sample research paper about tourism

Transformational tourism – a systematic literature review and research agenda

Journal of Tourism Futures

ISSN : 2055-5911

Article publication date: 22 June 2022

Issue publication date: 22 September 2022

This paper aims to examine critically the literature on transformational tourism and explore a research agenda for a post-COVID future.

Design/methodology/approach

A systematic review of the transformational tourism literature is performed over a 42-year period from 1978 to 2020.

Further research is required in terms of how transformative experiences should be calibrated and measured both in qualitative and quantitative terms, particularly from the perspective of how tourists are transformed by their experiences. Similarly, the nature and depth of these transformative processes remain poorly understood, particularly given the many different types of tourism associated with transformative experiences, which range from religious pilgrimages to backpacking and include several forms of ecotourism.

Practical implications

Future research directions for transformational tourism are discussed with regard to how COVID-19 will transform the dynamics of tourism and travel, including the role of new smart technologies in the creation of enhanced transformational experiences, and the changing expectations and perceptions of transformative travel in the post-COVID era. In addition, the researchers call for future studies on transformational tourism to explore the role of host communities in the delivery of meaningful visitor experiences.

Originality/value

Transformational tourism is an emerging body of research, which has attracted a growing level of interest among tourism scholars in recent years. However, to this date, a systematic review of published literature in this field has not been conducted yet in a holistic sense. This paper offers a framework for future research in this field.

Transformational tourism

Literature review

Research agenda

Nandasena, R. , Morrison, A.M. and Coca-Stefaniak, J.A. (2022), "Transformational tourism – a systematic literature review and research agenda", Journal of Tourism Futures , Vol. 8 No. 3, pp. 282-297. https://doi.org/10.1108/JTF-02-2022-0038

Emerald Publishing Limited

Published in Journal of Tourism Futures . Published by Emerald Publishing Limited. This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) licence. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode .

Introduction

Although transformational tourism would seem to be a novel emerging field of research ( Reisinger, 2013 ), the roots of this concept can be arguably traced back to Victorian England (e.g. the Grand Tour), when leisure-related travel was often linked to self-change and self-exploration. Indeed, authors in the 17th and 18th century, including James Boswell, Samuel Johnson and Mariano Vasi, among others, provided reflective accounts of their travels in continental Europe ( Knowles, 2013 ). From a more scholarly perspective, Mezirow's (1978) transformational theory set the foundations of what later evolved into transformational tourism with Bruner (1991) and Kotler (1998) as its pioneers. Today, scholarly research guided by transformational learning theory (see, for instance, Mezirow, 1991 , 2000 ; or Hobson and Welbourn, 1998 ) is well established and early tourism scholars built on these foundations to explore the therapeutic and experiential elements of travel ( Kotler, 1998 ). More recently, Ross (2010) defined transformative travel and tourism in terms of their aim to “honour the delicate interplay between the self and anyone who is different or the ‘other’ during the travel” (p. 55), with Lean (2012) arguing the key role of physical travel in this process.

Different aspects of transformational tourism have been explored adopting perspectives that have included existential-humanistic approaches ( Kirillova, 2017 ), co-creation ( Wengel et al. , 2019 ), volunteer tourism ( Knowlenberg et al. , 2014 ), pilgrimage tourism ( Nikjoo et al. , 2020 ), ecotourism ( Pookhao,2014 ), the sharing economy ( Guttentag, 2019 ), experience development ( Wolf et al. , 2017 ) and host–tourist relationships ( Lean, 2012 ; Soulard et al ., 2019 ; Robledo and Batle, 2017 ).

Reisinger (2013) defined transformational tourism as tourism that delivers “very rich and very deep sensual and emotional transformational experiences that enable people to achieve their full potential as unique and authentic human being” (p. 31). In spite of this tentative attempt to define the concept, the connection between lasting personal transformations and visitor experiences in the context of tourism remains poorly understood. This article seeks to contribute to existing knowledge through a bibliographic analysis of the literature in this field and a research agenda for future scholarly work beyond the on-going COVID-19 pandemic and building on similar systematic literature reviews (SLRs) on this topic published recently ( Teoh et al. , 2021 ), though adopting a more comprehensive approach to the literature beyond the merely experiential elements of this field of research. The research agenda suggested is deliberately thought-provoking in its stance, particularly at a stage when the world is beginning to emerge from one of the most traumatic global health crises in living memory. Travel and tourism have been one of the worst-hit sectors of the economy ( Škare et al. , 2021 ). However, the sector is uniquely positioned to capitalise on the use of much sought transformational experiences to drive strategies for recovery ( Abbas et al. , 2021 ; Pasquinelli et al. , 2022 ) and re-think the strategic positioning of tourism destinations adopting innovative future-based approaches ( Korstanje and George, 2022 ; Assaf et al. , 2022 ). First, the methodology of the systematic literature search is explained, with its main findings outlined. This is then followed by a review of the literature on transformational tourism and a proposed research agenda.

Systematic literature search methodology

Building on earlier literature reviews by Stone and Duffy's (2015) and, more recently, Teoh et al. (2021) , an SLR of transformational tourism (TT) was conducted as part of this study with the aim of eliciting key publications in this field as well as different theoretical perspectives and conceptual frameworks in this context. This SLR combined Davis et al .’s (2014 ) standard five-step Evidence-Based practice in Medicine (EBM) approach with the PRISMA (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis) approach proposed by Moher et al. (2009) , as shown in Figure 1 . In line with this, Scopus and WoS (Web of Science) were chosen as the sources for the literature search over a 42-year period from January 1978 to July 2020.

First, a set of keywords linked to transformational tourism was selected for the systematic literature search. In order to do this, a selection of seminal scholarly works in this field was made first. These seminal works included Reisinger's (2013 and 2015) edited books on “Transformational Tourism (Tourist and Host perspectives)”, where various typologies of tourism are explored from a transformational perspective. In addition to these two books, two articles were selected ( Sterchele, 2020 ; Pung et al. , 2020 ), as they included the most up-to-date literature reviews at the time. Similarly, the first article to coin the concept of transformational tourism ( Bruner, 1991 ) was also selected. A content analysis of these publications was then conducted to elicit search keywords relevant to transformational tourism. Additionally, the five most-cited journal articles on transformational tourism were used as part of this content analysis to develop a set of keywords, which were then used for the systematic literature search process. The terms “transformative” and “transformational” were selected as some of the most often used keywords in these scholarly works. However, given that transformative experiences often involve a process of defining or re-defining an individual's self-identity, the following keywords were also deemed relevant to this study, based on the analysis of the publications cited above: “self-changing”; “self-development”; “self-improvement”; “self-responsibility”; “self-fulfilment”; “self-realisation”; “self-reflexive”; “self-monitoring”; “self-transformation”; “personal transformation”; “personal development”; “personal identity”; “transformational self”; “change in oneself”; “reflection on oneself”; “being true to oneself”; “immersing oneself”; “finding oneself”; and “life-changing”. Similarly, and given the different types of tourism often linked to transformational processes, the following search keywords were also adopted as part of this content analysis: “volunteer”; “ecotourism”; “adventure”; “backpacker”; “backpacking”; “yoga”; “religious”; “pilgrim”; “pilgrimage”; “wellness”; “wellbeing”; “well-being”; “spiritual”; “culture”; and “cultural heritage”.

The article search was performed by title, abstract and keywords, using Boolean operators “OR” and “AND” with an asterisk (“*”-proximity operator) to ensure that all alternative terms were captured. In addition to this, and given the limited amount of “hits” achieved initially, a number of search keyword combinations were implemented as part of the search query. For instance, “religious* Tourism” OR “religious* travel” AND “transform*” OR “life-changing” OR “self-change” OR “self-reflect” OR “personal transformation” OR “identify the life” were used as part of this exercise.

Figure 2 outlines the process followed in this systematic search of the literature on transformational tourism. For each search criteria, the number of scholarly sources found is indicated (e.g. n = 51). Only books and articles in peer-reviewed journals were considered in this systematic literature search. Editorial articles published in academic journals were not included in the analysis.

Overall, 194 scholarly sources related to transformational tourism were found to have been published between January 1978 and June 2020, following on from a preliminary screening process for validity and applicability to this study. Overall, it was found that scholarly interest in transformational tourism was rather embryonic among tourism scholars until 2007, with a significant growth in research activity between 2018 and 2020, which accounted for more than half of the total available documents, as shown in Figure 3 .

Research topics in transformational tourism

Further analysis of the data ( Figure 4 ) showed that 34 of these scholarly works were in pilgrimage/religious/spiritual tourism, with others related to cultural and heritage tourism (31), ecotourism (27), volunteer tourism (25), wellness/wellbeing/yoga tourism (14), backpacking tourism (9), adventure tourism (7) and dark tourism (5).

A qualitative analysis of keywords used was also performed. This is illustrated in the form of a network visualisation in Figure 5 . The analysis rendered 102 scholarly outputs with the highest level of connection with transformational tourism. This rendered 11 clusters and 364 links, with a total link strength value of 372. Higher weights rendered larger circle labels for “transformation”, “transformative travel”, “tourism development”and “sustainability”. For example, 13 items, including “memorable experience” and “transformational learning”, represented one cluster. On the other hand, 6 items, including “tourist behaviour” and “spiritual tourism”, represented 11 clusters, as shown in Table 1 .

