents and observations. The findings reveal that the idea formation for this destination developed along incremental changes in public policies until a state official seized a political transition event as an opportunity to cause a decisive shift in its trajectory. This incident triggered more real-time opportunities for the state to influence the development of this tourism destination through the application of power and agentic processes. Thus conceptually, we found that while public policies shape destination development visions, it often takes trigger events and strong state involvement to broker new destination pathways. The study contributes to broadening the current understanding of the state’s role in path creation and the significance of trigger events as well as offering empirical evidence on the political-economic mechanisms involved in destination development processes.
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AbstractThis study explores the affective worlds of its two authors and our responses to personally significant moments when confronting the transatlantic slavery discourses of Liverpool. Inspired by non-representational thinking and the concept of affective atmosphere, we consider our traditional values and beliefs, rooted in the Chinese philosophical understanding of humanism, and reveal how these conflicted with the encountered slavery discourses and shaped the (non)representations of affective experience in slavery spaces. Our experiences suggest that affective encounters in these slavery spaces appear to represent a highly nuanced, complex and personalised assemblage of sensing, feeling and affecting, and some parts arrive much faster than our thoughts, reflections and rationalisation, but can be easily overlooked in verbal representations. This autoethnography further highlights the significance of visitors’ personal characteristics (identity, gender, bodily capacity, and cultural values), their interaction with multiple-sensory input in the setting and the rhythms of drifting, in shaping affective conflicts and reconciliations at the newly-encountered components, situations and relations. This study also offers practical implications in terms of experience design and the destination management of dark and slavery tourism sites. Our experiences provide novel insights into why and how tourists interact with and make sense of the designed setting and objects around them, which can further inform tourism managers about their visitors’ needs, motivations, desires and expectations. The findings and method of this study support the human-centered approach to dark tourism, suggesting that visitors’ experiences as human beings rather than simply as consumers can inform such design. We should not only consider visitors’ cognitive and emotional involvement in the place but also their embodied and deeper affective responses.
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AbstractFew tourism sites possess the combined attributes of dark tourism and diaspora tourism, and journeys to these liminal spaces can unearth complex and nuanced emotions. While previous studies have added knowledge to the experiences of diaspora tourists, little is known about the liminal experiences at dark diaspora tourism sites. While most studies attempt to explore the experiences of tourists to destinations, there is neoteric interest in understanding the hermeneutics of these experiences by offering insights into the contextual interpretation of events. To investigate these, we integrate liminality and stimulus organism theories within a framework of interpretive phenomenology methodology. Forty interviews were conducted with dark diaspora tourists. The study revealed minor and major themes including enlightenment, visceral conflicts, identity dilemmas, and renegotiation of diasporic experiences. Ultimately, it is only by probing the interpretations of dark diaspora experiences from visitors’ own narratives that deep concealed meanings to liminal experiences can be uncovered. The research indicates that experiences at dark diaspora sites vary and result in diverse effects on individuals’ experiences and subsequent interpretations.
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AbstractThis study explores overtourism in the resort town of Sagada, the Philippines, which has experienced an influx of tourists over the past few years. Qualitative methods – including in-depth interviews, focus group discussions, participant observation, and informal conversations – were used to collect data from 2017 to 2019. A conceptual framework using systems theory guides the data analysis while social exchange and stakeholder theories are also employed. Research findings suggest that although Sagada has immense problems, including inadequate facilities, lack of policies, and insufficient preparedness, stakeholder collaboration has helped mitigate the problems brought by mass tourists. This study finds that when community cooperation is attained, issues brought about by overtourism can be mitigated, and solutions can be crafted.
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For more information on similar research see TOURISM RESET
https://www.tourismreset.com/projects/AbstractBlack travel experiences are not monolithic. In fact, Black travelers increasingly express their dissatisfaction with tokenism and the performative nature of checking the diversity box. To keep an authentic conversation about Black lives in the travel space – the goal of this manuscript is to take a deeper look into the nexus and intersectionalities of Black travelers and how their experiences in the tourism landscape both collide and diverge from each other. As a research team, we interviewed several Black travel influencers, bloggers, and community leaders who all shared one strong message – Black travel is not a monolith. Informed by intersectionality theory and Black geographies, we identified four major themes around the challenges of marginalized identities of Black travelers inclusive of being: Black and a woman; Black and queer; Black across nationalities; and Black with a disability. By bridging the gap between academia and industry, our hope is to curate a future road map for Black travel that values and empowers intersecting identities of Black travelers.
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AbstractLesbian, Gay, Bisexual (LGB) people can experience discrimination because of their minoritized status, which can be exacerbated when they come from a less privileged group or background compared to the rest of society. Travel can play a unique role in their lives by providing an opportunity to escape the constrictors of how one is defined and positioned in their home environment. The experiences enabled through travel can help build capacities that enhance well-being and the ability to cope with prejudice at home. This paper explores how LGB people with intersectional identities perceive the role of travel in contributing to their well-being and the activities they participate in while travelling. We frame intersectionality as one’s sexual orientation and the differences arising from one’s relative socioeconomic status. Through an online survey of 473 Australian LGB people, we identify five well-being segments, which differed on their socioeconomic status, travel activity choices, and sexual orientation. The results have implications for how travel is a well-being tool that supports different segments of LGB people through the provision of pleasure activities while also facilitating self-development, social contribution, and minimizing the impact of negative experiences on day-to-day life.
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ABSTRACT
This article examines how digital nomads (generally defined here as those from the Global North working remotely without a permanent home) reacted to the COVID 19 pandemic. Using social media data and 37 indepth interviews with digital nomads from 16 countries, it argues that many in this group continued traveling to maintain their identity and avoid border closures and lockdowns. the article explores how they rationalized their mobility while navigating feelings of guilt, avoidance of shame, and deflecting accusations of geographical and epidemiological selfishness. New geopolitical conditions created both barriers and travel loopholes, with participants therefore attempting to maintain their group identity through movement while also limiting their social media participation to avoid moral sanction. Drawing on Mimi sheller’s work on mobility justice, the article closes by demonstrating how mobility guilt may be a phenomenon that outlasts the pandemic.
