Tourism Geographies Podcast

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.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14616688.2023.2299845AbstractDigital 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.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14616688.2023.2275731AbstractIn 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.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14616688.2023.2280690AbstractThis 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.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14616688.2023.2290662AbstractThis 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.

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.

https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2023.2290009AbstractIssues 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.

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.

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.