Tourism Geographies Podcast

https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2025.2495175AbstractCultural memory, which shapes a collective understanding of historical experiences and influences identity, is crucial in the Indigenous context but has been understudied in tourism. This study examines the role of the Guthi system, a cultural space of Indigenous Newars from Khokana, Nepal, in the construction and sustenance of cultural memory across time and location. Employing a multi-phased qualitative approach, the study reveals how the Guthi system, rooted in the Indigenous Newars’ relational ontologies, integrates spiritual, cultural, and societal elements into a living archive of traditions and practices. The findings elucidate the processes of enacting and sharing cultural memory, demonstrating its impact on collective sensemaking within Indigenous tourism contexts. Moreover, the study identifies key factors influencing this process, including adaptive preferences, path dependence, and Indigenous values, which shape community engagement with tourism opportunities. This novel contribution to Indigenous tourism research illuminates the intricate relationship between cultural memory, collective sensemaking, and the translation of Indigenous knowledge and practices into tourism initiatives.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14616688.2025.2525815AbstractThe commercial spaceflight industry is progressing rapidly. Yet, there is a lack of research theorising what the spatio-temporal contours of sustainability look like if the biosphere, along with its finite resources and limited ability to sustain continued population growth, constitutes a boundary that can be readily transcended. Informed by the concept of sustainable trajectory, this paper presents a conceptual model that extends the traditional spatial (e.g. national, global) and temporal (e.g. near future, intergenerational) scales that sustainability discourses in geography are typically predicated upon. We conducted a critical narrative literature review to analyse the implications of space tourism in the context of sustainable trajectory. Our analysis highlights deep tensions between the perspectives of sustainability typically promulgated in academic spheres and the path dependencies currently being formed by private spaceflight companies.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14616688.2025.2506523?src=AbstractThe ‘working holiday’ model of youth mobility has evolved alongside backpacking in recent decades. Increasingly, backpackers on working holidays are seen as a potential labour source in many nations, due to the flexible and highly mobile capacity which suits much agricultural work. We discuss the evolution of Australia’s Working Holiday Maker visa program, which highlights the tensions between tourism, labour, and migration. The term ‘backpacker’ is widely used in Australia interchangeably with the ‘Working Holiday Maker’ visa, identifying both a tourist subculture and what has become an essential migrant worker cohort in horticulture and a staple part of rural tourism and economies. But their presence, and the agricultural industry’s dependence on them, manifests what we identify as a ‘tourism-migration nexus’, that is, where labour chains, tourist flows, and the complexities of bilateral government agreements influence the migration trajectories of these working visitors. We draw on scholarship across backpacking, tourism and migration, in dialogue with recent policy and government inquiries, in order to trace the evolution and changes in the Australian Working Holiday Maker visa and the implications that this has on tourist mobilities as well as longer-term migration journeys.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14616688.2025.2516837AbstractThis paper examines the political geography of land use management in developed western economies. It explains why tourism stakeholders continue to struggle to gain legitimacy in many protected area management decisions. The reason is that the politics of public land management, in general, and protected area management, in particular, are highly polarised between well-established stakeholder coalitions that try to influence government policy, but espouse contrasting strong or weak sustainability ideologies. Tourism is a disruptive force that sits awkwardly in this dyad, neither fully belonging to nor alienated from either camp. The net result is that tourism interests are often viewed with suspicion, for while they may share much in common with other stakeholder groups, its unique needs also pose a threat to traditional, long standing inter-organisational coalitions that dominate the politics of public land management. The issue is complicated further by the diverse nature of what ‘tourism’ entails, for the range of commercial activities varies from operators with a strong ecologically based focus, through to higher impact horse and vehicular access tourism and high impact roofed accommodation, resort development and consumptive forms of tourism. As such, tourism stakeholders struggle to gain trust from other stakeholder groups in the political arena.

AbstractSince the launch of Tourism Geographies in 1999, annual international tourist arrivals have surged from 664 million to 1.4 billion, with greater numbers of domestic tourists traversing within borders. Transportation improvements have made travel more efficient, affordable, and accessible, while the digital revolution has introduced social media, the sharing economy, GPS technology, and artificial intelligence to travelers. This forward-thinking collection offers the latest research in tourism geographies, drawing from a collective body of work developed over the last quarter century. During this period, the subfield has evolved from a convergence of geography and tourism studies into a critically engaged, multidisciplinary branch of the social sciences. With roots in social and cultural geography and cultural studies, tourism geographers offer a critical approach to tourism studies, which foregrounds the role of place, space, people, and the environment. This collection illustrates how contemporary tourism geographies scholarship has built on this critical foundation to transcend the disciplinary walls of geography. Tourism geographies has long existed on the verge of disciplinary borders, accounting for the broad range of scholars and scholarship from social science disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, history, environmental studies, and planning, among others. This collection provides essential frameworks for foundational and emerging themes in tourism geographies, deepening understandings of tourism discourse and practice and setting the stage for the subfield’s next act.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14616688.2025.2493776?src=exp-laAbstractThis study explores how local communities in Fiji perceive the portrayal of their home in films. Yet little is known how local communities collectively construct and interpret the cinematic representations of their homeland. This is important given the need for local community support for tourism. Through in-depth interviews with 22 Fijian residents, and drawing on social representation theory, the study reveals that locals use anchoring to interpret film depictions through their existing cultural values and experiences. While residents take pride in scenic locations featured in films, they also express disappointment, confusion, and concern over the lack of cultural authenticity and the perpetuation of stereotypes. These social representations shape how locals engage with film-induced tourism and influence their relationships with visiting film-induced tourists. The findings highlight the importance of cultural sensitivity and collaboration with local experts in film production to ensure an accurate and respectful portrayal that aligns with the host community’s collective identity and shared understanding of their land and way of life.