Sources of scholarly works in transformational tourism

The highest proportion of journal articles on transformational tourism was published in Annals of Tourism Research ( Table 2 ). Other journals contributing to this field included, in descending order, Tourism Recreation Research , Journal of Sustainable Tourism , International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage , Current Issues in Tourism and International Journal of Tourism Research . A further 62 scholarly sources were published in a variety of other journals, excluding books and book chapters.

Research focus on transformational tourism

Qualitative research tended to dominate (47%) scholarly works on transformational tourism. This was followed by conceptual approaches (26%). It is noteworthy that only 12% of published journal articles on this topic involved quantitative research, though the lack of appropriate measurement scales and indexes may have influenced this.

A substantial proportion of research related to transformational tourism has tended to focus on aspects related to tourism demand (47%), including tourist behaviour, visitor experiences and transformational processes (e.g. personal and emotional changes, self-transformation). From a supply perspective, research on transformational tourism centred on tourism destinations accounted for 26% of scholarly output, with research focusing on host communities, local stakeholders, entrepreneurs, culture, economic development and environmental impacts accounting for 50 articles. In turn, conceptual research accounted for only 12% of scholarly output, with other categories seemingly rather unexplored, particularly, as regard sustainability (1%).

The 194 scholarly outputs identified by this systematic literature search could be broadly grouped into four themes, namely: tourism experiences; leadership; responsible tourism and the United Nations' sustainable development goals framework.

Tourism experiences

Visitor experiences contribute to the thought processes that result in transformational outcomes for individuals. These experiences may revolve around the socio-cultural exchange, escapism, risk-taking activities, facing challenges, gaining confidence, personal development in new roles and controlling negative emotions such as fear, anger and anxiety. Coghlan and Gooch (2011) have shown that Mezirow's (2000) transformation steps effectively link with these types of experiences well beyond volunteer tourism. Similarly, interaction with local communities at tourism destinations, the development of new relationships and reflecting on a new understanding of social realities around the world have been shown to contribute to these processes in a variety of contexts, including ecotourism ( Walter, 2016 ; Jernsand, 2017 ), voluntourism ( Lee and Woosnam, 2010 ; Coghlan and Gooch, 2011 ; Zavitz and Butz, 2011 ; Alexander, 2012 ; Adams, 2013 or Muller et al. , 2020 ), pilgrimage and spiritual tourism ( Bond et al. , 2015 ; Kurmanilyeva et al. , 2014 ), backpacker tourism ( Bosangit et al ., 2015 ; Yang et al. , 2018 ), wellness, wellbeing and yoga tourism ( Thal and Hudson, 2019 ; Dillette et al. , 2019 ; Voigt et al. , 2011 ; Kim et al. , 2019 ), adventure tourism ( Allman et al. , 2009 ; Gilbert and Gillett, 2014 ), cultural and heritage tourism ( Yamamura et al. , 2006 ; Marschall, 2008 ) and dark tourism ( Sharma and Rickly, 2019 ; Zheng et al. , 2020 ).

Similarly, transformative processes at the individual level have been linked by research studies to visitor experiences where escapism was a key motivation ( Chen et al. , 2014 ; Lochrie et al. , 2019 ), breaking away from daily routines and responsibilities ( Adams, 2013 ), where feelings of personal freedom induced by travel remained at the core of visitors' enjoyment ( O'Reilly, 2006 ). For instance, research by Deville and Wearing (2013) examined ecotourism's transformational potential in the context of organic farms, where budget travellers interacted with local communities over lengthy periods of time, resulting in strong bonds forged with those host communities. Moreover, research by Jernsand (2017) found that there are three aspects affecting the delivery of transformational experiences in tourism. These include embodied and situated learning, relationship building and acknowledging and sharing power that is derived from engaging in development projects. Similarly, Massingham et al. (2019) found that engagement in environmental conservation projects and its experiential elements (e.g. education, encounters with wildlife) were generally associated with participants' emotions, learning, connections and reflective processes.

In a completely different context, dark tourism has often contributed to transformational processes through the delivery of experiences that often generate negative feelings among visitors, even when these negative emotions do not necessarily equate to negative experiences ( Linayage et al. , 2015 ). Dark tourism may in some cases result in visitors being exposed to poverty, hunger or dramatic levels of deprivation, which can have profound emotional impacts on people witnessing these circumstances.

Using generally more positive emotions, scholars have argued that adventure tourism ( Gilbert and Gillet, 2014 ) can also lead to transformative experiences through risk-taking, overcoming personal fears, self-affirmation, teamwork and tourists realising their true potential, even if some scholars would posit that for adventure tourism to deliver truly transformative experiences, it needs to involve extreme situations that take people to the very limits of their emotions ( Allman et al. , 2009 ).

Overall, considering the overall trends that appear to emerge from the transformational tourism literature over the past four decades, scholarly research in this field appears to have shifted from individual transformations among tourists to a different level of understanding of these processes through different types of experiences where interactions with other individuals are beginning to be investigated in more depth, even if the research that takes into account host–visitor relationships remains still nascent. Similarly, from a more theoretical perspective, memorable experiences linked to tourism remain another fertile path for research – see, for instance, Pung et al .'s (2020) conceptual model, particularly, in terms of their measurement (note the transformational tourism experience scale developed by Soulard et al. , 2020 ) and links to various aspects of experience design, including the “disorienting dilemma” first outlined by Mezirow's (1978 , 2000) as a factor that significantly influences the development of transformational experiences. Research by Soulard et al. (2020) , for instance, discovered that this “disorienting dilemma” tends to occur once tourists have returned home, so it is not possible to research it while they are still at their destination of choice.

Leadership is increasingly developing into an emerging research theme in transformational tourism. Scholarly research in this field ( Spicer-Escalante, 2011 ; Robledo and Batle, 2017 ) posits that tourism experiences focusing on personal development, including improved communication, bonding with others, development of self-understanding and self-awareness are elements that tend to contribute to personality traits associated with leadership.

For instance, using Hanson's (2013) leadership development interface model, Cruz (2017) showed that pilgrimage tourism experiences often contain important metaphorical aspects that influence the development of leaders. In fact, Cruz (2017) described pilgrimage as a “foundational symbol for leadership development” (p. 50) as it delivers self-awareness, self-growth and self-understanding as a result of self-reflection.

Similarly, Ross (2019) and Robledo and Batle (2017) used the metaphor of Campbell's archetypal journey adopting transformational tourism as a “hero's journey”. Research by Gilbert and Gillett (2014) echoes this metaphor in their analysis of Mary Shaffer and Barbara Kingscote as horseback adventurers and their achievements in the “frontier stage of adventure” (p. 314), which often involved overcoming fear in order to achieve their goals. The study found that through embodied experiences in adventure tourism such as excitement and thrill based on risk, they were able to de-territorialize themselves.

Responsible tourism

Responsible tourism guides a destination's development and respects its overall tourism system through a balanced focus on its culture, environment, local economy and host community ( United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), 2018 ). In line with this philosophy, responsible tourists tend to be particularly predisposed to protecting the environment and its biodiversity. In turn, for local communities, it is the conservation and development of destinations that are often the priority ( Sin, 2010 ; Woo et al. , 2015 ), particularly with the aim of improving the quality of life of residents ( Lehto et al. , 2020 ), creating an increasingly resilient local economy and capitalising on the advantages of sustainable tourism ( Uysal et al. , 2016 ). However, the longer-term sustainability of a destination relies largely on a combination of responsible visitors and entrepreneurial residents with a good sense of environmental stewardship.

On this front, Ulusoy (2016) argued that “responsible [tourism and consumption] becomes an act of hybrid, of moral, rational, social, and ludic agencies” (p. 284) where tourists partaking in alternative break trips can undergo deep transformational experiences as a result of the acquisition of a sense of empowerment and a broader sense of responsibility. The same study found that participants in transformational experiences tend to develop responsible identities through their development of an organic community, unpretentious fun, embracing the other, developing and using capabilities, overcoming challenges and self-reflection. Ulusoy’s (2015) findings underline that the development of responsible behaviours and identities leads to self-interest and the creation of deep connections with “others”. Walker and Moscardo (2016) took this further within an indigenous tourism context by arguing that responsible tourism should also involve the development of a “sense of place” and a “care of place”. Moreover, they posit that these two spheres have the potential to deliver deeply transformational processes in tourists as well as their host communities, often influenced by periods of critical self-reflection.

Sustainable development (United Nations' sustainable development goals framework)

Transformational tourism has been interpreted by some scholars as a sustainable ambassador ( Lean, 2012 ) by encouraging the empowerment of local communities as well as helping host communities and tourists to reflect on their responsibilities. In line with this, it could be argued that transformational tourism has a role to play in sustainable development.

The tourism sector has been linked to the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals framework and the tourism development report in 2018 ( United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), 2018 ) illustrated five pillars in this respect, namely, sustainable economic growth; social inclusiveness, employment, and poverty reduction; resource efficiency, environmental protection, and climate change; cultural values, diversity and heritage; and mutual understanding, peace and security. Kim et al. (2019) , for instance, illustrate the link between community-based ecotourism and sustainable transformative economies. Similarly, Butcher (2011) highlights that ecotourism has the capability to tackle poverty and address the Millennium Development Goals. Massingham et al. (2019) feature aspects of experiences such as positive and negative emotions, connections, reflections and elements of experiences (animal encounters and educational shows) associated with ecotourism that support different types of conservational engagements. Higgins and Mundine (2008) allude implicitly to aspects of social inclusiveness, poverty reduction and resource efficiency in their analysis of transformative experiences in voluntourism. However, much of this research remains embryonic in terms of its contribution to clear links between transformational tourism and the UN's framework of Sustainable Development Goals.