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ABSTRACT
The Margaret River region (Western australia) is a popular international tourism destination. since its emergence in the late 19thcentury, tourism in the Margaret River region (MRR) has interacted with a number of regional industries including timber, dairy, and wine. these interactions have changed from ‘supportive’ to ‘competing’ reflecting various changes in the market and the availability of common local assets such as forest, land, and public funding. While timber and dairy had an important influence on the evolution of tourism in the region, it was the emergence of winethat shifted tourism the most.Using selected concepts of evolutionary economic geography (eeG), mainly path-dependence, path-reformation, interpath relations, and triggering events, this paper demonstrates how tourism has interacted with different other industries and how these interactions have shaped the MRR as a wine-tourist destination. the paper shows how two related triggering events contributed to the emergence of wine-tourism as a new path in the region – a pro-cess referred to as ‘path-blending’. in this respect, the paper provides empirical evidence that triggering events can result in multiple new paths and can also significantly shape the relations between new and existing regional paths. as such, the paper responds to the call for breaking away with the ‘single path view’ in research on industrial evolution, and for more attention to the various relations between tourism and other sectors within a tour-ist destination
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AbstractLampedusa (Italy) and Lesvos (Greece) have become significant locations where the interaction between migration and tourism is expressed through the presence of volunteer tourism, which, along with supporting migrants, has spawned new practices, such as visiting emblematic sites of migrants’ passage, presence, and death. This study investigates the emergent practices of memorial tourism from the perspective of mobility justice. Specifically, considering this liminal practice, the study seeks an alternative route to the dead-end of political possibilities of volunteer tourism, by exploring, rather than denying, the paradoxes it produces. The study employs a comparative ethnographic approach using a multimethod process, including an online survey, semi-structured interviews, and participant observation. The author spent six months on Lampedusa and Lesvos as a volunteer. Via these tools, the research explores how volunteers’ actions reinforce and confirm mobility inequalities. Specifically, migration is ‘memorialized’ by volunteer tourists, while concurrently the individuals migrating, and in certain cases even those who return after completing their migratory path, have no access to the spaces of memory on Lampedusa and Lesvos. While volunteer tourists’ practices and relationships to these spaces can engender a growing awareness of the phenomenon of migration, an investigation of the emerging paradoxes argues that despite the risk of reproducing the forms of exclusion and injustice that volunteers seek to counter, some subjectivities gain new, significant positions that cause forms of resistance to the disciplinary power of the border regime.
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AbstractUrban slums, especially in the Global South, have become popular attractions for tourists interested in sites off the beaten track and more authentic encounters with local culture. This practice has drawn attention from the media and extensive academic research, pointing out its controversial character due to the uneven power relations between hosts and guests and the commodification of poverty to turn it into a tourist attraction. Though acknowledging this pitfall, this work takes a different approach. We argue that tourism has agency in co-producing meanings and values in the process of making and consuming slums as tourist places. Within this process, the cultural capital of slums may find new avenues of legitimization. We critically analyze how discursive practices may valorize and legitimize slums as spaces for cultural production and consumption and the role of tourism in ordering, valuing, and visualizing vernacular cultural landscapes. The paper examines the case of favelas in Rio de Janeiro open to tourist visitation. Using as sources 79 articles from virtual media outlets (a mainstream, hegemonic newspaper, and a popular grassroots publication), official social media accounts, and tourism policies, we leverage Foucauldian discourse analysis and scrutinized the data, drawing insights on three categories of legitimization: authorization, rationalization, and moral evaluation. Our main findings show that tourism is often portrayed as a justification for securitization policies, as well as for fiscalization and formalization processes. Tourists were perceived to have authority in evaluating and valorizing slums’ cacophonic landscape beyond the evaluations of hegemonic social and political elites, which makes for a potential avenue of legitimization. However, in employing a more critical scope, two questions resonate: (1) who benefits from the valorization of slums’ cultural capital and, (2) who decides on the social validity of emergent cultural elements?
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AbstractNature-based tourism in the desert can play an important role in reconnecting people with nature. Tourist experiences are influenced by imaginaries as well as the spiritual and aesthetic values of the landscape, promoting a new identity through a sense of transformation and belonging. These Cultural Ecosystem Services (CES) shaped as well by geopolitical imaginaries have as yet remained unexplored. They are important, new contributions to the body of research. How do German-speaking group and cruise tourists imagine the desert and how do they experience the cultural values of the dry ecosystem ‘in situ’? Primarily, in-depth interviews and travel ethnography were applied along with photography and content analysis of marketing material. To support these methods, a survey was distributed to mega-cruise tourists visiting the desert. Results show that group tourists in particular romanticize an imaginary, quiet, empty place similar to a sacred space, promoting self-transformation, a deep connection with the space and sociality with nature and/or with others. Their experiences also enhance empathy for the natural environment through ‘self-immersion’, creating profound well-being. While in the desert, group tourists engage in a multi-sensuous immersion and spiritual transformation, while cruise tourists enjoy an adventure experience. 74% of the cruise tourists enjoyed being in a completely different environment. But, due to noise, overcrowding and built infrastructure, some CES such as silence, finding solitude and viewing of the sands are diminished. A proposed framework takes into account the influence of geopolitical imaginaries and the spiritual and aesthetic values of the desert leading to the core spiritual experience. Such a framework can justify the long-term protection of the desert, and its high cultural value, as well as an environmental ethic.
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Abstract
This exploratory study presents Greenland as a case of a peripheral destination that complicates and contradicts global definitions of sustainable tourism. Using empirical data that consists of 39 semi-structured interviews, the author employs an inductive approach to discuss the conceptualisation of sustainable tourism according to local stakeholders in Greenland. The key points of conflict surrounding sustainable tourism in Greenland are identified and discussed, with a focus on how local stakeholders contradict each other, and on how the debates prevalent at the local scale can inform tourism development in other peripheral places. The paper contributes to academic literature by offering a deeper understanding of how core-periphery dynamics can influence perceptions of and priorities for sustainable tourism in peripheral places. It benefits the industry by exposing the main debates around the issue of sustainable tourism in Greenland, which can be used to inform the nation’s tourism development.
AbstractDiaspora tourism has become a significant form of transnational mobility that underlies many issues in the field of tourism and migration studies. Despite a considerable body of research that focuses on tourism motivations of home return and its social functions in collective identities and meaning-making, the political roles of diaspora tourism in shaping ethnic bonds and transnational networks need to be further acknowledged. Since 2014, a group of Muslims from Kazakhstan have travelled to China to celebrate their return after over 140 years of displacement from their homeland. Interviews with local officials and residents in Xi’an illustrate the political factors of host governments and local Muslim communities in organising the formal group tourism events. Unlike informal and personal travel, such officially organised diaspora tourism does not serve as a simple act of homecoming. The host governments have used it as a political tool to shape transnational networks and domestic ethnic governance under the discourse of ‘Belt and Road’ initiative. To fulfil this political agenda, the official narrative of diaspora tourism involves a process of remembering and forgetting, and the creation of itineraries that authenticates the imagined ancestral homeland while effacing the unsettled past. The itinerary of tourism events and related cultural practices focuses on a shared ethno-religious identity and common interests of cultural and business exchange between the selected diaspora representatives and host communities. However, due to its political nature, the sustainability of diaspora tourism does not only relate to funding and resource management. Such organised diaspora tourism is also closely associated with the shifting ethnic and migration policies of the host nation-state.
