Issues and Cases of Degrowth in Tourism

Konstantinos Andriotis

• Publisher: CAB International
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781789245073
• eBook ISBN: 9781789245097
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Hospitality, Travel & Tourism Industry
• Index: Business

Degrowth in tourism is the voluntary shift to rebuild destinations and local economies in a way in which consumption, production and the exploitation of resources are minimal. It looks to ensure that the direction of institutional changes and the orientation of technological development are controlled and in harmony with the environment. Degrowth involves people whose use of personal time enhances the richness of the tourism experience through travelling less frequently, more slowly and in a low carbon way; taking time to support the environment, the local economy and to explore the local culture. Despite the significant role degrowth can play in destination development, it has rarely been examined from a tourism studies perspective. This book takes steps to address the paucity of combined research on tourism and degrowth by presenting emergent knowledge and research on this increasingly important concept. The book: Outlines the core theme of degrowth from a tourism perspective. Contains content enriched with contributions from multi-disciplinary academics from around the world. Puts theory into practice via international case studies. Due to the multidisciplinary nature of the book, the contents will appeal to researchers and postgraduates studying tourism, environmental studies, geography, planning and development and other related disciplines.

1 Introduction

KONSTANTINOS ANDRIOTIS*

Middlesex University, London, UK

*[email protected]

1.1 Introduction

With 1.4 billion international tourist arrivals and an $8.8 trillion contribution to the global economy in 2018 (UNWTO, 2019), as well as forecasts which predict an increase of tourists’ movements by 2029 to almost 2.2 billion (an increase of 3.8% pa) and capital investment to rise from $940.9 billion in 2018 to $1,489.5 billion in 2029 (4.2% pa), travel and tourism is one of the world’s largest sectors and one of the major cultural and economic forces on the planet. Nevertheless, while past experiences indicate that the tourism industry is addicted to growth, forecasts have been recently revised downward by unforeseen disasters and crises attributed to the COVID-19 (coronavirus) outbreak that was an unexpected shock for the global tourism industry, especially as the fear factor restricted tourists’ mobility and governments closed their borders in their effort to curtail and control the pandemic (J.P. Morgan Chase and Co, 2020; Andriotis and Paraskevaides, forthcoming).

Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, the well-established global tourism system had for several years grappled with concerns of overtourism, but as a result of the virus has within a short time moved from overtourism to nontourism (Gössling et al., 2020; Higgins-Desbiolles, 2020). In popular destinations where overcrowding was widely recognized, a complete societal lockdown to combat the spread of COVID-19 plummeted tourism worldwide, leaving millions of tourism employees and businesses economically paralysed. Such conditions rapidly decreased mobile world populations and while this has obviously reduced carbon emissions, at the same time it has resulted in the collapse of the whole tourism sector, with airlines cancelling their flights and countries closing their borders.

However, it is not only viruses that should make us more concerned travellers and citizens. In many countries and destinations, tourism has grown beyond sustainable bounds. Endless tourism growth and various catastrophic human activities need to change to avoid the worst effects of human-induced global issues. Tourism activities, along with several other human pursuits, have caused the rise in carbon emissions which has resulted in global warming and climate change, both of which have caused intense and unpredictable weather events affecting several destinations across the globe. The negative effects of increased tourist movements have been felt by host communities, the tourists themselves and the environment and this, in conjunction with the failure of destination decision makers to manage tourism in a sustainable way, has directed several scholars (e.g. Brenner and Theodore, 2002; Jonas and Gibbs, 2003; Andriotis, 2003a; Andriotis and Vaughan, 2009; Campbell, 2016) to criticize the term ‘sustainable tourism’ for failing to alleviate problems facing developed and developing countries as a result of unplanned and/or unsustainable expansion of their tourism industry. In practice, by supporting hegemonic, capitalist relationships and serving as a ‘flanking mechanism’ to neoliberalism, the tourism industry has been incompatible with sustainability goals (Higgins-Desbiolles, 2018, p. 157).

In this respect, degrowth through a controlled decrease in economic activity came to the foreground as a way to meet host communities’ needs by ensuring a fair distribution of wealth and environmental use of resources (Latouche, 2006). Degrowth as a way of life has been adopted by several primitive societies through the centuries and can be traced back to ancient Greece and Rome, where philosophers, such as Diogenes the Cynic, voluntarily embraced a meaningful life by returning to the simplicity of nature. Over recent centuries, various degrowth debates have been ongoing, expressed first by critical thinkers such as Marx (1859) and more recently by Georgescu-Roegen (1971, 1979), Illich (1973) and Schumacher (1973), who challenged the conventional economic concept of unlimited growth. Despite its long history the term ‘degrowth’ emerged only after 2008, building from critical scholarship as well as activist social movements (Demaria et al., 2011, p. 2).