Discussion and research agenda

As scholarly enquiry related to transformational tourism and, indeed, transformational experiences in this industry ( Teoh et al. , 2021 ) continues to develop, it would appear that an impending sense of Quo Vadis is emerging among researchers in this field. Far from being a sign of philosophical indecisiveness, creative dithering or even – far from it – lack of thought leadership, this may be more a product of the trans-modernity phenomenon first coined by Ghisi (2001) within the context of sustainability and discussed holistically with mesmerising profoundness by Ateljevic (2009 , 2020) . Indeed, in line with Ateljevic's argument, should transformational tourism focus solely on the neurological and psychological changes taking place at the level of the individual, the search for meaning by new generations in a hyperconnected world where, paradoxically, loneliness is on the rise, or the existentialist dilemmas emerging among communities around the world as the fallout of the largest global pandemic in living memory? This section attempts to discuss these issues and potential avenues for new research in transformational tourism adopting a futures-based approach. Inevitably, perhaps, questions are raised with no easy answers, at least not within the current business and management paradigm that dominates much of tourism research today.

Firstly, the concept of what should be classed as “transformative” or “transformational” merits further investigation, particularly, given that transformational thought processes arising from self-reflection are complex and tend to take time ( Coghlan and Weiler, 2018 ), as illustrated in Figure 6 . Similarly, in order for transformation of any given magnitude to take place, is a trigger in the form of, for instance, a memorable experience a pre-requisite? Would this mean that a more ordinary, and arguably less memorable tourism experience, would be unlikely to result in transformative thought processes? Furthermore, if a tourism experience is designed to be “transformational”, how would we evaluate its success given that the time scales associated with self-reflection processes may last several years? Similarly, the output of this transformation may differ among individuals. For some, the transformation may be purely cognitive, whereas, for others, the transformation may result in physical changes and even life-changing actions such as a major career epiphany, a move to a different part of the world (or simply from an urban environment to a more rural location), dietary changes (e.g. embracing vegetarianism) or a radical lifestyle change involving some or all of the above.

Secondly, what type of tourism would be more likely to deliver the type of transformational tourism experiences sought by future generations? So far, scholarly enquiry in this field has tended to favour pilgrimage tourism, backpacker tourism, voluntourism and other forms of tourism often clustered under the general umbrella term of “special interest tourism” (see Weiler and Firth, 2021 for a research agenda for this field). Increasingly, however, slow tourism (see, among others, Caffyn, 2012 ) is likely to develop as a channel for transformational tourism experiences as the world emerges from the current global COVID-19 pandemic. However, although this type of tourism has often been associated with nature-based tourism, urban tourism destinations are likely to become strong competitors for slow tourism over time. Urban tourism destinations will not only develop their nature-based offer in the future, including mega parks (e.g. Buckley et al. , 2021 ), geology-related attractions (e.g. Richards et al. , 2021 ) and urban wildlife (e.g. Simpson et al. , 2021 ), all of which have a positive impact on the mental health of residents and visitors alike. They will increasingly seek to evolve their smart tourism offer towards a different paradigm, coined by Coca-Stefaniak (2020) as “wise tourism cities”, which focusses more on a hybrid approach combining smart technologies and digital detox to trigger neurological processes leading to elusive (and often ephemeral) states of inner peace. Although these events need not result in transformational experiences at all in the short term, the effect of these experiences on visitors and residents alike will become an avenue of scholarly enquiry at various levels, particularly given that the impending Internet of the Senses revolution is poised to widen the array of options available to tourism professionals on this front ( Agapito, 2020 ; Pasolini et al. , 2020 ).

Thirdly, the majority of articles found in this systematic literature review focused on the tourists' perspective, with only a limited number of studies investigating the host and destination perspective ( Isaac, 2017 ; Wanitchakorn and Muangasame, 2021 ). However, transformational experiences embedded in any degree of – albeit contested – authenticity tend to rely on a social context where local host communities play a pivotal role in the delivery of immersive experiences for visitors ( Lehto et al. , 2020 ; Seeler et al. , 2021 ). Meaningful tourism experiences ( McIntosh and Mansfeld, 2006 ; Mason and O'Mahony, 2007 ) sought by new generations of tourists (e.g. Chirakranont and Sakdiyakorn, 2022 ; Wilson and Harris, 2006 ) will increasingly rely on this aspect of transformational tourism, which currently remains under-researched. This search for more meaningful travel may well be one of the trigger points arising from the fallout of the global COVID-19 pandemic, as some scholars have postulated, particularly in the context of sustainable tourism ( Lew et al. , 2020 ; Galvani et al. , 2020 ).

Conclusions

Transformational tourism remains an emerging field in tourism research. This study has provided a systematic analysis of the literature on this topic in terms of its predominant research approaches, focus and perspectives, including the contribution of scholarly works from related fields such as ecotourism, voluntourism, adventure tourism and pilgrimage tourism, among others. Overall, 194 articles have been reviewed spanning a 42-year period from 1978 until 2020. Most research in transformational tourism appears to adopt a demand-led focus, with scholarly enquiry adopting a host community perspective in need of further development. Similarly, in spite of the growing links between leadership development and transformational experiences or the parallels between transformational tourism and the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals framework, these two aspects of scholarly enquiry remain under-researched. Moreover, the need for a tourism system-based approach to the analysis of transformational tourism processes is argued in this study with a framework suggested for further research in this field that considers the role of time in the development of transformational tourism experiences as well as a potential continuum in this process that also involves more “standard” or “ordinary” tourism experiences as well as memorable ones. Accordingly, recommendations for further research in transformational tourism are offered adopting a tourism futures approach to elicit not only the shorter-term impacts that the on-going global COVID-19 pandemic will have on the dynamics of tourism and travel but also longer-term trends, including the growing search among new generations of tourists for meaningful experiences, where local communities play an active role.

Systematic literature search process

Systematic literature review process with selection criteria

Growth in transformational tourism publications between 1978 and 2020

Articles in transformational tourism by topic (absolute numbers for 1978–2020 period)

VOS viewer network visualisation of themes related to transformational tourism research

Conceptual framework for future research in transformational tourism

Keyword co-occurrence

Sources (peer-reviewed journals) of transformational tourism articles

Abbas , J. , Mubeen , R. , Iorember , P.T. , Raza , S. and Mamirkulova , G. ( 2021 ), “ Exploring the impact of COVID-19 on tourism: transformational potential and implications for a sustainable recovery of the travel and leisure industry ”, Current Research in Behavioral Sciences , Vol. 2 , 100033 .

Adams , A.E. ( 2013 ), “ The pilgrimage transformed: how to decompartmentalize US volunteer tourism in central America ”, in Borland , K. and Adams , A.E. (Eds), International Volunteer Tourism , Palgrave Macmillan , New York , pp. 157 - 169 .

Agapito , D. ( 2020 ), “ The senses in tourism design: a bibliometric review ”, Annals of Tourism Research , Vol. 83 , 102934 .

Alexander , Z. ( 2012 ), “ International volunteer tourism experience in South Africa: an investigation into the impact on the tourist ”, Journal of Hospitality Marketing and Management , Vol. 21 No. 7 , pp. 779 - 799 .

Allman , T.L. , Mittelstaedt , R.D. , Martin , B. and Goldenberg , M. ( 2009 ), “ Exploring the motivations of BASE jumpers: extreme sport enthusiasts ”, Journal of Sport and Tourism , Vol. 14 No. 4 , pp. 229 - 247 .

Assaf , A.G. , Kock , F. and Tsionas , M. ( 2022 ), “ Tourism during and after COVID-19: an expert-informed agenda for future research ”, Journal of Travel Research , Vol. 61 No. 2 , pp. 454 - 457 .

Ateljevic , I. ( 2009 ), “ Transmodernity: remaking our (tourism) world? ”, Philosophical Issues in Tourism , Channel View Publications , London , pp. 278 - 302 .

Ateljevic , I. ( 2020 ), “ Transforming the (tourism) world for good and (re) generating the potential ‘new normal ”, Tourism Geographies , Vol. 22 No. 3 , pp. 467 - 475 .

Bond , N. , Packer , J. and Ballantyne , R. ( 2015 ), “ Exploring visitor experiences, activities and benefits at three religious tourism sites ”, International Journal of Tourism Research , Vol. 17 , pp. 471 - 481 .

Bosangit , C. , Hibbert , S. and McCabe , S. ( 2015 ), “ ‘If I was going to die I should at least be having fun’: travel blogs, meaning and tourist experience ”, Annals of Tourism Research , Vol. 55 , pp. 1 - 14 .

Bruner , M.E. ( 1991 ), “ Transformation self in tourism ”, Annals of Tourism Research , Vol. 18 , pp. 238 - 250 .

Buckley , R. , Zhong , L. and Martin , S. ( 2021 ), “ Mental health key to tourism infrastructure in China's new megapark ”, Tourism Management , Vol. 82 , 104169 .