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Abstract
Despite existing in practice, as well as in other social science and policy literature, narcotourism has not appeared in tourism journals, and its full scope remains unarticulated. This paper aims to introduce narcotourism to a broad audience of tourism scholars, provide its conceptual foundations, and guide subsequent tourism scholarship on this topic. Looking beyond writings that have previously focused on the consumption of drugs during travel and tourism experiences, this paper presents a conceptual framework distinguishing six different tourism-related activities encompassed by the term narcotourism: consumption-oriented narcotourism, production-oriented narcotourism, acquisition-oriented narcotourism, dark heritage narcotourism, narcotrafficker tourism and emulatory narcotourism. This framework describes the hallmark characteristics of each form of narcotourism, identifies linkages between these forms of narcotourism and other areas of tourism scholarship, and concludes by suggesting a future research agenda for narcotourism. Given a long history of association between tourism activities and drug consumption, shifting legal dynamics regarding drug use, insights emerging from related disciplines, and narcotourism’s coexistence alongside myriad forms of tourism already explored by tourism scholars, this paper provides a timely foundation for future research on narcotourism within tourism studies.
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Abstract
Tourism is undergoing major changes in the advent of social media networks and other new forms of digital technology. This has affected a number of tourism related processes including marketing, destination making, travel experiences and visitor feedback but also various tourism subsectors, like hospitality, transportation and tour operators. More radical than the change in technology itself, the COVID-19 pandemic has hastened questions of digitality and virtuality to the fore in tourism (and not just there). An already substantial and growing body of research has investigated these developments, both regarding tourism processes and industry subsectors and it has grown substantially since the pandemic. Still, largely overlooked are the effects of these changes on questions concerning inequality. This paper provides an overview of recent discussions on this topic, presenting an analysis of extant material and provides ideas of where to take the research further.
AbstractOlympic cities increasingly draw on New Urban Tourism (NUT) principles as part of a host’s strategic tourism development objectives. By doing so, governments and event organisers seek to entangle visitors with local urban, cultural and everyday life. Yet, empirical evidence generated across previous Olympic cities illustrates how hosts often fail to encourage such host–guest interactivity. This is a critical tourism geography and consumption issue repeatedly identified across host city contexts. To address the disconnect between inbound urban tourists and host communities, Tokyo 2020 explicitly placed NUT objectives at the heart of official bid and policy promises. On the basis of a 33-day walking ethnography in Tokyo as well as 26 interviews and documentary analysis, our work details a set of strategically planned and creative NUT initiatives deployed by the public, private sector, and host community in the lead up to the Tokyo 2020 Games. Some of these include state-funded walking tours and city volunteer guide networks; tourist boards promoting local-grassroots festivals; through to joint collaborations between local tourist boards and ‘Timeout’ to produce local guides – constituting a productive step forward for showcasing the local culture outside tourist bubbles. Furthermore, we illustrate how Tokyo’s urban landscape closely intertwines tourist bubbles with local neighbourhoods affording a potential balance between staged and spontaneous host–guest interaction. Our conclusions emphasise the conceptual, social, and economic implications for strategic planning and implementation of NUT in Olympic cities and its potential contribution to inclusive and sustainable development.
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Abstract
This paper draws on sustainability and ecotourism literature and aims to identify the deterrents to ecotourism development. The research opted to use Abaca Ecotourism Park, located in the Koroyanitu National Heritage Park in Western Viti Levu Fiji, as a case study. Three studies exploring management, local residents, and tourists’ perspectives were undertaken to determine the factors that deter from the further development of the selected ecotourism project. Study 1 conducted an interview with the management team of the ecotourism park to gain insights into the factors that influenced the project’s development. Study 2 was undertaken with the villagers who reside in the region where the ecotourism park is located. Longitudinal secondary research covering 20 years of data was used in Study 3 to identify tourists’ visitation and consumption patterns. Some findings were consistent across the three studies. The results reveal a range of deterrents to the ecotourism development, including infrastructure constraints, issues related to inequality, overdependence on neighbouring countries, and political vulnerabilities. The implications for the literature and practitioners conclude the paper.
Jaeyeon Choe talks to Raoul Bianchi about The Critical Turn
Abstract
In many respects Tourism Studies appears to be increasingly divided between the unquestioning embrace of the market, on the one hand, and questions of discourse, culture, and representation on the other. This apparent rift also conceals a growing convergence around the significance of ‘culture’ and cultural analyses in tourism, brought about by greater engagement with post-structural theory and a concomitant retreat from political economy. Accordingly, this paper evaluates the scope and potential for a revitalized radical critique of tourism that engages with issues of power, inequality and development processes in tourism whilst acknowledging the significance of cultural diversities. Some commentators, such as Aitchison, suggest the ‘cultural turn’ and, more broadly, the emergence of a sub-discipline of critical Tourism Studies, has shaken up the conceptual and theoretical foundations of tourism research and, in so doing, has delivered new insights into the discursive, symbolic and performative realms of tourism and tourist experiences. Whilst this has perhaps resulted in a more nuanced appreciation of the social and cultural dimensions of power manifest in tourism (particularly into its dominant discourses and representative frameworks), the emphasis on the latter at the expense of production and material aspects of tourism and mobility, has meant that tourism often appears detached from the forces of structural power that characterize twenty-first century capitalism and globalization. In response, this paper draws on Marxist political economy and a historical materialist method of inquiry, in order to both critique the ‘critical turn’ and to reflect upon tourism's relationship to the economic and political relations of power in the contemporary global (dis)order. In doing so, this paper puts forward the case that tourism research needs to further engage with some of the major themes and theoretical debates related to processes of globalization, capitalism and structural power if it is to engage with issues of substantive import related to critical scholarship and social justice.
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Mary interviews Daniel about place-making.
Abstract
Little research has been conducted on the place-making agency of farm tourism. Yet farm tourism is an increasingly important tourism activity that yields many economic, sociocultural, and environmental benefits. To shed more light on this subject, participant observation of, and semi-structured interviews with, farmers and visitors at farms on the Hawaiian island of O’ahu were conducted. The results revealed that through farm tourism, the tangible and intangible assets of the farms became recreational and educational resources, infusing the farms with new meanings and values and transforming them from agricultural productionscapes into places that were also consumptionscapes. The physical environment surrounding the farm, farm visitors and their externalities, community involvement with the farm, and the farmers’ entrepreneurialism and desire to educate the public about agriculture and perpetuate their traditions, emerged as place-making influences. These findings corroborated those of other inquiries on place-making in tourism, facilitating the theorization of this process. Conceptual models of the posited antecedents, processes, and outcomes of place-making related to farm tourism, and tourism in general, are presented, and recommendations are advanced for further research that will contribute to theorization in this area.
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Afiya Holder talks to Michelle McLeod about her Special Issue.