From a tourism perspective, degrowth in line with the post-tourists or postmodern tourists who embrace openly, ‘but with some irony, the increasingly inauthentic, commercialised and simulated experiences offered by the tourism industry’ (Smith et al., 2010, p. 129), has been explored as an ideology of opposition to conventional mass tourism and the exploitation of local communities and their environmental and cultural resources. As a philosophical concept, it has been expressed from the counterculture of youths and younger hippies during the mid-1960s, who chose to turn their back on the system and values of industrial society by visiting pristine spaces open to conditions of freedom distinctly different from the normal place of home (Andriotis, 2006, 2013), as well as several forms of degrowth-inspired travellers such as ‘drifters’ (Cohen, 1973), ‘wanderers’ (Vogt, 1976), ‘neo nomads’ (MacCannell, 1992), ‘tribal tourists’ (Gibson et al., 2013), ‘new age travelers’ (Martin, 1998, 2000), ‘frontier travelers’ (Laing, 2006; Laing and Crouch, 2009a, b) and antinomians (Andriotis, 2013). These degrowth-inspired forms of travelling have emerged from people who choose destinations that are not affected by commercialization and overconsumption, but instead their personal time is focused on the richness of the experience through travelling less, more slowly and using low carbon options; all of which aim to protect the environment and the local culture, as well as support the local economy.

Despite the fact that several types of tourist, such as those mentioned above, have followed several principles of degrowth, as well as the admittedly limited attempts of some host communities and local authorities to ‘rightsize’ their tourism industry, there is a lack of research identifying and critically assessing the discourse of tourism degrowth itself. This paucity of research combining degrowth and tourism has hindered our understanding about degrowth-induced tourism development and travel. It is the aim of this book to scientifically address this paucity by presenting case studies on the dynamics of degrowth from different parts of the world.

1.2 COVID-19 Recession vs Degrowth

As a result of the COVID-19 crisis and the consequent restrictions on mobility, the tourism industry ground to a halt (Fletcher et al., 2020). Nations shut their borders; flights, festivals and events were cancelled; airports, ports, resorts, hotels and food and beverage outlets closed; tourism and associated businesses faced bankruptcy; many employees in the tourism sector and all sectors dependent on tourism suffered from loss of income or even lost their jobs and, due to fear and uncertainty, many people changed their travel choices by either avoiding non-essential travel or choosing destinations in the vicinity of their home (Andriotis and Paraskevaides, forthcoming). As WTTC (2020) reports, due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the associated travel restrictions, the economy of many host communities worldwide has been threatened. In more detail, UNWTO (2020) estimated that the COVID-19 pandemic would cause international tourist arrivals to decline by 60–80% (compared with 2019 figures) rather than the forecasted 3–4% growth. This decline is expected to result in a loss of US$910 billion to US$1.2 trillion in export revenues and 100 to 120 million direct tourism jobs (UNWTO, 2020).

While globalization made possible people’s free movement, at the same time it predisposed the COVID-19 pandemic (Nelson and Liegey, 2020). Several pandemics, including COVID-19, have spread rapidly due to tourists’ movements and the use of planes and cruise ships. In the words of Monterrubio (2010):

international travel has been regarded as an important factor contributing to emerging infections. This is because international travel and commerce have modified the size and mobility of human populations, bringing some environments, humans and other animal species into contact with each other like never before (Tapper, 2006) … Owing to the great development and increase in air transportation, the international and in-flight spread of contagious diseases by air travellers have been reported as ways in which infections can be transmitted (Mangili and Gendreau, 2005) (pp. 2–3).

Hyper-mobile capitalist societies encouraged by a) frequent long-haul travel of westerners to exotic resorts for a week’s holiday; b) short-distance flights, for example from Italy to Austria for weekend ski vacations and c) massive cruise ship movements, have exacerbated the spread of COVID-19. For instance, the first infected diagnosed incidents of COVID-19 in Greece were religious travellers returning from Israel and one of the major outbreaks took place on board the Diamond Princess cruise ship when over 700 people became infected, and 12 people died, and therefore the ship was quarantined with 3711 passengers and crew members on board (The Guardian, 2020).

While the reasons for ‘slowing down’ that degrowth advocates (mainly reducing global emissions) differ from COVID-19 imperatives (i.e. a reduction of the spread of infection), both lead us to similar conclusions: fly less and mindfully, move more slowly and spend much more time in our communities (including staycations). All these are actually needed not only to restrict the pandemic but also for a number of ecological and social reasons, as various degrowth advocates assert (e.g. Latouche, 2010; Schneider et al., 2010; Kallis, 2011; Alexander, 2012, 2014; Andriotis, 2014, 2018). Thus the current economic contraction of the COVID-19 pandemic can be used as a starting point for transforming the global travel system in a direction that could better serve the needs of the planet.

While pollution and emissions have reduced following COVID-19 lock-downs, the unplanned downscaling of social and economic activity cannot be associated with degrowth. As Alexander (2020) highlights, degrowth means planned economic contraction, but nothing about the existing lockdowns in response to...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Contributors
• 1 Introduction
• 2 (De)growth Imperative: The Importance of Destination Resilience in the Context of Overtourism
• 3 Community-based Tourism in a Degrowth Perspective
• 4 Degrowing the Commoditization Process in Community-based Tourism and Local Entrepreneurship
• 5 Political Discourse Analysis of the Degrowth Challenge to Dominant Tourism Narratives in Spain
• 6 Growing Degrowth-oriented Tourism? CSR Certified Tour Operators as Change Agents
• 7 The Kavatzas of Gavdos: Heterotopias Apart from Modern Societies
• 8 Pushed Over the Periphery: Downsides of Degrowth on a Small Island – Experiences of Tourism Degrowth on the Isle of Man
• 9 Freedom of Movement and Degrowth
• 10 Conclusion
• Index
• Backcover