Butcher , J. ( 2011 ), “ Can ecotourism contribute to tackling poverty? The importance of ‘symbiosis’ ”, Current Issues in Tourism , Vol. 14 No. 3 , pp. 295 - 307 .

Caffyn , A. ( 2012 ), “ Advocating and implementing slow tourism ”, Tourism Recreation Research , Vol. 37 No. 1 , pp. 77 - 80 .

Chen , G. , Bao , J. and Huang , S. ( 2014 ), “ Segmenting Chinese backpackers by travel motivations ”, International Journal of Tourism Research , Vol. 16 , pp. 355 - 367 .

Chirakranont , R. and Sakdiyakorn , M. ( 2022 ), “ Conceptualizing meaningful tourism experiences: case study of a small craft beer brewery in Thailand ”, Journal of Destination Marketing and Management , Vol. 23 , 100691 .

Coca-Stefaniak , J.A. ( 2020 ), “ Beyond smart tourism cities–towards a new generation of ‘wise’ tourism destinations ”, Journal of Tourism Futures , Vol. 7 No. 2 , pp. 251 - 258 , doi: 10.1108/JTF-11-2019-0130 .

Coghlan , A. and Gooch , M. ( 2011 ), “ Applying a transformative learning framework to volunteer tourism ”, Journal of Sustainable Tourism , Vol. 19 No. 6 , pp. 713 - 728 .

Coghlan , A. and Weiler , B. ( 2018 ), “ Examining transformative processes in volunteer tourism ”, Current Issues in Tourism , Vol. 21 No. 5 , pp. 567 - 582 .

Cruz , J. ( 2017 ), “ Pilgrimage in leadership ”, International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage , Vol. 5 No. 2 , pp. 50 - 54 .

Davis , J. , Mengersen , K. , Bennett , S. and Mazerolle , L. ( 2014 ), “ Viewing systematic reviews and meta-analysis in social research through difference lenses ”, Springer Plus , Vol. 3 No. 511 , pp. 1 - 9 .

Deville , A. and Wearing , S. ( 2013 ), “ WWWOOFing tourists: beaten tracks and transformational paths ”, in Reisinger , Y. (Ed.), Transformational Tourism: Tourist Perspectives , CABI , Oxfordshire , pp. 151 - 168 .

Dillette , A.K. , Douglas , A.C. and Andrzejewski , C. ( 2019 ), “ Yoga tourism- a catalyst for transformation? ”, Annals of Leisure Research , Vol. 22 No. 1 , pp. 22 - 41 .

Galvani , A. , Lew , A.A. and Perez , M.S. ( 2020 ), “ COVID-19 is expanding global consciousness and the sustainability of travel and tourism ”, Tourism Geographies , Vol. 22 No. 3 , pp. 567 - 576 .

Ghisi , M.L. ( 2001 ), Au-delà de la modernité, du patriarcat et du capitalisme , L'Harmattan , Paris .

Gilbert , M. and Gillett , J. ( 2014 ), “ Into the mountains and across the country: emergent forms of equine adventure leisure in Canada ”, Society and Leisure , Vol. 37 No. 2 , pp. 313 - 325 .

Guttentag , D. ( 2019 ), “ Transformative experiences via Airbnb: is it the guests or the host communities that will be transformed? ”, Journal of Tourism Futures , Vol. 5 No. 2 , pp. 179 - 184 .

Hanson , B. ( 2013 ), “ The leadership development interface: aligning leaders and organizations toward more effective leadership learning ”, Advances in Developing Human Resources , Vol. 15 No. 1 , pp. 106 - 120 .

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Impact of tourism development upon environmental sustainability: a suggested framework for sustainable ecotourism

Research Article
Published: 19 August 2022
Volume 30 , pages 5917–5930, ( 2023 )

Cite this article

Qadar Bakhsh Baloch 1 ,
Syed Naseeb Shah 1 ,
Nadeem Iqbal 2 ,
Muhammad Sheeraz 3 ,
Muhammad Asadullah 4 ,
Sourath Mahar 5 &
Asia Umar Khan 6

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The empirical research investigated the relationship between tourism development and environmental suitability to propose a framework for sustainable ecotourism. The framework suggested a balance between business and environmental interests in maintaining an ecological system with the moderating help of government support and policy interventions. The study population encompasses tourism stakeholders, including tourists, representatives from local communities, members of civil administration, hoteliers, and tour operators serving the areas. A total of 650 questionnaires were distributed to respondents, along with a brief description of key study variables to develop a better understanding. After verifying the instrument’s reliability and validity, data analysis was conducted via hierarchical regression. The study findings revealed that a substantial number of people perceive socio-economic benefits, including employment and business openings, infrastructure development from tourism development, and growth. However, the state of the natural and environmental capital was found to be gradually degrading. Alongside the social environment, social vulnerability is reported due to the overutilization of land, intrusion from external cultures, and pollution in air and water due to traffic congestion, accumulation of solid waste, sewage, and carbon emissions. The study suggested a model framework for the development of sustained ecotourism, including supportive government policy interventions to ensure effective conservation of environmental and natural resources without compromising the economic viability and social well-beings of the locals. Furthermore, the variables and the constructs researched can be replicated to other destinations to seek valuable inputs for sustainable destination management elsewhere.

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Introduction

Tourism is a vibrant force that stimulates travel to explore nature, adventures, wonders, and societies, discover cultures, meet people, interact with values, and experience new traditions and events. Tourism development attracts tourists to a particular destination to develop and sustain a tourism industry. Moreover, environmental sustainability is the future-based conscious effort aimed at conserving socio-cultural heritage and preserving natural resources to protect environmental ecosystems through supporting people’s health and economic well-being. Environment sustainability can be reflected in clean and green natural landscaping, thriving biodiversity, virgin sea beaches, long stretches of desert steppes, socio-cultural values, and archeological heritage that epitomize tourists’ degree of motivation and willingness of the local community to welcome the visitors. In this context, tourism growth and environmental sustainability are considered interdependent constructs; therefore, the increase in tourism development and tourists’ arrivals directly affects the quality of sustained and green tourism (Azam et al. 2018 ; Hassan et al. 2020 ; Sun et al. 2021 ).

According to the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), tourism is one of the fastest-growing industries, contributing more than 10% to the global GDP (UNWTO 2017; Mikayilov et al. 2019 ). Twenty-five million international tourists in 1950 grew to 166 million in 1970, reaching 1.442 billion in 2018 and projected to be 1.8 billion by 2030. Mobilizing such a substantial human tourist’s mass is most likely to trickle environmental pollution along with its positive effects on employment, wealth creation, and the economy. The local pollution at tourist destinations may include air emissions, noise, solid waste, littering, sewage, oil and chemicals, architectural/visual pollution, heating, car use, and many more. In addition, an uncontrolled, overcrowded, and ill-planned tourist population has substantial adverse effects on the quality of the environment. It results in the over-consumption of natural resources, degradation of service quality, and an exponential increase in wastage and pollution. Furthermore, tourism arrivals beyond capacity bring problems rather than a blessing, such as leaving behind soil erosion, attrition of natural resources, accumulation of waste and air pollution, and endangering biodiversity, decomposition of socio-cultural habitats, and virginity of land and sea (Kostić et al. 2016 ; Shaheen et al. 2019 ; Andlib and Salcedo-Castro 2021 ).

Tourism growth and environmental pollution have been witnessed around the globe in different regions. The ASEAN countries referred to as heaven for air pollution, climate change, and global warming are experiencing economic tourism and pollution (Azam et al. 2018 ; Guzel and Okumus 2020 ). In China, more than fifty-eight major Chinese tourism destinations are inviting immediate policy measures to mitigate air pollution and improve environmental sustainability (Zhang et al. 2020 ). Similarly, Singapore, being a top-visited country, is facing negative ecological footprints and calling for a trade-off between tourism development and environmental sustainability (Khoi et al. 2021 ). The prior studies established that international tourism and the tourism-led growth surge tourists’ arrival, energy consumption, carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions, and air pollution resultantly cause climate change (Aslan et al. 2021 ). South Asian countries, more specifically Sri Lanka and Pakistan, are on the verge of tourism growth and environmental pollution compared to other countries (Chishti et al. 2020 ; Tiwari et al. 2021 ).

Pakistan is acknowledged in the tourism world because of its magnificent mountains with the densest concentration of high peaks in the world, scenic beauty of Neelum Valley, Murree, Chitral, and swat Valleys’, Kaghan, Naran, Hunza, Gilgit Baltistan (Baloch 2007 ), sacred shrines of Sikhism, archeological sites of the Gandhara and Indus Valley civilizations such as Mohenjo-Daro, Taxila including pre-Islamic Kalasha community (Baloch and Rehman 2015 ). In addition, Pakistan’s hospitable and multicultural society offers rich traditions, customs, and festivals for the tourists to explore, commemorate, cherish, and enjoy. Pakistan’s geographical and socio-cultural environment represents its resource and an opportunity (Baloch and Rehman 2015 ); therefore, Pakistan is looking to capitalize on it as a promising source of the foreign reserve to compensate for its mounting trade deficit (Baloch et al. 2020 ).

