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The purpose of this paper is to analyse urban transformation as a tourism resource. Tourism is undeniably a powerful motor for urban transformation but in return, urban transformation can represent a resource for actors related to tourism. More precisely this paper focuses on one major transformation of modern cities: gentrification.

The central hypothesis of this paper is that gentrification accompanies tourism, but that gentrification itself may also become an object of the tourist gaze. The paper focuses on local guides and small touristic entrepreneurs in order to identify the tensions that might arise. The presentation of two guided tours – “Subculture Brixton Nightlife Tour” and “Where Brooklyn At?” – will enable us to explore how the gentrification of Brixton (London) and Brooklyn (New York) may be used as a tourism resource for local private entrepreneurs.

Results presented here are based on ethnographic methods such as observation as well as content analysis and semi-directive interviews. Mobilising the historical concept of “slumming”, this paper proposes an extended conceptual framework, “neo-slumming”, to analyse evolving tourism practices in modern cities, practices that are considered here as tourism’s new frontiers.

However, as tourism transforms cities, the process itself is now of interest to tourists and thus becomes a resource for sector businesses (Naef, 2018). Yet studies about the touristification of urban transformation are still quite rare. This analysis aims to fill this gap by looking at the way a process, such as some spectacular, rapid or radical transformation of the urban fabric, can become a touristic resource associated with specific narratives and representations. In this context, the tourist gaze (Urry, 2002) is directed on a resource characterised by its ongoing change.

This paper aims to investigate the effect of tourists’ social media usage when planning trips on the probability of tourists consuming nightlife activities and their spending on nightlife consumption.

Two thousand questionnaires comprising questions about social media usage, consumption of nightlife entertainment and decisions to consume nightlife activities are distributed to international visitors at the departure hall of Phuket International Airport. A series of regressions are estimated. A Heckman two-step correction model is conducted to avoid the potential of selection bias.

Results show that the information available on Facebook positively links with the probability of tourists consuming nightlife activities. Furthermore, findings indicate that the usage of YouTube in tourist trip planning could statistically influence tourists to spend more on their nightlife consumption. Therefore, the results suggest that entrepreneurs could use Facebook to stimulate tourists’ nightlife consumption, while YouTube could be used to elevate tourists’ spending on nightlife consumption. The influence of these two social media sites on tourists’ decisions aids the authorities in the mitigation of the negative impacts of nightlife tourism.

Given the increasing role of social media in tourists’ consumption choices, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to quantitatively explore the relationship between tourists’ social media usage and nightlife consumption in Thailand. The revealed relationship between the use of specific social media sites (Facebook and YouTube) and tourists’ decisions to consume and the amount spent on nightlife consumption could be used by nightlife tourism entrepreneurs and destination marketers in their marketing campaigns, yielding competitive advantages. Meanwhile, related authorities and non-profit organisations could apply this study’s findings to demarket tourists’ consumption of nightlife activities in areas affected by the negative impacts of tourists’ nightlife consumption.