Abstract
The purpose of this Special Issue is to frame island tourism research while bringing to the forefront the myriad of challenges facing islands to develop successful tourism destinations. Islands are special geographic features spread all across the globe, and tourism has been an important economic activity for many of these often resource constrained territories. If tourism is a means to economic prosperity, then island destinations need to explore several considerations and build resilient tourism economies that can overcome external shocks. While tourism researchers have noted island tourism research in book and article titles, when addressing the occurrence of tourism in islands, the body of work surrounding tourism in islands requires framing, as a wide array of concepts has been explored including sustainability, resilience, development, economies, impact, destinations, trends, planning and prospects. With such variety, island tourism research has seemed to lack direction or form. Herein, this Special Issue seeks to address this by framing island tourism research around the themes of Lifecycles, System Decline and Resilience. Tourism growth and development occur as a process over a period of time and this flow can be illustrated using tourism arrivals. Ongoing flows of visitors are expected to take a particular course and understanding changes in that course relates to identification of system decline. Finally, building resilience means gaining the capacity to adapt to and successfully manage changes in the dimensions and nature of tourism.
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Steve talks to Liz about Backpackers
Abstract
While backpacker social identity remains an important theme among tourism researchers, its influence on sustainable behaviors has received limited attention. We examine the impact of backpacker social identity on sustainable behavior based on both a structural modeling approach and regression analysis. A survey of 400 backpackers is conducted within Cape Coast, a major tourism hub in Ghana, West Africa. Supporting seven out of eight hypotheses based on PLS-SEM, social identity has a positive effect on sustainable behavior, which in turn positively affects satisfaction suggesting that the more backpackers identify themselves with this group the more sustainably they behave. Additionally, social identity has a negative impact on unsustainable behavior which negatively impacts behavioral intentions. These findings suggest that individuals who identify themselves as backpackers are less likely to engage in unsustainable behavior. Findings contribute to a deeper understanding of the nexus between backpacker social identity and sustainable behavior.
Mary Mostafanezhad talks with Dean MacCannell about the concept of authenticity.
1. Where does the question of authenticity originate?
2. What do you think are some of the biggest challenges of the authenticity concept?
3 What do you think are biggest misconceptions about authenticity in tourism research/among tourism researchers?
4 The interest in dichotomizing authentic/inauthentic persists in the industry and in much academic research. What are your views on this?
5 Why do you think tourism researchers often argue that authenticity is difficult to define? What contributes to this complexity?
6 Why do yuo think authenticty has had such a long shelf-life in tourism studies?
Joseph Cheer talks to Ugljesa Stankov about mindfulness.
Abstract
This is a follow-up to the study ‘A mindful shift: an opportunity for mindfulness-driven tourism in a post-pandemic world’, which was published in Tourism Geographies. The original paper advocated that, during a major crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the focus could be put on (more) mindful tourists as a driver of mindful change for the global tourism industry. In this follow-up study, we discuss the mindfulness-based approaches as feasible, low-cost solutions to reduce negative psychological effects in many tourism settings as well as a strategy to ensure the tourism industry’s pro-longed sustainability during and after the pandemic. We start with the underlying mechanism of mindfulness practices as a technique to cope with the pandemic and, from a managerial standpoint, discuss the different roles of mindfulness within the envisioned courses of tourism development in a post-COVID-19 future.
Joseph Cheers talks to Johanna Loehr about climate change risk.
Abstract
Transformational system change is required to respond to the current climate emergency and the COVID-19 induced structural break presents an opportunity to progress such change. While the tourism industry accepts the need for change, how this may look like remains unclear. This article contributes to identifying pathways by presenting critical reflections on the research process and findings from a three-year research project on reducing climate change risk in Vanuatu. The approach is anchored in systems thinking and draws on the concept of leverage points. Seven points are identified for intervening in the tourism system to reduce climate change risk and achieve varying levels of systemic change. Each is explored in the context of Vanuatu before its broader relevance is discussed. The findings highlight the importance of engaging with deeper influences of risk and unsustainable system outcomes. This has implications for how decision-makers approach crisis management and what ‘tourism recovery’ means, especially when considering that system resilience might stand in the way of more profound transformational change required to address long-term risks.
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Steve speaks with Andy about his research on colo(u)r.
Abstract
Tourist experiences are the product of a temporally extended series of events and activities. The temporal distance from actual experiences distorts the recalled evaluation of their experiences so tourists photograph to record their experiences and consume the place. Tourist photographs build a positive image of a destination when they effectively evoke positive feelings (i.e. affective image) and provide clear information about the physical and functional characteristics (i.e. cognitive image) of the destination. Despite its strong evocative power in constructing a meaning and assessing the place and experience, colour receives little attention in existing tourist photograph literature. Assuming colour as a proxy of tourist experiences, I explore whether, and how, colour in tourist photographs represents tourist experiences and destination consumption. The psychophysical paradigm, which proposes that the quality of the scenery or landscape reflects not only its intrinsic attributes but also the eyes of the beholder, provides a theoretical foundation. A purposely developed colour extraction and analysis tool identifies colour distribution patterns from 2,131 tourist photographs and Leximancer discovers word-like concepts (e.g. regular nouns and adjectives) from the corresponding comments and tags collected from the Facebook of Queensland Tourism Board in Australia. Findings reveal five distinctive groups based on colour distribution patterns and associated concepts. For example, tourist photographs of Fraser Coast show dominantly blue and secondarily orange whereas photographs of Sunshine Coast show balanced blue and orange. Tourist photographs from the destinations sharing similar geographic characteristics often display dissimilar colour patterns. It suggests that destinations can be grouped together by colour patterns and conceptual similarity, instead of geographical characteristics. The results further support that colours in tourist photographs are a significant representamen of tourist experiences and destination image.
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Jamie speaks with Phoebe about her recent research.
Abstract
Promotion of volunteer tourism is couched within notions of ‘giving back’, drawing on affective sentiments of ‘care’, ‘compassion’ and ‘empathy’, reinforced by neo-colonial and neoliberal notions of developmental aid. It is not surprising then, that scholars are turning to theories of affect to make sense of the embodied, emotional aspects of the volunteering experience. We build on this emerging research trajectory by arguing that in drawing attention to the unequal geographies of international volunteering, the complexities and nuances of affect and emotion demand an engagement with theories that are more attuned to ambiguity, in order to open up dialogue for multiple possibilities. We critically engage with extant theorisations of affect as autonomous in volunteer tourism encounters to explore these possibilities. However we find a tendency within the conceptualisations of affect as autonomous (re)creates binaries, albeit in distinctive forms - with a focus on possibility - to the detriment of power. We therefore turn to decolonial feminist contributions to understand subjectivity, positionality and the pivotal role of the body in research in non-binary ways. We use this framing to reflexively re-engage with fieldwork six years on from a volunteer tourism site in Ecuador to demonstrate the nuances and complexities of theorising the affective aspects of volunteer tourism encounters. We focus this analysis around three key themes that arose in this re-engagement with the fieldwork: i) vulnerability and unlearning ii) critical intimacy and iii) affective closures. We conclude by arguing that the affective spaces in volunteer tourism are at once bound up in, and shaped by, the larger processes of neoliberalism and neo-colonial legacies, while at the same time, they contain borderland encounters of intersubjective relationalities and moments of vulnerability, care, critical intimacy and emergent decolonising connections.
