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This study aims to discuss the idea of a rethinking of tourism, as proposed in the academic literature, in the wake of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, to evaluate the rationale for such a process and to consider by and for whom such a rethink should be undertaken.

This is a viewpoint paper, interpreting the literature on the topic of refocusing and rethinking tourism in general and identifying issues arising from such arguments – in particular, the impact of such a process on tourists and their destinations.

Whilst a rethink of tourism is appropriate and necessary in many respects, the rationale and goals of such a process need to be made specific and focussed rather than general and based on interest groups' preferences and beliefs.

Much of the discussion about rethinking tourism has focussed on what is perceived to be wrong with tourism by the various interest groups rather than what the goal and value of a refocus might be. This paper questions that approach and argues for change at local and specific levels rather than a sweeping and generalised approach.

Australia's COVID-19 response has been one of containment and suppression with tightly regulated borders and restrictions on mobility. As an island nation, Australia has considerable advantages in terms of geographic isolation and population density, with quarantining the key strategy for containing the virus coming in from overseas. This has enabled Australia to be relatively virus-free. With such few cases, testing and tracing systems have been able to contain the virus within relatively small geographical locations. In comparison to other parts of the world Australia has been relatively unscathed from the most extreme impacts of COVID-19. In relation to tourism, there have been two major impacts (1) no international tourists in Australia (2) no Australians travelling overseas. While tourism operators that have relied on international tourists have suffered, other tourism operators have thrived due to the domestic-led initiatives for Australians to explore their own backyards. Various initiatives focus on reimaging the visitor economy away from international markets, towards encouraging Australians to spend more money within their own borders. This chapter explores the possibilities with this momentum to rethink tourism and travel more broadly in relation to how we live our everyday lives. We argue that this ‘tourism reset’ allows us to reimagine our being-in-the-world; our lives, habits and routines, for the betterment of social and ecological sustainability, through rethinking leisure time more holistically. Taking a ‘more-than-tourism’ perspective we argue that some of the underlying motivations for travel – such as relaxation, joy, wonder and connection can and should be implemented in our everyday lives, and that this is necessary for rethinking our relationships to each other and the natural world for more sustainable and equitable futures.

Discussions on tourism development address the urgent need to reduce the negative impacts of tourism on tourist destinations. Despite decades of trying to find potential ways to foster sustainability, however, current tourism development is still mainly driven by political interests and growth agendas. In spite of concepts intending to improve sustainable tourism development, negative dynamics, such as over-tourism and the exploitation of nature and local communities, dominate the current reality of tourism. This article focuses on the concept of degrowth as a potential solution for rethinking tourism policy and practices to ensure greater sustainability. Its aim is to explore the gap between these policies and the academic theories on instigating sustainable change, and the actual reality of the tourism industry, which is primarily driven by economic motivations such as growth.

To explore this dichotomy, this paper investigates the values of tourism lifestyle entrepreneurs. Small businesses are the most dominant group in the industry in terms of numbers. I contend that researching their viewpoint on current developmental trends could lead to valuable insights into how to tackle this gap between theory and reality. This paper also explores how the degrowth paradigm may promote sustainability in tourism, as well as the potential role that tourism lifestyle entrepreneurs could play in this development. The discussion is illustrated by a case study based on interviews with tourism entrepreneurs in Iceland.

The findings indicate that various tourism stakeholders have different approaches to growth, with many tourism lifestyle entrepreneurs tending to embrace degrowth practices by acting according to their value base, albeit sometimes unconsciously. This focus on aspects other than growth could potentially encourage tourism lifestyle entrepreneurs to contribute to sustainable development.

The examples discussed in this paper are locally limited and cannot be generalized due to the small size of the interviewed sample group. The scalability of individual entrepreneurs’ impact is limited due to their small size.

The actions and values applied by these tourism lifestyle entrepreneurs demonstrate how degrowth can be manifest on a small scale: growth is only embraced up to a certain limit, so it oes not exceed social and environmental capacities; from that point on, community well-being plays the key role. This study demonstrates the untapped knowledge tourism lifestyle entrepreneurs could provide to rethinking the tourism industry.

This study demonstrates the importance of shedding more light on ethical issues and values beyond growth in both academic and political discussions. Addressing tourism lifestyle entrepreneurs as smaller-scale actors of tourism degrowth could be a meaningful starting point for holistically rethinking tourism and give them a voice.

This research emphasizes untapped knowledge by acknowledging entrepreneurs and their potential for rethinking tourism development, concluding with recommendations for practice and policy.

