Socialising tourism for social and ecological justice after COVID-19

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic of 2019–2020 has the potential to transform the tourism industry as well as the context in which it operates. This global crisis in which travel, tourism, hospitality and events have been shut down in many parts of the world, provides an opportunity to uncover the possibilities in this historic transformative moment. A critical tourism analysis of these events briefly uncovers the ways in which tourism has supported neoliberal injustices and exploitation. The COVID-19 pandemic crisis may offer a rare and invaluable opportunity to rethink and reset tourism toward a better pathway for the future. ‘Responsible’ approaches to tourism alone, however, will not offer sufficient capacity to enable such a reset. Instead, such a vision requires a community-centred tourism framework that redefines and reorients tourism based on the rights and interests of local communities and local peoples. Theoretically, such an approach includes a way tourism could be ‘socialised’ by being recentred on the public good. This is essential for tourism to be made accountable to social and ecological limits of the planet.     

Regenerative tourism needs diverse economic practices

Abstract

Calls for a new relationship between tourism and capitalism have intensified as a result of COVID-19. The pandemic has exposed massive vulnerabilities in the tourism operating system, the effects of which have fallen unevenly across different groups and subsectors of tourism. Critics have been quick to point out capitalism’s emphasis on resource exploitation, growth and profit is to blame and that tourism destinations have never been encouraged to foster diverse economic practices which would enhance resilient communities and regenerative tourism. The diverse economies framework envisages the co-existence of capitalist, alternative capitalist and non-capitalist practices and provides a pathway to more resilient and regenerative tourism practices in tourism. Tourism industry cases are used to illustrate the innovation inherent in diverse economic practices (enterprise, exchange, labour, transactions, property etc.) and illustrate their natural resilience as a result. Post COVID-19, a regenerative tourism that incorporates diverse economic practices will guide tourism practices worldwide to withstand future exigencies.     

Post COVID-19 ecological and social reset: moving away from capitalist growth models towards tourism as Buen Vivir

Abstract

Tourism has been one of the industries most highly affected by COVID-19. The COVID-19 global pandemic is an ‘unprecedented crisis’ and has exposed the pitfalls of a hyper consumption model of economic growth and development. The scale of immediate economic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic has shattered the myth of ‘catch up development’ and ‘perpetual growth’. The Crisis has brought unintended degrowth, presenting opportunities for an economic and social ‘reset’. In terms of long-term thinking post COVID-19, it is time to change the parameters of how we imagine a trajectory going forward, to prefigure possibilities for contesting capitalist imperatives that ‘there is no alternative’. In relation to tourism, the pandemic provides an opportunity for reimaging tourism otherwise, away from exploitative models that disregard people, places, and the natural environment, and towards a tourism that has positive impacts. Non-western alternatives to neo-colonial and neoliberal capitalism, such the South American concept of ‘Buen Vivir’, can help us to shift priorities away from economic growth, towards greater social and environmental wellbeing, and meaningful human connections. Taking a Buen Vivir approach to tourism will continue the degrowth momentum, for transformative change in society within the earth’s physical limits. Yet Buen Vivir also redefines the parameters of how we understand ‘limits’. In limiting unsustainable practices in development and tourism, a focus on Buen Vivir actually creates growth in other areas, such as social and environmental wellbeing, and meaningful human connection. Buen Vivir can reorient the tourism industry towards localised tourism, and slow tourism because the principles of Buen Vivir require these alternatives to be small-scale, local and benefiting host communities as well as tourists to increase the wellbeing for all.     

Critical tourism scholars: brokers of hope

Abstract

The past four decades of tourism research have demonstrated that the field would be impoverished without recognising the human aspect of scientific inquiry. The contributions made through critical approaches, Indigenous perspectives, qualitative methods and morally instilled concepts such as ‘sustainability’ or ‘community development’ have accentuated that tourism scholars are not detached and value-free producers of knowledge. Rather, our gender, ethnicity, personal and political views enter research agendas and actively shape knowledge. Alarmed by a host of social, economic, environmental, political and ethical concerns, and motivated to end injustice, inequality, oppression and discrimination, we also circumnavigate hope. However, researchers’ relationships with hope can be problematic, as evidenced by the recent tensions within critical tourism scholarship. In order to examine the extent to which hope ought to be part of tourism research, it is important to engage with the notion of hope seriously and methodically. By drawing on different varieties of hope, it is argued that these can underpin research projects to different degrees, including critical hope, hope-as-utopia, transformative hope, radical hope and pragmatic hope. It is emphasised that hope is connected to critical research in elementary ways and plays a vital role in envisioning a more just, inclusive, sustainable and equitable world. The acknowledgment of hope as part of critical research is particularly valuable amid the COVID-19 pandemic – an event with devastating consequences for communities worldwide. Through a hopeful lens, our momentary loss of tourism may bring with it a renewed appreciation and care, which has been eroded by rampant commodification and comatose consumerism. The hope driving post COVID-19 visions of tourism is argued to lie in more thoughtful and responsible engagement with tourism, and in our ability to positively transform it.     

