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The phenomenon of overtourism and tourism phobia and their negative impacts are nothing new. However, over the summer of 2017, both phenomena became major issues as never before for many European destinations like Spain and Italy. Those popular tourist destinations have proven not being able to cope with the massive influx of tourists coming their way. In a context of overtourism, locals and visitors are influencing each other using violence without authority due to a lack of positional power. Hence the reason it is believed that there is a security issue. The relationships between locals/locals and visitors/visitors have not been explored in depth in existing literature when discussing overtourism. Most research and publications in tourism and related fields are to address issues in the industry. Issues in the industry are therefore contributing to develop concrete knowledge in tourism education. On that basis, overtourism and related perverse impacts, which are the current main issues in the tourism industry, and a growing research area could therefore be said to contribute to knowledge creation in tourism.

Permatourism is a holistic approach to the study and design of equitable tourism development strategies, which leverages adaptive complex systems thinking and permaculture design principles. Permatourism advocates for the symbiosis between the formal and informal sectors of the tourism system, through creating and nurturing meaningful, functional relations among multiple actors. The formal tourism sector must embrace the sociocultural characteristics of the host community and grassroots business development strategies must be pursued to align local microentrepreneurs with expected business opportunities generated by big tourism investments. This chapter provides an overview of the conceptual foundation of this new approach as well as examples illustrating its pertinence to destination stewardship.