This paper aims to provide answers to the question: “What innovations would enable the tourism and hospitality industry to re-build?”.

At the outset, it redefines the concept of ‘Innovation” in the context of the hospitality and tourism industry. It then focuses on post-pandemic re-building best practices in tourism and hospitality. It captures the essence of the articles in this theme issue collection on innovative actions from around the world and presents concluding remarks.

This article summarises the key findings of this theme issue and it draws generalized conclusions about re-building the tourism and hospitality industry. In conclusion, 14 key learning outcomes are presented. These include topics such as: rethinking tourism and hospitality products and services, sustaining resilience, collaboration between the government, academia and industry, special interest tourism, domestic tourism, crisis management, digital transformation, the health and safety of all stakeholders, operational efficiencies and environmental sustainability.

This research contributes to the emerging research theme of tourism and hospitality post-pandemic re-building.

There are a number of practical implications in terms of industry approaches to the adoption of innovative strategies to re-build tourism and hospitality operations around the world.

Readers who are interested in international best practices of hospitality and tourism should find this concluding article of interest.

A case study about the creation of four scenarios that were used to make sense of the fast-moving pace of COVID-19 and the consequences for New Zealand tourism.

Adapting global visitor economy scenarios, a set of New Zealand tourism scenarios were constructed using a “back of house Shell” method and were supplemented with an expert panel to test the reliability and validity of the scenarios.

The four scenarios constructed were based on two critical uncertainties, namely economic recession and the moral dilemma of the consumer. Four scenarios were portrayed using film and TV titles to help participants visualise the scenarios. Crazy Rich Asians: Recovery represented many of the attributes of tourism in New Zealand prior to COVID-19 i.e. a focus on high value tourists from Asia. Contagion: Survival of the Fittest represented the reality of the COVID-19 pandemic. This Side of Paradise: ReThinking Tourism focused on rebuilding tourism based upon the principles of sustainability. The Colony: Gated Communities represented fortress destinations trying to keep COVID-19 at bay. Each scenario portrayed several features including a unique narrative, tourism, the tourist, vision, strategy and risks. The paper highlighted the trade-offs and conflicts between the scenarios as COVID-19 unfolded in different directions.

In a fluid situation, the paper reminds readers of the value of scenarios as framing devices to understand the fast-moving pace of COVID-19 when New Zealand was in unchartered waters. Thus, this study highlights how a scenario-planning process builds resilience and foresight to help stakeholders and actors make sense of crisis situations.

Using COVID-19 pandemic as a more immediate empirical reference, this paper aims to understand the biosecurity risks arising from tourist activities and, through a more prospective analysis, to consider the relevance of public health issues in the context of tourism-sustainability nexuses.

The text assumes a hybrid format, incorporating elements resulting from empirical research and essayistic viewpoints. The collection of empirical elements was based on documental research in several sources, such as newspapers, international institutions of an intergovernmental nature and the discussion forum of the travel platform TripAdvisor.

By assuming mobility and large agglomerations of people from different origins, mass tourism has fostered multiple outbreaks of COVID-19 and the rapid global spread of contagion chains. The pandemic clearly exemplified the responsibility of tourism in the dispersion of biotic agents with severe ecological, economic, social and public health repercussions. It is, therefore, urgent to rethink the tourism growth trajectory and more effectively consider the biosecurity risks associated with mobility in discussions on tourism and sustainability. At the same time, tourism must be delineated in terms of the great aims of sustainability, and this transversal purpose to which it contributes should be considered an intrinsic condition of its own sectorial sustainability as an economic activity.

The biosecurity challenges posed by mass tourism are a very topical issue, still little considered in sustainability policies and on which there is a marked deficit in scientific research.

This article considers the possibilities of and barriers to socialising tourism after the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. Such an approach allows us to transform tourism and thereby evolve it to be of wider benefit and less damaging to societies and ecologies than has been the case under the corporatised model of tourism.

This conceptual analysis draws on the theorisation of “tourism as a social force” and the new concept of “socialising tourism”. Using critical tourism approaches, it seeks to identify the dynamics that are evident in order to assess the possibilities for socialising tourism for social and ecological justice. It employs an Indigenous perspective that the past, present and future are interconnected in its consideration of tourism futures.

