Global Tourism and COVID-19

Implications for Theory and Practice

Alan A. Lew, Joseph M. Cheer, Patrick Brouder, Mary Mostafanezhad, Alan A. Lew, Joseph M. Cheer, Patrick Brouder, Mary Mostafanezhad

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000506761
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Negocios y empresa
• Subtopic: Hostelería, viajes y turismo

This comprehensive book focuses on how the COVID-19 pandemic is transforming travel and tourism, globally. Despite the devastation caused by COVID-19, authors argue that within the ongoing crisis, there is also an opportunity to positively transform the tourism sector in ways that contribute to a more hopeful future for tourism practitioners, tourists and host communities.

As the world emerges from the shadow of COVID-19 there will not be a return to the "normal". Rather, the volume shares a vision of global transformation that is driven at least in part by the changing ways people in the post-COVID-19 era may travel and encounter each other and their environments. Individual chapters explore topics such as: regenerative economies, transformational travel, critical perspectives on pandemics and tourism, sustainable development and resilience post-COVID-19, re-discovering and re-localising tourism, global (im)mobilities, transforming tourism management, as well as new value systems for travel and tourism including the chance to strengthen social equity and social justice as tourism returns after COVID-19. In this edited volume, a series of senior and emerging scholars engage with debates on how to best contribute to more substantial, meaningful, and positive planetary shifts within the tourism industry.

The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal Tourism Geographies.

Transforming the (tourism) world for good and (re)generating the potential ‘new normal’

Irena Ateljevic

ABSTRACT

With or without the global COVID-19 pandemic to promote and envision a meaningful and positive transformation of the planet in general, and tourism specifically, a wake-up call is long overdue. The 300-years old industrial and modern paradigm of ruthless and selfish exploitation of natural resources has separated us from nature and ultimately ourselves to such an extent that the crises of our economic, political, environmental, social and healthcare systems do not come at any surprise. Yet, in juxtaposition to (post)modern pessimistic views, the positive transmodern paradigm shift with its holistic perspectives and practices can be observed. Led by ‘the silent revolution’ of cultural creatives, new worlds are emerging, although still kept at the margins. ‘Transformative travel and tourism’ as an ever-growing trend, appears to be an important medium through which these cultural creatives reinvent themselves and the world they live in. Inner transformation is reflected in the outer world. New ways of being, knowing and doing in the world are emerging as conscious citizens, consumers, producers, travellers, entrepreneurs, and community leaders are calling and acting upon the necessary transformation towards the regenerative paradigm and regenerative economic systems. Based on the natural cycles of renewal and regeneration, this circular approach is underpinned by regenerative land practices. The vision of connecting regenerative agriculture and transformative tourism is offered to reset the global tourism system for good.

摘要

无论是否出现新型冠状病毒肺炎全球大流行, 警钟早就应该敲响以促进和展望整个地球, 尤其是旅游业发生重大和积极的转变。历时300年野蛮而又自私地开采自然资源的工业和现代范式, 将我们与自然分开, 以至于当我们的经济、政治、环境、社会和保健系统的危机到来时, 我们一点不惊讶。然而, 与（后）现代悲观主义观点同时存在的是我们也可以观察到跨现代范式及其整体视角和实践的积极转变。在文化创意”无声革命”的引领下, 仍处于边缘的新世界正在崛起。”改造式旅游和旅游业”作为一种不断发展的趋势, 似乎是这些文化创意者重塑自己以及他们生处世界的重要媒介。外在世界反映了内在的转变。伴随着有上述意识的公民、消费者、生产者、旅行者、企业家和社区领导人呼吁并采取行动实现向可再生范式和再生经济体系的必要转变, 新的存在、认识和行动方式正在出现。基于可恢复和再生的自然循环, 这种循环方法以再生土地实践为基础, 提出将再生农业和改造式旅游相结合的愿景, 以期永久性地重置全球旅游体系。

Introduction

We will not go back to normal. Normal never was. Our pre-corona existence was not normal other than we normalised greed, inequity, exhaustion, depletion, extraction, disconnection, confusion, rage, hoarding, hate and lack. We should not long to return, my friends. We are being given the opportunity to stitch a new garment. One that fits all of humanity and nature (Renee Taylor, 2020).

This special TG issue has been designed to promote ‘a substantial, meaningful, and positive transformation of the planet in general, and tourism specifically.’ A call to not return to a “normal” that existed before COVID-19 but rather to provide a vision of how the world can or is evolving into something different. I have been ‘obsessed’ with these kinds of issues most of my life and academic career. From my personal traumatic experience of the civil war in Croatia to my PhD in critical economic geography in New Zealand, to co-founding the global Critical Tourism Studies movement and promotion of an Academy of hope, I’ve called upon new ways of being, knowing and doing not only in tourism studies and practice but also in the world (e.g. Ateljevic, 2009, 2011). Thus, I feel I cannot say anything new here, but will aim to instead mainstream previously marginalised ideas allowed by the unprecedented global standstill. To potentially move what was considered either radical, over positive or naïve into the centre of (y)our attention and (y)our consideration. During this great pause, we could potentially embrace the holistic paradigms and practices that have been waiting on the margins. In our humbled state, we could bring them into the centre and build a new system around them (Eisenstein, 2020). In some parts of the world, we already are. I thank Alan Lew on this initiative to wave the flag of what radically different and potentially positive outcomes can come out of this huge predicament. We need to see a vision of what’s desirable and possible so that we are able to commit to a paradigm shift.