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Guillaume Tiberghien discusses his work on gulag tourism in Kazakhstan.
Abstract
To date, there has been limited research concerning the methodology and approach to Gulag heritage and how it has been memorialised and commodified for tourism purposes. The recent cultural commodification of the Soviet past and the development of participatory visitor experiences at Gulag museums in Kazakhstan necessitate to advance understandings of the roles authenticity and performance play in the management of Gulag museum practices in the country. Using a qualitative case study research approach based on a combination of semi-structured interviews with stakeholders involved in the development of Gulag tourism including senior management of museums, museum guides, policy-makers, tourism operators, local NGOs and experts in Soviet Gulag heritage, direct observations and qualitative document analysis of two Gulag museums and sites in Kazakhstan, the commodification and management of Soviet Gulag heritage is explored. Results reveal that beyond objects on display and images regarded as interpretive illustrations that allow visitors to connect with the past and verify history, dioramas and staged performances re-enacting various elements of the Gulag life are used as immersive and emotional tools to accentuate the ‘dark’ atmosphere of the epoch and induce a more impactful and participatory visitor experience. The findings contribute to literature on authenticity and performance in Gulag tourism by examining the delicate question of the extent to which stakeholders involved in the management of the Gulag tragedy can offer meaningful visitor experiences that are historically accurate and protect the dignity of the victims while adapting to the dynamic roles of museums as heritage and education sites.
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Joseph speaks with Linus about his recent research.
AbstractHigh hopes are pinned on tourism and its catalytic potential to foster growth in remote rural areas. In the Zambezi region of northeastern Namibia, tourism plays a key role in the design of community-based natural resource management (CBNRM) programmes for nature conservation. Local communities form conservancies, small village-based entities of bottom-up nature conservation activities. These conservancies are granted rights for the use of natural resources, which are then transferred to tourism investors and trophy-hunting companies. Thus, conservancies partly determine tourism’s developmental outcomes on a local level. By applying a global production network (GPN) approach, the objective is, first, to assess how much of the turnover generated in the Zambezi region remains in the region and, second, to examine the extent to which conservancies, as newly formed local institutions, enable communities to capture value from tourism. A mixed-methods approach is applied, using a business survey, qualitative interview data and financial reports which allow a calculation of value capture. Roughly 20% of the value generated by the tourism industry in the Zambezi region is captured locally. In addition, conservancies play a key role in the GPN, acting as hinges between the local and the global: conservancies are involved in the production of the resource, mediate in strategic coupling processes and use regulatory and bargaining power to capture value. Conservancies therefore have the potential to increase local gains from tourism. On the one hand, these results underline the importance of local institutions for value capture in GPN analysis. On the other hand, as local linkages are limited and the level of local ownership is low, policies are needed that ensure the participation of local residents beyond direct transfer payments from private enterprises to communities.
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Jaeyeon Choe speaks with Kathleen Adams about her recent reesearch.
AbstractClassic Anglo-European definitions of tourism as recreational travel have hindered more nuanced locally-grounded understandings of travel phenomena elsewhere in the world. Moreover, contemporary global labor and educational mobility have produced novel travel forms and behaviors that straddle the Western categories of “tourist” and “migrant.” The purpose of this analysis is to examine Toraja (Indonesia) perspectives on travel which can be instructive for correcting the binary divides between tourism and migration that have long plagued dominant Western models of travel. Drawing from data culled from long-term qualitative fieldwork and online research, I convey three ethnographically-grounded stories of Toraja migrants on return visits to their homeland in order to destabilize Western-centrism in tourism studies. Research findings underscore contemporary travel understandings and practices that do not fit neatly with Western mutually exclusive categories of “tourism” and “migration.” These Toraja practices encompass local historical patterns of travel for experiential/financial enrichment (merantau), migration and tourism. This study also advances tourism scholarship by highlighting the importance of local knowledge and demonstrating the value of ethnographic storytelling as a scholarly strategy for destabilizing orthodox Western-centric theoretical understands of tourism. The global significance of this place-based research is that tourism studies can be enriched by widening our lenses to also consider emigrants on return visits to their homelands.
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Joseph interviews Kiran Shinde about his recent research.
AbstractReligious tourism refers to contemporary patterns of travel to sacred places and has taken many forms owing to different motivations of visitors. Researchers have discussed motivation, activities, and behaviour of visitors in framing what constitutes religious in religious tourism, but little attention is given to spatial manifestations of religious practice. Towing this direction, I examine the significance of religious practices to spatial arrangements in Hindu pilgrim towns in India by juxtaposing the concept of “spatial practice” from Lefebvre’s theory of production of space with an indigenous approach called the “sacred-complex model”. A fieldwork based collective study of six pilgrim-towns, namely, Alandi, Jejuri, Pandharpur, Tuljapur, Shegaon, and Shirdi, which represent a full spectrum of religious tourism destinations in India, provides a sound comparison of similarities and differences in spatial practice of religious tourism. In this analysis, four themes emerge: (1) the engagement of religious actors in religious rituals and performances over space defines the boundaries and territories of the sacred and religious; (2) the performance area of religious practice has reduced from traditional pilgrimage landscape to specific routes providing access to the main attraction which is a built structure (shrine/temple); (3) religiousness is also created by non-religious and seemingly “profane” commercial activities; (4) without the explicit expression of religiousness there is no opportunity for religious tourism or any other form of tourism. They are organized and presented following different principles from attractions elsewhere in the world, and that they are more important in the lives of the Indian people who visit and maintain them than they are to the Western tourist. Using spatial lens has reinforced that religious as a prefix, is a stronger and an essential concept for religious tourism in the non-western context of India, that needs to be factored in for sustainable management of religious tourism destinations.
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In this episode, Rosa Codina talks about her research published in Tourism Geographies emanating from her PhD.
Codina, R., Lugosi, P., and Bowen, D. (2022). 'Place, power, and tourism in value-creation: contesting the plaza in Pisac, Peru', Tourism Geographies, 24(4-5):pp. 879-901.
Abstract
Place, power, and tourism intersect as disparate actors attempt to create and extract different forms of value from shared spatial resources. In Pisac, Peru, various stakeholders pursue their interests through and in relation to the plaza. Participant observation and interviews show how traders, residents, tour guides and municipal agents make competing claims over place through their engagement with evolving tourism practices. Power is exercised through physical and symbolic visibility, tactical use of expertise and control of information, temporal and spatial orchestration of mobility, acts of micro-aggression leading to exclusion and invisibility, coupled with unfulfilled political promises and inaction regarding governance. These practices and strategies help to construct and extricate economic, social, and political value from intersections of tourism and place.