COVID-19 has fundamentally disrupted tourism, travel and affiliated industries. In dealing with the crisis, borders have been shut, lockdowns imposed and international tourism curtailed. The pandemic foregrounded the renewal of social bonds and social capacities as governments acted to prevent economic and social devastation. This disruption of normality has inspired some to envision radical transformations in tourism to address the injustices and unsustainability of tourism. Others remain sceptical of the likelihood of transformation. Indeed, phenomena such as vaccine privilege and vaccine tourism are indicators that transformations must be enabled. The authors look to New Zealand examples as hopeful indications of the ways in which tourism might be transformed for social and ecological justice.

This conceptualisation could guide the industry to better stakeholder relations and sustainability.

Socialising tourism offers a fruitful pathway to rethinking tourism through a reorientation of the social relations it fosters and thereby transforming its social impacts for the better.

This work engages with the novel concept of “socialising tourism”. In connecting this new theory to the older theory of “tourism as a social force”, this paper considers how COVID-19 has offered a possible transformative moment to enable more just and sustainable tourism futures.

In the postmodern consumer society, factors such as sustainability, responsible behaviour and digital environment have direct consequences on rethinking sustainable tourism promotion through 2.0 communication policy embedded within a specific cultural context. The aim of this research is to analyse and discuss the application of 2.0 systems thinking (ST) in three countries (France, UK and Serbia) to promote sustainable tourism thinking.

Online tourism ads available on YouTube, Vimeo, and Dailymotion, related to the cultural contexts of the UK, France and Serbia, have been analysed through a qualitative approach based on the use of visual methods. Furthermore, sustainable tourism dimensions and discourses have been identified in each context by applying intra- and intertextual analysis.

The results show that the use of 2.0 ST to promote sustainable tourism should take into account environmental and socio-cultural issues in each cultural context. These findings show that both the UK and France promote sustainable tourism logic through applying a 2.0 ST. This is not the case with Serbia where online sustainable tourism videos are underrepresented and the online content is different from the one in the UK and France.

This research might help tourism researchers and professionals to understand cultural differences when promoting sustainable tourism through a 2.0 communication and online videos. The results show that tourism system has to be considered as a complex and a dynamic framework where intense interlinking of social media with political, cultural, promotional, and organizational aspects of tourism systems in different countries is present.

The proposed framework in this study represents a tool that will enable tourism professionals to improve their sustainable tourism communication, especially the environmental and socio-cultural dimensions when considering a 2.0 communication approach.

The original aspect of this research is related to the analysis of interactive videos in tourism studies and to the introduction of a new framework based on 2.0 ST, used to promote sustainable tourism in a cross-cultural context.

The purpose of this paper is to chart the history of tourism academia and offer observations as to its future development in the 21st century.

This paper uses a limited review of the literature and the personal reflections of the authors as its main approaches.

In reviewing the multi-generational history of tourism academia, it became apparent that whilst we have become a more scientifically rigorous community of scholars, a challenge for the academy going forward will be how best to cultivate a spirit of understanding among different parts of the academy when presented with viewpoints that do not appear to coalesce with one’s understanding of “truth”.

This paper contributes to scholarly debates over the history and future of tourism academia by challenging the academy to reflect critically on its increasing diversity and how to incorporate diverse viewpoints into the tourism knowledge canon.

本文的目的是绘制旅游学术的历史, 并对其在21世纪的未来发展提出看法。

本文采用有限的文献综述和作者的个人反思作为主要方法。

在回顾旅游学术界的代际更替历史时, 很明显, 虽然我们已经成为一个科学严谨的学者群体, 旅游学界未来面临的挑战将是, 当学术界不同群体提出的观点似乎与人们对“真理”的理解不一致时, 如何更好的培养大家的理解精神。

本文通过挑战学术界批判性地反思其增长, 为学术界关于旅游学术的历史和未来的辩论做出了贡献。

El objetivo de este trabajo es trazar la historia de la academia del turismo y ofrecer observaciones sobre su futuro desarrollo en el siglo XXI.

Este artículo se basa en una revisión limitada de la literatura y en las reflexiones personales de los autores a sus principales enfoques.

A lo largo de la revisión de la historia multigeneracional de la academia del turismo, se pone de manifiesto que, si bien nos hemos convertido en una comunidad de estudiosos más rigurosa desde el punto de vista científico, uno de los retos para el mundo académico en el futuro será cómo cultivar mejor un espíritu de entendimiento entre las distintas partes del mundo académico cuando se presenten puntos de vista que no parezcan coincidir con la propia concepción de la “verdad”.

Este artículo contribuye a los debates académicos sobre la historia y el futuro de la academia en turismo, al desafiar a la academia a reflexionar críticamente sobre su creciente diversidad y sobre cómo incorporar diversos puntos de vista al canon del conocimiento turístico.