Tourism expansion has been established as a very deleterious ecological cost vis-à-vis the socio-economic benefits it passes to the host communities (Pulido-Fernández et al. 2019 ; Simo-Kengne 2022 ). In this context, the research is motivated to investigate the relationships between Pakistan’s tourism development activities and environmental sustainability. Drawing from the arguments of Pulido-Fernández et al. ( 2019 ) and Simo-Kengne ( 2022 ), it is feared that Pakistan’s ongoing determination to tourism development is likely to cause environmental degradation in two ways. Firstly, the tourism infrastructure developmental process would consume natural resources in the form of air and water pollution, loss of nature, and biodiversity. Secondly, the proliferation of tourism-related energy-consuming activities harms the environment by adding CO 2 emissions (Andlib and Saceldo-Castro 2021 ; Chien et al. 2021a ). Therefore, to tape this tourism-rich potential without compromising the sustainability of the natural and socio-cultural environment in the area, there is a dire need to develop Pakistan’s tourism areas into environment-friendly destinations.

Against the backdrop of a widening level of trade deficit, Pakistan’s rich tourism potential is being perceived as an immediate alternative for earning revenue to compensate for the current account gap. However, the developing large-scale tourism industry is considered a threat to deforestation, and air and water pollution, endangering biodiversity trading on resilient ecological credentials. The research study attempts to find an all-inclusive and comprehensive answer to the socio-ecological environmental concerns of tourism development and growth. Therefore, the research investigates the relationship between tourism development and its environmental sustainability to suggest a model framework for the development and growth of Sustainable Ecotourism in Pakistan along with its most visited destinations.

Literature review

Tourism development and growth

Tourism is considered a force of sound as it benefits travelers and communities in urban and suburban areas. Tourism development is the process of forming and sustaining a business for a particular or mix of segments of tourists’ as per their motivation in a particular area or at a specific destination. Primarily, tourism development refers to the all-encompassing process of planning, pursuing, and executing strategies to establish, develop, promote, and encourage tourism in a particular area or destination (Mandić et al. 2018 ; Ratnasari et al. 2020 ). A tourism destination may serve as a single motivation for a group of tourists or a mix of purposes, i.e., natural tourism, socio-cultural or religious tourism, adventure or business tourism, or a combination of two or more. Andlib and Salcedo-Castro ( 2021 ), drawing from an analysis approach, contended that tourism destinations in Pakistan offer a mix of promising and negative consequences concerning their socio-economic and environmental impressions on the host community. The promising socio-economic impacts for the local community are perceived in the form of employment and business opportunities, improved standard of living, and infrastructural development in the area. The adverse environmental outcomes include overcrowding, traffic congestion, air and noise pollution, environmental degradation, and encroachment of landscaping for the local community and the tourists. An extensive review of the literature exercise suggests the following benefits that the local community and the tourists accrue from the tour are as follows:

Generate revenue and monetary support for people and the community through local arts and culture commercialization.

Improve local resource infrastructure and quality of life, including employment generation and access to improved civic facilities.

Help to create awareness and understanding of different ethnic cultures, social values, and traditions, connecting them and preserving cultures.

Rehabilitate and conserve socio-cultural and historical heritage, including archeological and natural sites.

Establishment of natural parks, protracted areas, and scenic beauty spots.

Conservation of nature, biodiversity, and endangered species with control over animal poaching.

Improved water and air quality through afforestation, littering control, land and soil conservation, and recycling of used water and waste.

Tourism and hospitality business incorporates various business activities such as travel and transportation through the air or other modes of travel, lodging, messing, restaurants, and tourism destinations (Szpilko 2017 ; Bakhriddinovna and Qizi 2020 ). A tourist’s tourism experience is aimed at leisure, experiencing adventure, learning the culture or history of a particular area or ethnic entity, traveling for business or health, education, or religious purposes. The chain of activities adds value to the Tourism experience. Every activity contributes toward economic stimulation, job creation, revenue generation, and tourism development encompassing infrastructure for all activities involved in the tourism process. Tourism growth expresses the number of arrivals and the time of their stay/trips over a period of time. Tourism growth is measured through the interplay between tourists’ arrivals, tourism receipts, and travel time duration (Song et al. 2010 ; Arifin et al. 2019 ). The following factors drive the degree and level of tourism development and growth:

Environmental factors include scenic beauty, green spaces, snowy mountains, towering peaks, good climate and weather, the interconnectivity of destination, quality of infrastructure, etc.

Socio-economic factors: the distinctiveness of community, uniqueness of culture and social values, hospitality and adaptability, accessibility, accommodation, facilities and amenities, cost-effectiveness, price index, and enabling business environment.

Historical, cultural, and religious factors include historical and cultural heritage, religious sites, and cultural values and experiences.

The tourism development process and its different dynamics revolve around the nature of tourism planned for a particular destination or area, which can be specified as ecotourism, sustainable tourism, green tourism or regenerative tourism, etc. Ecotourism is “responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment, sustains the well-being of the local people, and involves interpretation and education” (Cheia, 2013 ; TIES, 2015). According to the World Conservation Union (IUCN), ecotourism involves “ Environmentally responsible travel to natural areas, to enjoy and appreciate nature (and accompanying cultural features, both past, and present) that promote conservation, have a low visitor impact and provide for beneficially active socio-economic involvement of local peoples ”. Moreover, Blangy and Wood ( 1993 ) defined it as “ responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment and sustains the well-being of local people ” (p. 32). The concept of ecotourism is grounded upon a well-defined set of principles including “environmental conservation and education, cultural preservation and experience, and economic benefits” (Cobbinah 2015 ; De Grosbois and Fennell 2021 ).

Ecotourism minimizes tourism’s impact on the tourism resources of a specific destination, including lessening physical, social, interactive, and psychosomatic impacts. Ecotourism is also about demonstrating a positive and responsible attitude from the tourists and hosts toward protecting and preserving all components of the environmental ecosystem. Ecotourism reflects a purpose-oriented mindset, responsible for creating and delivering value for the destination with a high degree of kindliness for local environmental, political, or social issues. Ecotourism generally differs from mass tourism because of its following features (Liang et al. 2018 ; Ding and Cao 2019 ; Confente and Scarpi 2021 ):

Conscientious behavior focuses on the low impact on the environment.

Sensitivity and warmth for local cultures, values, and biodiversity.

Supporting the sustenance of efforts for the conservation of local resources.

Sharing and delivering tourism benefits to the local communities.

Local participation as a tourism stakeholder in the decision-making process.

Educating the tourist and locals about the sensitivity and care of the environment because tourism without proper arrangement can endanger the ecosystems and indigenous cultures and lead to significant ecological degradation.

Sustainability aims to recognize all impacts of tourism, minimize the adverse impacts, and maximize the encouraging ones. Sustainable tourism involves sustainable practices to maintain viable support for the ecology of the tourism environment in and around the destination. Sustainable tourism is natural resource-based tourism that resembles ecotourism and focuses on creating travel openings with marginal impact and encouraging learning about nature having a low impact, conservation, and valuable consideration for the local community’s well-being (Fennell 2001 & 2020 ; Butowski 2021 ). On the other hand, ecotourism inspires tourists to learn and care about the environment and effectively participate in the conservation of nature and cultural activities. Therefore, ecotourism is inclusive of sustainable tourism, whereas the focus of sustainable tourism includes the following responsibilities:

Caring, protecting, and conserving the environment, natural capital, biodiversity, and wildlife.

Delivering socio-economic welfare for the people living in and around tourists' destinations.

Identifying, rehabilitating, conserving, and promoting cultural and historical heritage for visitors learning experiences.

Bringing tourists and local groups together for shared benefits.

Creating wide-ranging and reachable opportunities for tourists.

Environment and sustainability of ecosystem

The term “environment” is all-inclusive of all the natural, organic living, inorganic, and non-natural things. The environment also denotes the interface among all breathing species with the natural resources and other constituents of the environment. Humans’ activities are mainly responsible for environmental damage as people and nations have contemplated modifying the environment to suit their expediencies. Deforestation, overpopulation, exhaustion of natural capital, and accumulation of solid waste and sewage are the major human activities that result in polluted air and water, acid rain, amplified carbon dioxide levels, depletion of the ozone, climate change, global warming, extermination of species, etc. A clean, green, and hygienic fit environment has clean air, clean water, clean energy, and moderate temperature for the healthy living of humans, animals, and biodiversity as nature is destined for them by their creatures. Maintaining and sustaining a clean environment is indispensable for human and biodiversity existence, fostering growth and development for conducting business and creating wealth. The environment can be sustained through conservation, preservation, and appropriate management to provide clean air, water, and food safe from toxic contamination, waste, and sewage disposal, saving endangered species and land conservation.

The globalization process, known for building socio-economic partnerships across countries, is also charged with encouraging environmental degradation through the over-consumption of natural resources and energy consumption, deforestation, land erosion, and weakening (Adebayo and Kirikkaleli 2021 ; Sun et al. 2021 ). Chien et al. ( 2021b ), while studying the causality of environmental degradation in Pakistan, empirically confirmed the existence of a significant connection between CO 2 emissions and GDP growth, renewable energy, technological innovation, and globalization. However, Chien et al. ( 2021a ) suggested using solar energy as a source of economic intervention to control CO 2 emissions and improve environmental quality in China. The danger of air pollution is hard to escape as microscopic air pollutants pierce through the human respiratory and cardiovascular system, injuring the lungs, heart, and brain. Ill-planned and uncontrolled human activities negatively affect ecosystems, causing climate change, ocean acidification, melting glaciers, habitation loss, eutrophication, air pollution, contaminants, and extinction of endangered species ( Albrich et al. 2020 ) .