I imagine all sectors surrounding or embedded in tourism practice will be in a desperate need for a new and meaningful sense of direction. In such desperate need and ambitious aspiration, I recall Charles Eisenstein (n.d.) when he states: ‘We don’t need smarter solutions. We need different questions’. Indeed, we need to look at the values underlying, pre-existing and exacerbating the crisis that may drive us to ask questions like, what do we really want? What does a beautiful life look like? What do we want to leave behind and what do we want to take forward? If we are able to stop almost everything to save sick humans, why don’t we do the same for a sick planet? That’s the invitation that crises in general can offer - that is to deeply reflect on our dominant worldview and our value system. Anderson and Ackerman-Anderson (2010), in their extensive experience with change management at the organisational and systemic levels, distinguish processes of change and transformation whereby the change happens within the existing world view, while transformation in fact ‘is the emergence of a new order out of existing chaos…<which > begins with ever-increasing disruption to the system, moves to the point of death of the old way of being, and then, as with the phoenix, proceeds toward an inspired rebirth’ (p. 61).

Transformative travel and tourism

In 2009, I wrote a chapter for Tribe’s book on Philosophical Issues of Tourism, entitled: Transmodernity: Remaking Our (Tourism) World?, in which I summarised my academic journey from being a pessimistic, critical theorist to a more positive and hopeful academic. In juxtaposition to the structural relations of injustice created by the worldview of ‘the survival of the fittest’, I reviewed the emerging promising discourses of the transmodern philosophical, economic, political and socio-cultural shift. The shift that moves us from the story of separation from ourselves, nature and each other - to a narrative of interbeing, the one that sees the mutual interdependence of all living forms (Eisenstein, 2013). Ghisi (2008) described transmodernity as a planetary vision in which humans are beginning to realize that we are all (including plants and animals) connected into one system, which makes us symbiotic, vulnerable and responsible for the Earth as an indivisible living community. The current pandemic crisis could not be a greater case in point.

Magda (1989), the Spanish philosopher who first coined the term, uses Hegelian logic whereby modernity, postmodernity and transmodernity form a dialectic triad that completes a process of thesis, antithesis and synthesis. As expressed in her own words: ‘the third tends to preserve the defining impetus of the first yet is devoid of its underlying base: by integrating its negation the third moment reaches a type of specular closure’ (p. 13). In other words, transmodernism is critical of modernism and postmodernism while at the same time drawing elements from each. In a way it is a return to some form of absolute ‘logic’ that goes beyond Western ideology and aims to connect the human race to a new shared story, which can be called a global relational consciousness (Rifkin, 2005; for the full review of transmodernity paradigm see Ateljevic, 2013).

The paradigm shift is being carried by the growing population of so-called transmodern ‘cultural creatives’ who are acquiring new ways of looking at and being in the world — ways that are consistent with a sustainable global future and in doing so forming and shaping new cultures of conscious living (Ray & Anderson, 2001). They provide and demand products and services based on their values of social and environmental justice, and travel appears to be a powerful medium through which these conscious citizens seek to re-invent themselves and the world they live in. They travel in order to volunteer and make a difference; they value what is slow, small and local (especially food); they are connected and communicative; and they seek meaningful experiences, which help them develop personally and collectively (Ateljevic et al., 2016).

Observing and researching new travel trends, I argued they are indicators manifesting the emerging global shift in human consciousness rather than just ‘special interest’ market segments. Elsewhere, I have further reformulated this transmodern perspective into the concept of hopeful tourism scholarship (Pritchard et al., 2011). This values-led, humanist perspective that strives for the transformation of our way of seeing, being, doing and relating in tourism worlds, called for the creation of a less unequal, more sustainable planet through action-oriented and participant-driven learnings and acts.

Since then, a growing number of studies have begun to emerge to reaffirm ‘transformative travel and tourism’ as a potential means of making the world a better place. Claimed to create conditions conducive to personal and social transformation necessary for a radical change in worldview, transformative tourism has become a new buzzword in tourism studies (Reisinger, 2013; 2015; Lean et al., 2014; Lean, 2016; UNWTO and Institute for Tourism, 2016; Kirillova et al., 2017a; 2017b; Soulard et al., 2019). In a similar vein, Pollock (2015) uses the term ‘conscious travel’ which assists this transformation towards a life-affirming, place-based regenerative economy in which all stakeholders and all living forms can thrive and flourish.

Parallelly, the tourism sector has reflected this trend. For example, the Transformative Travel Council (TTC) was formed in 2016, which comprised of ‘guides and conveners of a global movement which maximizes the power of travel to positively transform how we live our lives, how we live with others, and how we live on our planet’ (TTC, n.d.). A trendy Vogue magazine article (Trimble, 2017) claimed that ‘transformational travel is the next evolution. It has similar elements of experiential travel, but taken a step further—it’s travel motivated and defined by a shift in perspective, self-reflection and development, and a deeper communion with nature and culture’. In 2018 Skift (the agency that invented the term overtourism) published a report ‘Transformative travel: Shifting toward meaning, purpose and self-fulfilment’, claiming that ‘travelers today are increasingly drawn to travel as a form of self-actualization and personal transformation and growth. They want more than a simple visit to a new destination or spend their days merely relaxing on a beach. Instead, the travel they’re seeking is an experience of the world that goes deep — one that changes them in ways they may not even be aware of’ (p.3). To this end, Sheldon (2020) examines how the ultimate human journey is an inner one towards the state that gives us a sense of peace and unity and connectedness with all living beings, and how tourism destinations and providers might design tourism experiences to assist tourists on the path to this ultimate inner destination.

During the same years, I conducted a longitudinal (2015–2019) research project titled: ‘Trans-tourism: an integrated approach for the study of the transformative role of tourism in the 21st century’*. Designed to run for the period of 4 years through a multi-method approach, the project further investigated these claims of tourism being a t...