The novel spaces and power-geometries in tourism and hospitality after 2020 will belong to the ‘local’

Abstract

The global crisis we have experienced due to the COVID-19 pandemic emergency challenges our perception of the global and local context in which we live, travel, and work. This crisis has spread novel uncertainties and fears about the future of our world, but at the same time, it has also set the ground to rethink the future scenario of tourism and hospitality to bring about a potentially positive transformation after 2020. Such a scenario can be understood in light of the work of Doreen Massey and the pivotal theorisations on ‘space’ and ‘power-geometry’ she presented in her book For Space (2005). Massey conceives space as the product of multiple relations, networks, connections, as the dimension of multiplicity, the result of an ongoing making process, and in a mutually constitutive relationship with power. Interweaving Massey’s theorisations with a critical examination of the neoliberal capitalism approach to the conceptualization of space, the COVID-19 global crisis prompts us to rethink the space inside and outside of tourism and hospitality by re-focusing on the local dimension of our space as the only guarantee of our own wellbeing, safety, and security. While the global dimension seems more broken than ever, the urgency of belonging to the local is more and more evident. Hence, we propose a critical reflection on the implications of such a scenario in the space of tourism and hospitality, foreseeing a potentially positive transformation in terms of activation of local relations, networks, connections, and multiplicities able to open up such space to multiple novel functions designed not just for tourists and travelers but also for citizens.     

Ecological grief generates desire for environmental healing in tourism after COVID-19

Abstract

Tourism research is starting to take interest in the psychology of environmental distress, particularly as it relates to climate change. For both the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 and the climate change movement that dominated international media in 2019, psychological parallels exist in terms of our experience of loss. As the world grapples with the pandemic and tourism grinds to a halt, stories on social media are surfacing that claim wildlife is returning to quarantined cities and that the Earth is healing itself. Much of the implicit critique of these stories is directed at the tourism industry, with two viral posts in particular supposedly documenting the ‘rewilding’ of Venice, that infamous icon of overtourism. While the popular media have been concerned primarily with the factual accuracy of these claims, what has gone largely unexplored is the apparent desire for environmental reparation that they express. The fixation on environmental healing evidenced in tourist social media can be interpreted as a response to widely-felt ‘ecological grief’, triggered by the events of COVID-19. In this context, animal reclamation of urban spaces can be identified as a motif of environmental hope that symbolises life, regeneration and resilience, the understanding of which may contribute to the project of hopeful tourism in the post-COVID-19 era.     

COVID-19: from temporary de-globalisation to a re-discovery of tourism?

Abstract

The processes of globalisation and time-space compression, driven mainly by the neoliberal agenda and the advancement of various space-shrinking technologies, have markedly re-shaped the world over the last 75?years in an almost unchallenged manner. Amongst the most significant outcomes of these processes have been the popularisation of international travel and the accompanying global expansion of the tourism industry. As the first major force ever to effectively stop (or even reverse) globalisation and time-space compression, the COVID-19 outbreak has also put on hold the whole travel and tourism industry. In this respect, the tourism as we knew it just a few months ago has ceased to exist. Although the price the world is paying for this is enormous, the temporary processes of de-globalisation offer the tourism industry an unprecedented opportunity for a re-boot – an unrepeatable chance to re-develop in line with the tenets of sustainability and to do away with various ‘dark sides’ of tourism’s growth such as environmental degradation, economic exploitation or overcrowding. However, the path of re-development and transformation which the global tourism production system will follow once the COVID-19 crisis has been resolved is yet to be determined.     