Humans have a more significant effect on their physical environment in numerous ways, such as pollution, contamination, overpopulation, deforestation, burning fossil fuels and driving to soil erosion, polluting air and water quality, climate change, etc. UNO Agenda for 2030 “Sustainable Development and its Sustainable Development Goals” (SDGs) mirrors the common premise that a healthy environment and human health are interlaced as integral to the satisfaction of fundamental human rights, i.e., right to life, well-being, food, water and sanitation, quality of life and biodiversity to ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages (SDG3)—which includes air quality that is dependent upon terrestrial ecosystems (SDG15), oceans (SDG14), cities (SDG11), water, cleanliness, and hygiene (SDG6) (Swain 2018 ; Opoku 2019 ; Scharlemann et al. 2020 ). The UNEP stated that 58% of diarrhea cases in developing economies is due to the non-provision of clean water and inadequate sanitation facilities resulting in 3.5 million deaths globally (Desai 2016 ; Ekins and Gupta 2019 ).

Climate change overwhelmingly alters ecosystems’ ability to moderate life-threatening happenings, such as maintaining water quality, regulating water flows, unbalancing the temporal weather and maintaining glaciers, displacing or extinction biodiversity, wildfire, and drought (Zhu et al. 2019 ; Marengo et al. 2021 ). Research studies advocate that exposure to natural environments is correlated with mental health, and proximity to green space is associated with lowering stress and minimizing depression and anxiety (Noordzij et al. 2020 ; Slater et al. 2020 ; Callaghan et al. 2021 ). Furthermore, the Ecosystem is affected by pollution, over-exploitation of natural resources, climate change, invasive and displacing species, etc. Hence, providing clean air and water, hygienic places, and green spaces enriches the quality of life: condensed mortality, healthier value-added productivity, and is vital to maintaining mental health. On the other hand, climate change aggravates environment-related health hazards through adverse deviations to terrestrial ecology, oceans, biodiversity, and access to fresh and clean water.

Tourism development denotes all activities linked with creating and processing facilities providing services for the tourists on and around a destination. Infrastructure development is vital for developing a tourism destination to advance tourists’ living conditions and preserve natural and cultural heritage by constructing new tourist facilities, the destinations administrative and supporting echelons, including community living, etc. Development for tourism infrastructure and land use often burdens natural capital through over-consumption, leading to soil erosion, augmented pollution, loss of natural habitats, and endangered species. Development of tourism infrastructure and construction work has profound implications on environmental degradation, reduction in green spaces, deforestation, solid waste and sewage, overutilization of air and water, emission of CO 2 and other gases contributing to air and water pollution, climate change, loss and displacement of biodiversity, and the degradation of ecosystems. These negative consequences of tourism development result in many problems for the tourists and the indigenous people in the foreseeable future (Azam et al. 2018 ; Hoang et al. 2020 ).

A report published by UNEP titled “Infrastructure for climate action” has suggested governments introduce sustainable infrastructure as the prevailing one is responsible for causing 79% of all greenhouse gas emissions in struggling climate change, alleviation, and adaptation efforts. Sustainable infrastructure signifies that structures’ planning, construction, and functioning do not weaken the social, economic, and ecological systems (UNEP 2021 ; Krampe 2021 ). Sustainable infrastructure is the only solution that ensures societies, nature, and the environment flourish together. Therefore, Sustainable Ecotourism supports adapting pro-environment and nature-based climate change strategies that help resilient biodiversity and ecosystem to impact climate change. The proposed strategy is to focus on the conservation and restoration of ecosystems to combat climate hazards, fluctuating rainfalls, soil erosion, temperature variations, floods, and extreme wind storms (Niedziółka 2014 ; Setini 2021 )

Pakistan’s tourism infrastructure suffered a colossal amount of damage during the earthquake of October 8, 2005, which left widespread demolition and destruction to its human, economic assets, and infrastructure networks, especially in Kashmir and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa's tourism areas. The tourism-related infrastructure, including hotels, destination facilities of social service delivery and commerce, water channels, and communications networks, were either drained or virtually destroyed. The destruction in the aftermath of the earthquake was further added by the war against terror in tourism-hit areas, resulting in the redundancy of tourists and tourism facilities for a long time (Akbar et al. 2017 ; Zakaria and Ahmed 2019 ). The tourism revival activities during the post-earth quack, post-terrorism scenario, and COVID-19 period called for various entrepreneurial activities, including the construction of infrastructure, hotels, road networks, community living, etc. Development and reconstruction of the livelihood and hospitality infrastructure through entrepreneurship were undertaken intensively through a public-private partnership from national and international findings (Qamar and Baloch 2017 ; Sadiq 2021 ; Dogar et al. 2021 ).

The revival and reinvigoration of infrastructure in tourism areas were backed up by extensive deforestation, use of local green land, rebuilding of the road network, displacement of biodiversity, and overtaxing the consumption of water and other natural resources. The deforestation, extensive use of green land, and over-consumption of water and other natural resources have depleted the tourism value of the area on the one hand and degraded the environment on the other. However, it was the focused rehabilitation activities of earthquake and Pakistan’s Government’s socio-environment conservation strategy of the Billion Trees plantation program in the province, including dominating tourism areas. The afforestation and loss of green tops are being reclaimed through these efforts, and the tourism environment is soon expected to regenerate (Qamar and Baloch 2017 ; Rauf et al. 2019 ; Siddiqui and Siddiqui 2019 ).

Government support and policy interventions

Tourism generates wide-ranging benefits for the economy, community, and people. Tourism contributes to the economy through revenue generation and shares responsibility with the Government to alleviate poverty alleviation, create opportunities for job placements, protect environments, and conserve natural ecosystems and biodiversity. It is assumed that if the tourism industry is left to its own, it will most likely prefer its business interests over environments or biodiversity. Governments, custodians of the life and well-being of their subjects, are directly responsible for providing a clean environment, nature, and Ecosystem. Therefore, national and local governments are responsible for preparing and implementing tourism development plans and enforcing values and standards for tourism development in conformity with the prerequisites of environmental sustainability. Through institutional governance, governments help tourism development by providing financial and budgetary support, regulatory framework, land, physical resources, infrastructure, etc. Provision and facilitation for Sustainability of Ecotourism and conservation of environment and biodiversity are dependent upon Government-supported interventions as follows:

The regulatory framework for setting up tourism-related entrepreneurship and quality standards can support ecotourism and prevent environmental degradation on any account.

Provision of budgetary support for ecosystem conservation and regeneration of bio-diversity-related projects.

Plan, rehabilitate if needed, promote conservation and protection of socio-cultural, historic, antique, and natural endowments in coordination with other public and private agencies, and deal with the defaulters, if any.

Promoting and undertaking afforestation alongside land conservation and discouraging deforestation, soil erosion, accumulation of solid waste, littering, and any direct or indirect loss or threat to biodiversity.

Setting restrictions for over-tourism beyond capacity and quality standards for transportation, restaurants, hotels, food and drinking water, etc.

Placing enforcement mechanism necessary to ensure application of the regulatory framework and quality standards applicable along with all activities inclusive to the Ecotourism value chain.

Theoretical support and hypothesis development

According to the social disruption theory, rapidly expanding societies usually experience a period of widespread crisis and a loss of their conventional routines and attitudes. The crisis impacts people whose mental health, worldviews, behavioral patterns, and social networks may all be impacted (Çalişkan and Özer 2021 ). According to the social disruption theory, fast community change brought on by population growth will result in a variety of social issues that are signs of a generally disorganized community (Smith et al. 2001 ). Because some types of tourism communities experience rapid expansion accompanied by intensive development and rapid social change over a relatively short period of time, they seem to be great settings for studying various postulations of the social disruption theory.

Place change and social disruption theory are closely connected. According to this assumption, when a community undergoes fast expansion, it tends to experience a generalized crisis that might culminate in several social issues as changes spread throughout the community and among individuals (Rasoolimanesh et al. 2019 ). Place change can result from fundamental community restructuring due to economic development, new class divides, and migration of both long-term and temporary people (Nelson 2001 ). Social unrest, though, is not enduring. Instead, it is transitory; societies gradually adjust to these changes (Deery et al. 2012 ).

The standard of living may initially deteriorate, but due to the adaptability of people and communities, they will gradually reinvigorate and strengthen themselves accordingly. Furthermore, the social disruption proposition reinforces one of the challenges in analyzing the effects of tourism, particularly in emerging nations, since it is sometimes difficult to distinguish between the effects of tourism and the overall ongoing development (Park and Stokowski 2009 ) (Fig. 1 ).

Tourism development and growth significantly affect natural environment resources.

Tourism development and growth significantly affect environmental pollution.

Tourism development and growth significantly affect the physical ecosystem of the environment.

Tourism development and growth significantly affect the socio-cultural environment.

Tourism development and growth significantly affect the economic environment of people and the community.

Government policy and support significantly moderate the relationship between tourism development and growth and the environmental factors.