Joseph Cheers speaks with Ethan Bottone about his research inot the Green Book.
Abstract
Tourist homes, private residences that rented rooms to traveling guests, were once a popular form of tourist accommodation in the United States. Reaching their peak in the early 20th century, tourist homes largely became obsolete as hotels and motels were able to provide relatively inexpensive and standardized forms of hospitality. As a result of their meteoric rise and fall, and the private nature of the lodging, tourist homes have been neglected in studies of historical tourism and hospitality. However, tourist homes occupied an important position in providing welcome and other forms of hospitality to travelers, particularly Black Americans, in the first half of the 20th century, and this role deserves to be recovered and recognized. An exploration of tourist homes listed in the Green Book, a Black American-centric travel guide published during the Jim Crow Era, reveals that tourist homes not only lodged travelers overnight, but also significantly contributed to forms of mobile resistance against white supremacy. Specifically, through a conceptualization of hospitality as resistance, tourist homes enabled opportunities for Black Americans to gain economic and social capital through processes of welcoming and establishing ‘Black counterpublic spaces’. Particularly through constructions of home-like environments, tourist homes presented spaces that served as moorings within larger mobility networks, countering white supremacist attempts to immobilize and disadvantage Black Americans. Given these contributions to resistance and Black mobility, tourist homes deserve to be included in studies of tourism, hospitality, and Black geographies as important sites of welcoming, resistance, and resilience.
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Stephen Pratt interviews Dawn Gibson about their research in Samoa.
ABSTRACT
Tourism is a global phenomenon yet non-Western travel and tourism mobilities are under-researched and lack theoretical development. In the South Pacific, a region which is increasingly receiving geopolitical attention, there is substantial knowledge of inbound tourism but outbound and domestic forms of travel are less known. To understand the travel and tourism mobilities of Samoans, a concurrent mixed methods design of surveys supplemented by interviews with both urban and rural Samoans was employed. Samoan understandings of travel and tourism are expressed via the concept of malaga, which has a range of meanings including ‘migration’, ‘movement’ or ‘travel back and forth’. For Samoans, travel was for cultural and familial purposes, including the maintenance of cultural bonds through fa’alavelave (traditional obligations) and visiting friends and relatives (VFR). The migration of Samoans to various Pacific countries such as Australia, New Zealand and the USA has generated more need for travel and has helped to make mobility a routine aspect of Samoan social life. The travel mobilities of both urban and rural Samoans were influenced by a mix of cultural and familial obligations, leisure and tourism goals, and work-related purposes, blurring the lines between tourism and other forms of mobility. This paper advances knowledge of Samoan forms of travel and tourism mobility, providing important insights into the travel practices of a Pacific Islander people at a time when the South Pacific is becoming a site of intensifying geopolitical competition.
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In Invited to Witness, Jennifer Lynn Kelly explores the significance of contemporary solidarity tourism across Occupied Palestine. Examining the relationships among race, colonialism, and movement-building in spaces where tourism and military occupation operate in tandem, Kelly argues that solidarity tourism in Palestine functions as both political strategy and emergent industry. She draws from fieldwork on solidarity tours in Palestine/Israel and interviews with guides, organizers, community members, and tourists, asking what happens when tourism is marketed as activism and when anticolonial work functions through tourism. Palestinian organizers, she demonstrates, have refashioned the conventions of tourism by extending invitations to tourists to witness Palestinian resistance and the effects of Israeli state practice on Palestinian land and lives. In so doing, Kelly shows how Palestinian guides and organizers wrest from Israeli control the capacity to invite and the permission to narrate both their oppression and their liberation.
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Jaeyeon Choe speaks with Daniel Olsen about his research
Ce Qu, Chaozhi Zhang, Shiwei Shen & Daniel H. Olsen (2022) Heritage conservation and communities’ sense of deprivation in tourism: the case of the Hani community in Yunnan, China, Tourism Geographies, DOI: 10.1080/14616688.2021.2016936
Abstract
Communities play a critical role in the development and maintenance of sustainable heritage tourism. However, conflicts often arise when these communities are ignored or marginalized in the heritage tourism development process. This paper examines whether the community located within the Honghe Hani Rice Terraces, a World Heritage Site in China, views the designation and subsequent tourism development as beneficial or not. The findings show that there are significant differences in opinion between the local Hani people and non-Local Hani and outsiders who live in the heritage area. The local Hani feel a greater sense of deprivation due to de-empowerment and economic inequalities as compared with non-Local Hani and outsiders. This deprivation has reduced their motivation to conserve their own heritage, while the non-local Hani feel a greater sense of gain and a newfound appreciation for their personal and collective heritage identity. Frequent interactions between the two groups have led to local Hani people resisting the heritage preservation responsibilities enforced upon them.
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Jamie Gillen interviews Niamh Espiner about her research on camping in New Zealand.
You can reference it here:
Niamh Espiner, Emma J. Stewart, Helen Fitt, Shannon Page & Stephen Espiner (2021) From tents and maps to vans and apps: Exploring camping mobilities, Tourism Geographies, DOI: 10.1080/14616688.2021.1964588
Abstract
Mobile camping in a tent or vehicle is an increasingly popular way for tourists to experience place and movement as part of their leisure travel. Allowing tourists to save money, stay close to attractions, and maximise flexibility in their travel, camping provides a convenient accommodation option for domestic and international tourists alike. In the past, camping research has often been conceptualised using theories related to place. Contemporary camping can be interpreted as increasingly mobile in both the movement of people and information, which complements traditional conceptualisations of camping in the literature and in management approaches. Through 17 exploratory qualitative interviews with camping managers in the Mackenzie and Waitaki Districts of New Zealand, this research considered camping manager perspectives on the increasing mobility of camping in New Zealand. Qualitative analysis of these interviews, using Cresswell’s mobilities concepts as a framework, revealed a dynamic camping landscape inextricably enmeshed with complex political meanings about campers and movement. The findings allow the characterisation of campers as Self-Sufficient Spenders, Basic Budgeters, and Kiwi Classics—each representing distinct profiles in relation to mobilities notions of rhythm and speed. Subsequently, we suggest that the increasing mobility of camping needs to be acknowledged both in management approaches and future conceptualisations of camping.