A mindful shift: an opportunity for mindfulness-driven tourism in a post-pandemic world

Abstract

Many see the COVID-19 pandemic as a turning point for tourism, a chance to reflect on the pressing environmental and socio-economic concerns of the industry, and an opportunity to pinpoint a more desirable direction. However, for tourism to revive as a less impactful and more meaningful industry, more mindful consumers are needed to take factual benefits from the gravity of the current situation. Mindfulness as a practice of bringing a certain quality of attention to moment-by-moment experiences has become an important asset for individuals to cope with the problems of modern life. It is even seen as a significant driver of lifestyle change in Western societies, resulting in an increasing number of more conscious consumers and mindfulness-driven products and services. The COVID-19 pandemic is a wake-up call and opportunity for the tourism industry to embrace the mindfulness movement, trusting in its capacity to reflect on the current problems and to pave a new way forward towards more compassionate and meaningful tourism for both hosts and guests.     

From high-touch to high-tech: COVID-19 drives robotics adoption

Abstract

Global economic and social life has been severely challenged since the World Health Organization (WHO) declared the COVID-19 disease a pandemic. Travel, tourism and hospitality, in particular, has been massively impacted by the lockdowns used to maintain social distance to manage the disease. Robotics, artificial intelligence, and human-robot interactions have gained an increased presence to help manage the spread of COVID-19 in hospitals, airports, transportation systems, recreation and scenic areas, hotels, restaurants, and communities in general. Humanoid robots, autonomous vehicles, drones, and other intelligent robots are used in many different ways to reduce human contact and the potential spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, including delivering materials, disinfecting and sterilizing public spaces, detecting or measuring body temperature, providing safety or security, and comforting and entertaining patients. While controversial in the past due to concerns over job losses and data privacy, the adoption of robotics and artificial intelligence in travel and tourism will likely continue after the COVID-19 pandemic becomes less serious. Tourism scholars should seize this opportunity to develop robotic applications that enhance tourist experiences, the protection of natural and cultural resources, citizen participation in tourism development decision making, and the emergence of new ‘high-touch’ employment opportunities for travel, tourism and hospitality workers.     

Reconsidering global mobility – distancing from mass cruise tourism in the aftermath of COVID-19

Abstract

The mass cruise tourism industry (MCTI) is inscribed in a neoliberal production of tourism space that promotes the economic, sociocultural and environmental marginalization of cruise destinations. With cruise tourism halted as a result of the COVID-19, but likely to resume in 2021, I question the relevance of this form of tourism and propose future development alternatives aligned with deglobalisation and degrowth of the industry. Power relations with destinations communities can be critiqued using the concepts of global mobility and local mobility to show that the former, imperative for the deployment of mass cruise tourism, is a weakness for the industry in a post-pandemic perspective of reduced mobility. Destinations must use the industry’s dependence on global mobility as leverage to transform the balance of power in their favor and promote local mobility. They must embrace radical solutions to take control of their territory to favor a transition from “Growth for development” to “Degrowth for liveability”. Host territories, relying on national and regional governance, should gradually ban or restrict the arrival of mega-cruise ships, implement policies that promote the development of a niche cruise tourism industry (NCTI) with small ships and develop a fleet controlled by local actors.     

Performative Chineseness and Culinary Tourism in Chinese Restaurants in Newfoundland,Canada

Abstract

This article explores Chinese culinary practice in Newfoundland by including a non-Chinese perspective in the sense of ‘culinary tourism’. As it is an open, multivocal, and incomplete system, both Chinese and non-Chinese participate in the everyday negotiation of Chinese foodways, shaping their different and sometimes conflicting understandings of Chineseness in response to various global or local socio-cultural circumstances. In this process, a diasporic Chinese identity is mutually constructed, while a creolized, cosmopolitan sense of being Newfoundlanders—based on shared culinary experience—also emerges.     

Reset redux: possible evolutionary pathways towards the transformation of tourism in a COVID-19 world

Abstract

With international arrivals surpassing 1.5 billion for the first time in 2019 the long-term evolution of tourism demonstrates prolific path dependence with a decade of growth since the global financial crisis. This latest period of unfettered international tourism development has come to an abrupt end as the impact of COVID-19 has brought the sector to a near standstill. As the world grapples with the realities of the global pandemic there is an opportunity to rethink exactly what tourism will look like for the decades ahead. Key concepts in evolutionary economic geography, especially path dependence/creation and institutional inertia/innovation, show variations in pathways for travel and tourism in a COVID-19 world. A path that leads to transformation in tourism can be realized if sufficient institutional innovation occurs on both the demand and supply side of tourism that can foster the emergence of new paths. COVID-19 presents a once in a generation opportunity where the institutional pump is primed for transformation. Whether that leads to a radical transformation of the tourism sector remains to be seen, but the imprint it will leave on both the demand and supply of tourism will have long-term, incremental impacts for years to come and ultimately move us closer towards the transformation of tourism.     