Conceptual framework

Methodology

The study aimed to investigate the association of tourism development and its impact on environmental factors. Therefore, a survey method was employed to collect data by including all the relevant people in the locality. The study is based on stakeholders’ opinions from Pakistan’s most visited tourist areas, including Murree, Swat, Chitral, Naran, Kaghan, Neelum Valley, Malam Jabba, Ayubia, and Nathia Gali. A total of 650 stakeholders were contacted from the above-mentioned tourist destinations through survey. The distribution of the sample is mentioned in Table 1 .

Using quantitative techniques, hierarchical linear regression analysis was employed to investigate the possible relationships between tourism growth and various dimensions of environmental sustainability. The results below reveal that tourism development translates into environmental deterioration, and the relationship between tourism and environmental sustainability is bidirectional.

Tourism growth and development were measured through a five-item scale. The environment was measured through 16 items combined scale with sub-dimensions; depletion of Natural Resources=3 items, Polluting Environment=3 items, Physical Effects on Ecosystem=4 items, Socio-Cultural Degradation=3 items, and Economic Environment=3-items. Similarly, our moderating variable, Government Interventions and Support, was measured using a 5-item scale. Table 2 below presents the details of the instruments.

Analysis and results

Data were analyzed using SPSS Version 26. It includes correlation, linear regression, and stepwise hierarchal regression analysis.

Table 3 above shows that our Tourism Growth and Development has significant and positive relationship with Polluting Environment ( r = 0.20**), Physical Effects on Ecosystem ( r = 0.19**), Depletion of Natural Resource ( r = 0.24**), Socio-Cultural Degradation ( r = 0.18**). However, Tourism Growth and Development has positive relationship with Economic Environment ( r = 0.29**) and Government Interventions and Support ( r = 0.13**).

Results of linear regression analysis at Table 4 above depict that tourism growth and development predicts 4.1% variance in Depletion of Natural Resources ( β = 0.20, p <0.01), 3.9% variance in pollution ( β = 0.19, p <0.01), 6% variance in Physical Effects on Ecosystem ( β = 0.24, p <0.01), 3.6% variance in Socio-Cultural Degradation ( β = 0.18, p <0.01), and 8.8% variance in Economic Environment ( β = 0.29, p <0.01).

The study analyzes the applied two-step hierarchal regression. In the first step, Tourism Growth and Government Interventions were treated as independent variables, and their significant impact was measured. In the second step, the interaction term Tourism and Growth× Government Interventions was added, and its impact was measured. The results suggest that Government Interventions and Support moderate the relationship between Tourism Growth and the Environmental variables (Table 5 ).

The study has reported unique findings regarding tourism and its environmental impacts. We found that tourism growth and development generate economic activity on the one hand. However, it has specific adverse environmental and socio-cultural outcomes on the other hand as well. Our study revealed that tourism growth and development predict a 4.1% variance in Depletion of Natural Resources ( β = 0.202*, p <0.01). This suggests that due to the expansion of tourism in the country, natural resources are continuously depleted to meet the needs of tourists. Studies also supported our findings and suggested that revival and reinvigoration of infrastructure in tourism areas were backed up by extensive deforestation, use of local green land, rebuilding of the road network, displacement of biodiversity, and overtaxing the consumption of water and other natural resources (Qamar and Baloch 2017 ; Sadiq 2021 ; Dogar et al. 2021 ). The prior studies are consistent with our hypothesis that “tourism development and growth significantly affect natural environment resources.”

We further found that tourism growth and development predict a 3.9% variance in pollution ( β = 0.198*, p <0.01), suggesting that tourism expansion may pollute the natural environment. Furthermore, recent national statistics depict that major human activities at local tourism destinations such as Kalam, Sawat, Muree, and Northern Areas have accumulated solid waste and sewage, resulting in polluted air and water. Further, research also suggests that the overflow of tourists to tourist destinations may adversely affect the environment due to human activities (Noordzij et al. 2020 ; Slater et al. 2020 ; Andlib and Salcedo-Castro 2021 ; Callaghan et al. 2021 ). Thus, it is safe to argue that the growth of tourism has a particularly detrimental effect on the environment. These findings also support our hypothesis, “Tourism development and growth significantly contribute to environmental pollution.”

The results reported that tourism growth and development predict a 6% variance in Physical Effects on the Ecosystem ( β = 0.245*, p <0.01). Studies have reported that deforestation and alteration in species’ natural environment for tourism facilities construction may adversely affect environmental health (Kuvan, 2010 ; Azam et al. 2018 ; Hoang et al. 2020 ; Andlib and Salcedo-Castro 2021 ). During post-terrorism and post-Covid-19 times in Pakistan, millions of local tourists moved to popular tourist destinations that required new infrastructure to accommodate these tourists. Consequently, colossal deforestation and other detrimental human activities have negatively affected ecosystem. These findings also support our hypothesis that tourism development and growth significantly affect the physical ecosystem of the environment.

The study reported a total of 3.6% variance in socio-cultural degradation ( β = 0.189*, p <0.01) due to tourism growth and development. These findings suggest that tourism’s growth and development may lead the inhabitants to imitate the foreign tourists regarding their living standards, which may endanger their traditional culture. Thus, our hypothesis that “tourism development and growth significantly affect the socio-cultural environment” is confirmed.

Further, it was found that tourism growth and development predict an 8.8% variance in the economic environment ( β = 0.297*, p <0.01). It is established from the literature that tourism growth and development generate economic activity in the country. Development projects such as the construction of infrastructure, hotels, and road networks generate economic activity to facilitate international and indigenous tourists, positively affecting the community’s living standard (Baloch et al. 2020 ). Thus, our hypothesis, “tourism development and growth significantly affect economic environment of people and community,” is confirmed.

Due to tourism growth and development, our study reported a 1.8% variance in Government Support and Interventions ( β = .133*, p <0.01). However, more recently, the Government of Pakistan has devised specific interventions that may help curb the adverse impacts of detrimental environmental factors. For example, developmental schemes such as the Billion Trees Plantation drive and Road-Infrastructure Network Development under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor initiative may prove moderators to curb the negative impacts of tourism growth on the environment (Qamar and Baloch 2017 ; Rauf et al. 2019 ; Siddiqui and Siddiqui 2019 ). Therefore, the hypothesis, Government policy and support, significantly moderates the relationship between tourism development and growth with the environment is confirmed based on these findings.

Suggested model for ecotourism framework

Through its detailed review of existing literature, prevailing tourism policies, and empirical inputs from the stakeholders’ perspectives, the study has identified a wide range of obstacles limiting the development and growth of ecotourism in Pakistan. The study suggests National Tourism Management authorities carefully invest in ecotourism destination’s planning and development in coordination with the environment development agency. The suggested model for ecotourism framework is initially meant for the tourism destinations specifically designated for ecotourism. However, selected points can also be extended to the quality management parameters set for the National Parks, Conservation and Protracted Areas, Museums, National or International event sites, etc. The national tourism authorities are to lay particular emphasis in their forthcoming National Tourism Policy on the development and promotion of Sustainable Ecotourism having, with focus on the following key areas:

Identify and classify four to five ecotourism destinations, including ecotourism-centered activities of value chains for priority development, which are administratively possible within budgetary constraints. However, the development plan shall consider the integral benefits of other developmental schemes such as the Billion Trees Plantation drive, Road-Infrastructure Network Development under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor initiative, International Union for Conservation of Nature (ICUN) programs in the area.

While staying within the alignment of UN Millennium Development Goals (MDG) calling for ‘environmental sustainability’ and the development vision of each designated destination, the Tourists Management System shall take into cognizance of issues like managing capacity of the place, quality parameters for the conservation of the environment, and allowable activities thereof.

Identify degenerated destinations of religious, socio-cultural, or historical significance for their rehabilitation under the Regenerated tourism program.

Tourism Destinations that have been over-consumed and exhausted (e.g., Murree, Galiaat, Naran, Malam Jabba) because of over-tourism shall be planned for their reclamation through regenerated tourism. However, to facilitate the success of the regeneration of their tourism potential following is to be catered for:

To deflect the tourist pressure upon these destinations, the potential tourists from nearby cities and metropolitan areas be provided with nearby alternative destinations for leisure tourism as stay-tourism sites.

To prevent the environment from air pollution, the traffic load on the destination be curtailed through an effective traffic management strategy, provision of off-destination parking for combustion engine vehicles, and encouraging electric driven or hybrid vehicles for nearby parking.

Provision of clean drinking water through public infiltration plants, public toilets, solid waste carriers, and recycling of sewage and used water is recommended in the most visited areas of the destination.

Signposting at appropriate places, giving social messages encouraging to maintain cleanliness, avoid littering, ensure nature conservation, and humility toward biodiversity.

Develop all-inclusive, comprehensive execution plans to expedite the investments for the sustainable ecotourism, encouraging public–private cooperation, community involvement, and infrastructure mapping guaranteeing environmental conservation and safeguards.

Develop and place on the ground an all-inclusive program of capacity building for sustainable ecotourism, regenerative and green tourism services.

Develop and launch Pakistan tourism profile and Sustaining Ecotourism obligatory framework “to promote tourism on the one hand and nurture conscious ecological behavior among the potential tourists of the area”.

In order to fetch local ownership for the ecotourism center developments, all efforts shall be made to share the socio-economic benefits integral to the development scheme with the local population for community development.