https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2025.2502997AbstractThis paper explores the intersection of dark tourism and spectral geographies, offering a critical examination of how spaces of death, disaster, trauma, and painful memories are shaped by hauntings and spectral presence. Drawing on hauntology and the work of Derrida, as well as on work in spectral geographies, it proposes spectrality not as a metaphor to analyse places connected with literal ghosts and supernatural presence, but as an analytical framework that reconfigures our understanding of temporality, spatiality, and presence within dark tourism sites. This article, as introduction to a collection of works on the nexus between dark tourism and spectral geographies, argues that spectrality offers a qualitative and transformative rethinking of dark tourism, revealing how disruptions in linear understandings of absence and presence, and past-present-future temporalities can produce sites that are emotionally and politically charged, and ethically complex. The collection interrogates how ghostly traces—whether of colonialism, disaster, or ecological loss—complicate linear historical narratives. It positions spectrality as a transformative and generative lens through which to engage with dark tourism’s critical potential in negotiating memory, justice, and intergenerational trauma.

https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2025.2495179AbstractMacau is a Special Administrative Region (SAR) located in the south of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Settled by the Portuguese it was the last European colony in Asia. Over the centuries as a maritime city Macau saw its fortunes coming as trade boomed in the 16–17th centuries; however, with the establishment of Hong Kong as a port city the importance of Macau decreased. The authorities resorted to gaming and tourism as key sources of tax revenues eventually in 2000s becoming ‘Las Vegas’ of Asia. As the pandemic hit China and the rest of the world, Macau was isolated, gaming revenues declined temporarily and the Macau authorities decided to diversify its offer of tourist attractions. Although Macau has already been recognised as a UNESCO heritage site with a well-preserved historic core since 2005, two new attractions were developed to help reposition Macau as a city with a rich cultural history. The two new sites that opened in 2023 were the long abandoned Iec Long firecracker factory (益隆炮竹厂) in Taipa and dilapidated Lai Chi Vun shipyards in Coloane. Iec Long firecracker factory is unique, as it blends an interface with nature (green space dominated by the century old trees), a public space and interpretative displays of how the industrial activities were performed. In this paper we use mixed methods approach to provide a ‘thick description’ of Iec Long firecracker factory as an interplay of affective and material elements. Drawing on the existing literature we further advance how assemblage thinking can contribute to analysis of industrial heritage sites as tourist attractions. Additionally, drawing on the first-hand empirical data and the context of ongoing urban revitalization in Macau we scrutinise heritage-tourism dichotomy and demonstrate how we can better understand the meanings of heritage co-created from below.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14616688.2025.2462222AbstractOver the past twenty-five years, conceptualisations regarding where, when and how tourists travel have undergone profound changes. For many years, surveys, maps relying on tourists’ recall, and physical surveillance were the only means through which the mobility of tourists could be tracked. The internet, cellular phone networks and satellite-based technology has facilitated new methods to collect data, including Bluetooth tracking, Wi-Fi tracking, mobile phone data, social media and GPS location-based data. It has also facilitated new forms of data, including big data, real-time data collection and continuous tracking data. Moreover, it has enabled new forms of data analysis including automation, artificial intelligence, and predictive analytics. As a result of these innovations, researchers have extended theoretical knowledge within tourism geographies, particularly in relation to tourists’ spatiotemporal activity including visitation patterns, activity within specific locations, dispersal patterns and the impact of mobility upon emotions. This paper reviews the history of tourist tracking over the last 25 years, along with conceptual findings that have emerged from innovations in technology. It argues that there have been four stages of tourist tracking, namely: the pre-technology era, the tourist tracking 1.0 era characterised by the emergence of Global Positioning Systems technology, the tourist tracking 2.0 era whereby mobile phone, internet, and location-based technologies were developed, and the recent 3.0 era that is characterised by artificial intelligence, physiological sensors, mobile eye tracking and real time tracking. The paper concludes by highlighting future research needs, including predictive analysis, ethical considerations and use of tracking technology to encourage activity change.