Covid-19 is an unnatural disaster: Hope in revelatory moments of crisis

Abstract

The unfolding COVID-19 pandemic has closed borders, grounded planes, quarantined more than half of the world’s population, triggered anxiety en masse, and shaken global capitalism to its core. Scholars of the political ecology of disasters have sought to denaturalize so-called “natural” disasters by demonstrating their uneven consequences. Work in the political ecology of health similarly accounts for how risk of illness and disease are socio-economically mediated. While this scholarship has demonstrated the need to contextualize the unequal fallout from ecological and health disasters in ways that reveal the festering wounds of structural inequality, we know much less about how hope is cultivated in moments of crisis. The current revelatory moment of the COVID-19 pandemic offers an opportunity to find hope in the rubble through the deconstruction of framings of crisis as “error” and by homing in on the current and potential role of tourism to contribute to a more socially and environmentally just society. This reframing the pandemic as an "unnatural" disaster opens new debates at the intersection of tourism geographies and political ecologies of hope in revelatory moments of crisis.     

Human flourishing,tourism transformation and COVID-19: a conceptual touchstone

Abstract

As the planet remains in the grips of COVID-19 and amidst enforced lockdowns and restrictions, and possibly the most profound economic downturn since the Great Depression, the resounding enquiry asks—what will the new normal look like? And, in much the same way, tourism aficionados, policy makers and communities are asking a similar question—what will the tourism landscape, and indeed the world, look like after the pandemic? As casualties from the crisis continue to fall by the wayside, the rethinking about what an emergent tourism industry might resemble is on in earnest. Many are hopeful that this wake-up call event is an opportunity to reshape tourism into a model that is more sustainable, inclusive and caring of the many stakeholders that rely on it. And some indicators, though not all, point in that direction. In line with this, the concept of ‘human flourishing’ offers merits as an alternative touchstone for evaluating the impacts of tourism on host communities. Human flourishing has a long genesis and its contemporary manifestation, pushed by COVID-19 and applied to travel and tourism, further expands the bounds of its application. Human flourishing has the potential to offer more nuanced sets of approaches by which the impact of tourism on host communities might be measured. The challenge remaining is how to develop robust indices to calibrate human flourishing policy successes.     

COVID-19, indigenous peoples and tourism: a view from New Zealand

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic’s impact is predicted to be long-lasting with intergenerational impacts for both Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples. Indigenous peoples offer untapped potential for understanding how we are shaping resilient solutions to COVID-19 and similar threats in the future. In New Zealand, the Māori people occupy diverse leadership and occupational roles throughout society. As a result of the 1840 Treaty of Waitangi (Te Tiriti o Waitangi) they are recognised, through Acts of Parliament, as government partners who work in governance and planning processes, including the COVID-19 response. Such recognition can result in the inclusion of Māori values such as whanaungatanga (kinship and belonging), kaitiakitanga (environmental guardianship and responsibility) and manaakitanga (respect, care, and hospitality) within policy and Acts of Parliament. Māori leaders and spokespeople are stressing that environmental and social welfare needs of all communities should be prioritised as part of the COVID-19 solution and that tourism responses cannot be separated from social needs. Government responses and planning efforts that incorporate diverse cultural values ensure more equitable futures and positive experiences for tourism providers, travellers and the hosts. In this way Indigenous-informed approaches would positively contribute to transforming business, health and education for a more positive global society.     

Reconnecting tourism after COVID-19: the paradox of alterity in tourism areas

Abstract

One of the transformations induced by the almost complete halt of tourism due to the COVID-19 pandemic has been a turning of the tourism sectors to a greater orientation towards their host communities. The enclavic tendencies of tourism areas, along with a multilayered approach to alterity gives insight into ongoing changes in the Quebec, Canada, tourism industry that have been enhanced by the COVID-19 pandemic. These changes points to a relinking of tourism to the needs of the host communities as part of a survival strategy in a time when there are no tourists, and could become, in the long run, a resilience strategy. On the other hand, there is a possibility of a reinforcement of the alterity and a further delinking of tourism in a “6?foot-tourism world” where sanitary safety would be at the core of a closed and controlled tourism development.     