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Stephen Pratt interviews Denis Tolkach about their paper: Globalisation and cultural change in Pacific Island countries: the role of tourism
Which can be found here:
Denis Tolkach & Stephen Pratt (2021) Globalisation and cultural change in Pacific Island countries: the role of tourism, Tourism Geographies, 23:3, 371-396, DOI: 10.1080/14616688.2019.1625071
Abstract
Globalisation is often perceived as a threat to the preservation of traditional cultures. There are various approaches to understanding the impact of globalisation on culture. Pieterse’s three paradigms of globalisation and culture, clash of civilisations, McDonaldisation and hybridisation, provide a useful theoretical foundation for understanding how tourism impacts culture. The three paradigms of globalisation assess cultural change holistically. Cultural change in Pacific Island countries (PIC) due to globalisation, especially tourism’s role, in this change, is the focus. Data are sourced via interviews with various tourism stakeholders from Fiji, Tonga and Cook Islands. Tourism is only one driver of cultural change. Other forces include mobilities, migration, diaspora, geopolitical change, technology and popular culture. Examples of the clash of civilisations paradigm include geopolitical changes resulting in different tourism markets and the imitation effect from diaspora and tourists. Commodification of cultural performance for both tourist and local consumption and use of popular culture, for example the animated film Moana, are viewed as McDonaldisation of culture. Participants’ reflections on ongoing evolution of culture including the integration of PIC into the world economy, through increased mobilities and technologies, exemplify hybridisation. In general, the three PIC are found to be culturally resilient. Culture of these PIC is resilient with Pacific Islanders maintaining agency over change, however the impact of various globalisation factors demand effort in preserving culture in the long term.
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Jamie Gillen speaks to Julia Giddy about her recent research on uber in South Africa.
You can read all about it here:
Julia K. Giddy (2021) Uber and employment in the Global South – not-so-decent work, Tourism Geographies, DOI: 10.1080/14616688.2021.1931955
AbstractDue to its global standards and brand recognition, Uber has become an important form of transportation and is now found throughout the world. It has played a role in transforming local mobilities in many cities, particularly those lacking efficient public transportation options. Uber has played a particularly important role in increasing mobilities in places with security concerns, such as South Africa, due to their competitive rates, the accountability of drivers, and their innovative security features. Uber promotes itself as a peer-to-peer platform that connects drivers to riders, calling drivers ‘partners’, and vehemently dismissing any claims that it is an employer. The company advocates the ability of Uber to increase economic upliftment, particularly in the Global South. South Africa has staggering urban un-and-underemployment rates and, therefore, Uber can be seen as a potential tool for job creation or a means of supplementing low and inconsistent wages. A critical analysis of these claims demonstrates the manner in which Uber has emerged as an employment mechanism in South Africa within a ‘decent work’ framework. The findings are based on an analysis of detailed questionnaires distributed to Uber drivers based in South Africa as well as ethnographic research. It also draws on secondary sources, such as driver forums, newspaper articles and the Uber South Africa website. The findings demonstrate the many challenges faced by Uber drivers such as long working hours, low fares, subcontracting of drivers and concerns over driver safety. The paper introduces primary research in the form of driver surveys and questions the discourse propagated by the company as a mechanism for economic upliftment. In particular, the results show that working for Uber, according to these results, should not be considered decent work.
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In this episode, Jamie Gillen interviews Jaeyeon Choe about her publication: Migration, tourism and social sustainability
The full article can be found here:
Choe, J., & Lugosi, P. (2022). Migration, tourism and social sustainability. Tourism Geographies, 24(1), 1-8.
Abstract
In practice, the distinctions between tourism and migration are blurred. Tourism often drives various forms of mobility, and an international workforce is central to maintaining functioning tourism economies. This piece sketches out some critical themes and issues concerning intersections of tourism and migration, considering their relationships with and impacts on social sustainability. It highlights the contradictory ways in which tourism and migration are approached as political, social and economic phenomena. Whereas tourism is often viewed more positively, migration is recurrently politicised, and seen to challenge social systems and cultural values, despite the reliance of tourism on migrant labour. The discussion outlines the relevance of social sustainability to studies of migration and tourism. These include the need to assess how tourism planning, development and governance of tourism impacts on the sustainability of communities, which consequently influences attitudes towards migrants and tourists. It also reflects on how migrant-local connections may evolve, creating opportunities for positive, symbiotic co-existence, alongside exploitative relationships. It concludes by inviting further studies examining new forms and interactions between migration and tourism, which considers how research can contribute to greater social sustainability.
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Joseph Cheer interview Revati Pandya about her recent research.
Revati’s research and practice are in resource governance and community dynamics in India. Since 2011 she has worked in natural resource and protected area contexts, examining questions of local engagement with resources, forest rights, conservation governance and markets. Her work is grounded in understanding contexts, identities, positionalities and community dynamics in relation to structural processes. Her doctoral research was in political ecology of (eco)tourism and intersectional community dynamics at Corbett Tiger Reserve (Wageningen University and Research, Netherlands).
She is currently a faculty in the School of Development at the Azim Premji University in Bangalore, India.
The full paper can be read here:
Revati Pandya, Hari Shankar Dev, Nitin D. Rai & Robert Fletcher (2022) Rendering land touristifiable: (eco)tourism and land use change, Tourism Geographies, DOI: 10.1080/14616688.2022.2077425
Abstract
Critical research concerning ecotourism has revealed the activity’s socio-economic impacts, including low-wage employment-based dependencies for many rural communities. While these dynamics are important, a crucial aspect of the ecotourism industry that falls outside this conventional sort of dependency is land use dynamics, specifically land use change, sales and entrepreneurship. We examine these dynamics in Corbett Tiger Reserve, India, where promotion of (eco)tourism since the 1990s has influenced significant changes in local land use. These changes were initially facilitated by outsiders buying land and setting up hotels and resorts in villages adjoining the Reserve. Empirical research reveals that while this initial boom of outsiders buying land has waned, land owning villagers are now setting up tourism enterprises on their own land, thereby diversifying land use from agriculture to tourism. Critical agrarian research has shown that material and symbolic factors influence farmers’ decision-making regarding land use change. An agrarian studies perspective thus facilitates a nuanced understanding of tourism-related land use diversification and change. By bringing agrarian and ecotourism studies approaches together here, we contribute to both by emphasising the importance of (eco)tourism in agrarian change and of attention to land use change in ecotourism studies to understand how rural people negotiate and navigate (eco)tourism in relation to land use. We also contribute to tourism geographies more broadly by highlighting how land use decision-making shapes local spaces in the course of ecotourism development. We draw attention to the broader processes of and impacts of ecotourism that shift generational rural land use influenced by changing values of land outside a protected area. Rendering land touristifiable deepens villagers’ dependence on the market and alienates them from their land. Ecotourism commodifies nature, and we show that this commodification extends to rural land outside of ecotourism zones per se.
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Mary Mostafanezhad speaks to Heike Schänzel about Sexual politics in the field: gendered research spaces in tourism geographies.
You can read the full article here:
Schänzel, H. A., & Porter, B. A. (2022). Sexual politics in the field: gendered research spaces in tourism geographies. Tourism Geographies, 1-19. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2022.2077426
Abstract
Sexual violence and harassment in field research is an uncomfortable and under-discussed phenomenon in the social sciences. Tourism geographies, being cross-cultural, often require solo fieldwork that exposes one’s gender in geographically remote locations. There is a pressing need to normalise the discussion of sexual politics in the field, specifically concerning occurrences of gender-associated risks in fieldwork and report on the unexpected physical and mental health risks for women researchers. This study takes a feminist theoretical lens to unpack the hidden dimensions of women engaged in ‘voluntary’ risk taking by conducting field research in male-dominated research environments. Taking an exploratory approach within an interpretivist paradigm, this study is based on the fieldwork experiences of 13 women from diverse cultural and academic backgrounds with the participants sharing their subjective realities of researching in tourism geographies. A thematic analysis revealed the two key themes of risk/perceived vulnerabilities and wellbeing/care in the field as paramount for field research spaces for women, along with 11 subthemes. Findings reaffirmed the political nature of tourism geographies fieldwork and the need to challenge sexual politics and patriarchal domination, including for LGBTQ researchers. Further, the results highlighted the intersectionality of race and gender of women’s experiences of sexual violence and other risks in the field. Thus, the findings suggest an urgent need to provide an imperative for fieldworker safety, wellbeing considerations, and alternative ways of researching.
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In this episode, Jaeyeon Choe interviews Tom Jones about his recent published paper on zoning in World Heritage Site.
The full paper can be found here:
Jones, T. E., Bui, H. T., & Ando, K. (2022). Zoning for world heritage sites: dual dilemmas in development and demographics. Tourism Geographies, 24(1), 33-55. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2020.1780631
Abstract
Since listing as a UNESCO World Heritage Site (WHS) in 1999, Hoi An Ancient Town in Vietnam has been transformed by tourism development with visitor numbers increasing more than sixteen-fold. Beyond positive economic impacts, tourism has generated considerable funds for conservation, with revenue assisting authentic restoration of the town’s historic center. However, tourism impacts have provoked criticism linked to social sustainability, examined in this paper using the core-and-buffer-zone principle - a neo-normative spatial planning framework. Our longitudinal, mixed-method analysis from development and demographic perspectives combines interviews and census data with spatial planning guidelines and maps. Findings show that architectural renovations, accompanied by stricter regulations and hierarchical World Heritage Site zoning, legitimized rapid development of Hoi An’s buffer zone in tandem with ‘museumification’ of the core, epitomized by the central clustering of traditional wooden architecture renovation projects. By 2010, population in the core had declined by 20% as ‘adaptive re-use’ of heritage buildings paved the way for conversion of private residences into shops or other services and the core transformed from living heritage into a tourism stage. Demographic and development trends reinforced the dual hierarchy, although attempts to mitigate museumification, including a series of craft villages around the perimeter, provided impetus for revitalization of the newly-expanded buffer zone. Our findings highlight certain implications of spatial zoning for social sustainability, pointing the way for better integration with adaptive re-use policies. Our study contributes to further the debate on social sustainability at a living heritage site by investigating the bipolarity between museumification of the core and concurrent development of the buffer zones. The implications of our study extend beyond the current context of developing Southeast Asia, as this paper draws parallels and expounds opportunities for more site-specific planning and management of World Heritage Sites.
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In this episode, Joseph Chee r interviews Eva Erdmenger about her recent publication on participatory destination governance.
Eva C. Erdmenger (PhD) is currently working as a research associate at the University of Trier (Germany) where she also started her academic career in Applied Human Geography with a focus on tourism geography. Afterwards, she completed her Master’s degree in Tourism Destination Development at Dalarna University (Sweden). As part of her Master’s thesis, Eva specialized in tourism governance. Back at the University of Trier, she completed her PhD research project on inclusive urban destination governance, community PROsilience, and socially sustainable tourism development. From April 2023, Eva will be open to new challenges and is looking forward to the next step of her carreer.
The full paper can be found here:
Eva C. Erdmenger (2022) The end of participatory destination governance as we thought to know it, Tourism Geographies, DOI: 10.1080/14616688.2022.2086904
AbstractIn response to rising anti-tourism movements, the role of residents in destination governance has experienced a revival in tourism research. Participatory destination governance approaches have been advocated as problem-solvers for increasing conflicts, yet their implementation is still lacking. Besides a considerable amount of positivist research drafting the best participatory governance model, the socially constructed perspective of those who are supposed to participate has been widely neglected until now. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to reveal residents’ views on participating in tourism activities and destination governance processes. In pursuit of this, a mixed qualitative research method of focus groups and photo elicitation has been deployed in Copenhagen and Munich in 2020 following a social constructionist epistemology. The findings confirm that residents are not willing to participate in destination governance per se due to a lack of time, access, awareness, prioritization, knowledge, qualification, and opportunities. At the same time, residents were interested in a socio-cultural exchange with like-minded tourists and are generally proud to share their city. Ultimately, the perspectives of residents on tourism should be considered for the implementation of an inclusive urban destination governance. Via psychological, political, and social empowerment, destination governance should foster residents’ (1) motivation to connect with other city users (including tourists); (2) opportunity to influence local tourism development if they are affected by it; and (3) ability to benefit from local tourism (at least indirectly). Ultimately, by understanding how and to what extent residents’ are actually willing to participate in tourism and its governance enables tourism professionals to proactively realize a more resilient destination development while mitigating potential social conflicts caused by the renaissance of (over)tourism.
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Joseph Cheer speaks to Loretta Bellato about her recent paper: Regenerative tourism: a conceptual framework leveraging theory and practice
The full paper can be read here:
Loretta Bellato, Niki Frantzeskaki & Christian A. Nygaard (2022) Regenerative tourism: a conceptual framework leveraging theory and practice, Tourism Geographies, DOI: 10.1080/14616688.2022.2044376
Abstract
The sustainable tourism development agenda is widely criticised for being co-opted to serve continual economic growth, driving environmental devastation and social inequalities. In response, calls for a fundamental paradigm shift have become louder. Subsequently, a novel approach has emerged, regenerative tourism, which belongs to a long lineage of regenerative development approaches drawing from Western science and Indigenous perspectives, knowledge systems and practices. The paper develops a conceptual framework consisting of five design dimensions and seven practice principles based on practitioner consultations and an appraisal of the theoretical and practical dimensions of regenerative tourism. Consequently, the conceptual framework offers practical guidance for tourism stakeholders working towards regenerative futures. Arguably, this is the most comprehensive review of regenerative tourism to date and contributes to scholarship through its examination of the transformational potential of the regenerative tourism paradigm and related approaches.
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In this episode, the editors and members of the editorial board discuss the tips and tricks of how to get published in Tourism Geographies.
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Welcome to the Tourism Geographies Podcast.
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