Sports,Politics and Ethnicity in the North. Workers’ Sport in Western Finnmark in the Late 1930s

Abstract

Internationally, ethnicity in sports has become an independent field of research amongst sports historians focusing on phenomena such as colonialism, immigration and indigenous populations. Studies demonstrate that sports have simultaneously been able to assimilate different groups, promoting majority concepts of identity and majority values, and enable groups to fashion their own singular ethnic identities in contrast to those of majority societies. In Norwegian historical research, sport and ethnicity has been given only scarce attention. Norwegian sports historians have mainly seen Norway as an ethnically homogenous society where sport has played an essential part in creating a unifying national identity. A major concern for Norwegian sports history research has been the political split in Norwegian sports in the 1930s. Research on this event has mainly been occupied with the relationship between the Workers’ Sports Association (AIF) and the “bourgeois” National Sports Federation (NLI), and by AIF's significance as a political movement. Less attention, however, has been given to its cultural impact. This article investigates the establishment and function of AIF in the multi-ethnic area of West Finnmark, a geographically and politically peripheral region of Northern Norway, at the end of the 1930s. The town of Alta, the main focus of attention, was in the 1930s a small fiord community with an ethnically mixed population of indigenous Sámi, Kvens and Norwegians, sharp political divisions and a vibrant sporting milieu. Although the political division of Alta's sports establishment displays many of the traits that characterize similar events in the country at large, the ethnic factor brought another, important, dimension to it. This highly politicized period in Finnmark sports underlines the importance of sports as an arena for the construction and reinforcement of not only political identity, but also for the production of ethnic and local identities.     

民族体育旅游发展研究综述

近年来,体育与旅游的融合,不仅为体育和体育产业的发展拓展了空间,而且也为旅游业提供了可以持续利用的旅游资源与发展动力。因此,了解我国民族体育旅游现状,掌握民族休育旅游群体的消费特征,制定民族体育旅游可持续发展对策,己成为当务之急。本文在文献调查研究基础上,将我国民族体育旅游发展中的问题进行梳理,为我国民族体育旅游研究的发展提供有益参考。     

A post COVID-19 future - tourism re-imagined and re-enabled

Abstract

The urgent demands of the present necessitate an interrogation – a re-exploration and a re-envisioning of the future of tourism – of what has to change (and remain constant). Despite the crippling effects of COVID-19, new forms of solidarity are emerging that challenge the prevailing competitiveness ethic. While a transactional economic revival has to remain a top priority, progress will advance, so long as tourism becomes more transformational and transcendent. Discoveries of new methodologies for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals and versions of a Green New Deal, for example, are generating interest, notably ‘mass flourishing’ introduced in ‘anti-fragile’ ways. Utilizing a ‘future-back’ paradigm that demands deep-dive assessments and articulation of purpose, the gaps between ‘what is’ and ‘what could or should be’ are bound to close. Such undertakings represent a ‘coming together’ of all stakeholders, a role that academicians are urged to embrace, especially through action research, curriculum change and creation of ‘daring classrooms’.     

Transforming the (tourism) world for good and (re)generating the potential ‘new normal’

Abstract

With or without the global COVID-19 pandemic to promote and envision a meaningful and positive transformation of the planet in general, and tourism specifically, a wake-up call is long overdue. The 300-years old industrial and modern paradigm of ruthless and selfish exploitation of natural resources has separated us from nature and ultimately ourselves to such an extent that the crises of our economic, political, environmental, social and healthcare systems do not come at any surprise. Yet, in juxtaposition to (post)modern pessimistic views, the positive transmodern paradigm shift with its holistic perspectives and practices can be observed. Led by ‘the silent revolution’ of cultural creatives, new worlds are emerging, although still kept at the margins. ‘Transformative travel and tourism’ as an ever-growing trend, appears to be an important medium through which these cultural creatives reinvent themselves and the world they live in. Inner transformation is reflected in the outer world. New ways of being, knowing and doing in the world are emerging as conscious citizens, consumers, producers, travellers, entrepreneurs, and community leaders are calling and acting upon the necessary transformation towards the regenerative paradigm and regenerative economic systems. Based on the natural cycles of renewal and regeneration, this circular approach is underpinned by regenerative land practices. The vision of connecting regenerative agriculture and transformative tourism is offered to reset the global tourism system for good.