As part of the destination management planning, identify complementary value chains and livelihood activities that could be developed as part of the overall ecotourism destination package.

Governments at all levels and the tourism Development and Promotion Agencies Network in Pakistan shall join hands to chalk out and, with a strict enforcement mechanism, a “Regulatory Framework for Ecotourism Friendly Destination” to sustain the efforts and policies undertaken in this regard on the one hand and generate responsible behavior from the tourism stakeholders on the other. Some of the suggestive points could be:

Setting new quality standards facilitating the promotion of ecotourism and environmental sustainability through acts of various bodies operating in the Ecotourism value chain, such as:

Revision of Private hotels Management Act (1976) and Tourists Operators Act (1976) alongside introduction and promulgation of a new “Tourism Destination Management Act” incorporating new quality standards as of today.

Promulgating laws to make all new construction/development projects responsible from any agency in the area, incorporating quality standards needed for environmental sustainability, and promoting ecotourism.

Set measures for the preservation of the local biodiversity and preservation of endangered species, including seeking support from internationally active environment conservation agencies, declaring local hunting illegal, introducing licensing programs for hunting of certain selected animals/ birds on the payment of a handsome amount to be used for the welfare of the local community.

Create awareness programs against deforestation, land conservation, and biodiversity, and maintain cleanliness, inculcating a culture of respecting and enjoying nature instead of spoiling it.

Conclusion, implications, and limitations of the study

The study premise was based on the contention that sustenance of ecotourism focuses on the economic viability of the business interests alongside the conservation and preservation of natural ecosystems, including ethical fairness to the socio-cultural environment of the host community. Ecotourism is a phenomenon that contributes to environmental sustainability through well-planned and careful destination management capable of balancing conflicting interests of business growth and environmental sustainability. Tourism-environment paradox suggests that the sustainability and survival of both are dependent upon the flourishing mode of each other. Quality of environment and sustainability of bio-ecosystem stimulates tourists’ arrivals and over-tourism beyond capacity with irresponsible behavior from tourists negatively influencing the environment and harming the ecosystem of nature. Ecotourism is not inevitably sustainable unless it is economically sustainable and environmentally maintainable besides being socio-culturally acceptable. Socio-culturally intolerable ecotourism means the activity which does not benefit locals and their socio-cultural values. Hence, the study concludes that ecotourism has to positively interplay between economy, environment, and culture without compromising one over others. The pursuit of sustainable ecotourism is not an end in meeting the little comforts of the business interests but rather a means to end the sustainability issues created due to ill-conceived tourism development and unmanageable growth.

Practical implications

Drawing from the findings and conclusions of the research, the study extends the following practical implications for effectively managing the process of tourism development and environmental sustainability in line with the dictates of the philosophy behind ecotourism:

Paradoxically tourism necessitates ecological capitals as primary ingredients for the creation of tourism experiences on the one hand. However, it is also contingent upon the conservation and preservation of ecological integrity on the other. The study suggests that unbalancing this “resource paradox” results in the harshness and tenacity of adversarial climate change, natural calamities, environmental pollution, and endangered biodiversity.

The research findings and the suggested framework for ecotourism imply that sustainable ecotourism principles-based planning is mandatory for destination management to assure effective trade-off between the business interests’ sustainability of the environmental ecosystem.

Tourism development and growth shall be steered through ecotourism principles as its sustainable model offers enduring social, environmental and economic, ecological integrity, and social and cultural benefits for the local community. Therefore, ecotourism is a recipe for preventing environmental degradation and guarantees sustainability of ecosystems nature and its biodiversity. Hence, ecotourism shall stand central priority focus for strategic management to nurture quality experiences from sustainable tourism.

To revive back the sustainability of the environment, in the areas where over-tourism has degraded the environment, schemes for regenerated tourism shall be immediately launched to mitigate the negative footprints on the sustainability of destinations, including reinforcing protracted conservation sites, biodiversity, and recouping endangered species, afforestation drives, recycling of water and solid waste, refurnishing of landscaping, preservation, and rehabilitation of cultural heritage and refurbishing of depleted infrastructure accordingly. Furthermore, to regenerate and sustain the tourism infrastructure of the destinations experiencing over-tourism, capacity building measures like capacity, recycling of water and solid waste, preventive measures to control air and water pollution, traffic control management, and spread of entertainment facilities shall be the focus of the regeneration plans.

The study implies that government authorities and policymakers have a special role in placing their moderating intervention in terms of policy guidelines, regulatory framework, and budgetary support, provision of inter-organizational synergy in planning and implementation of ecotourism strategies, protection of environmental resource base and conservation of natural and biological ecosystem, sustenance of socio-cultural value of local community over and above their economic and social well-being/quality life for the long run.

The study also implies that public and private policymakers lay down threshold criteria for responsible travel and tourism standards for destination management and its related supply chain. The laid criterion would facilitate management in nurturing “responsible behavior” to plan, protect, conserve, preserve, and sustain natural and cultural resources and responsible socio-economic development without compromising the sustainability of the environment and long-term well-being of the hoist community. The deep-seated adherence to social responsibility protocols by the tourism supply chain network can significantly increase the capacity of tourism destinations and improve the conscious awareness of green consumers along the tourism supply chain. Furthermore, the consciously responsible behavior among stakeholders and legislatures can strike a needed balance between the business interests and environments in favor of sustainability of socio-cultural, economic, and natural capital.

The study elucidates that responsible behavior necessitates purpose-built eco-friendly infrastructure and policy parameters to support the sustainability of environments across destinations. The strategic planning aligned with the sustainability-focused objectives dictates the need for artistic, innovative, and talented people and quality intuitions in harnessing quality tourism services and responsible tourism behavior. Furthermore, the study encourages community involvement in the developmental process, enactment of structural policies, preservation of socio-cultural heritage, and conservation of natural biodiversity as it would foster emotional bondage between the people of the host community and the tourism undertakings. Therefore, community and value chain managers shall collaborate to maximize the perceived benefits of responsible tourism while developing cultural exchanges and planning opportunities for leisure and tourism.

Regulatory measures help offset negative impacts; for instance, controls on the number of tourist activities and movement of visitors within protected areas can limit impacts on the ecosystem and help maintain the integrity and vitality of the site. Limits should be established after an in-depth analysis of the maximum sustainable visitor capacity. Furthermore, the variables and the constructs researched can be replicated to other destinations to seek valuable inputs for sustainable destination management elsewhere.

Study limitation

Besides the functional, practical applications, the study has some limitations. Besides having integral disadvantages of cross-sectional research, the respondents selected for the study were visitors on peak days with the highest tourist arrivals, thereby having experiences of a higher degree of environmental pollution and natural disorder. Furthermore, the research is limited to stakeholders’ perspectives instead of any scientifically generated data or mathematical or econometric model.

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Qadar Bakhsh Baloch & Syed Naseeb Shah

Air University School of Management, Air University, Islamabad, Pakistan

Nadeem Iqbal

Department of Commerce, Bahauddin Zakariya University, Multan, Pakistan

Muhammad Sheeraz

IBA, Gomal University, Dera Ismail Khan, Pakistan

Muhammad Asadullah

University of Sialkot, Sialkot, Pakistan

Sourath Mahar

Islamia College University Peshawar, Peshawar, Pakistan

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QBB: conceptualization, methodology, writing—original draft. SNS: data curation and supervision. NI: visualization, editing, proofreading. MS: review and editing. MA: review and editing. SM: editing, data curation. AUK: review and editing.

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Baloch, Q.B., Shah, S.N., Iqbal, N. et al. Impact of tourism development upon environmental sustainability: a suggested framework for sustainable ecotourism. Environ Sci Pollut Res 30 , 5917–5930 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-22496-w

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Received : 14 December 2021

Accepted : 08 August 2022

Published : 19 August 2022

Issue Date : January 2023

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-22496-w

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Tourism and COVID-19: Impacts and implications for advancing and resetting industry and research

The paper aims to critically review past and emerging literature to help professionals and researchers alike to better understand, manage and valorize both the tourism impacts and transformational affordance of COVID-19. To achieve this, first, the paper discusses why and how the COVID-19 can be a transformational opportunity by discussing the circumstances and the questions raised by the pandemic. By doing this, the paper identifies the fundamental values, institutions and pre-assumptions that the tourism industry and academia should challenge and break through to advance and reset the research and practice frontiers. The paper continues by discussing the major impacts, behaviours and experiences that three major tourism stakeholders (namely tourism demand, supply and destination management organisations and policy makers) are experiencing during three COVID-19 stages (response, recovery and reset). This provides an overview of the type and scale of the COVID-19 tourism impacts and implications for tourism research.

1. Introduction: Setting the necessity and parameters for tourism COVID-19 research

The COVID-19 (declared as a pandemic by WHO, 12 March 2020) of significantly impacts the global economic, political, socio-cultural systems. Health communication strategies and measures (e.g. social distancing, travel and mobility bans, community lockdowns, stay at home campaigns, self- or mandatory-quarantine, curbs on crowding) have halted global travel, tourism and leisure. Being a highly vulnerable industry to numerous environmental, political, socio-economic risks, tourism is used to and has become resilient in bouncing back ( Novelli, Gussing Burgess, Jones, & Ritchie, 2018 ) from various crises and outbreaks (e.g. terrorism, earthquakes, Ebola, SARS, Zika). However, the nature, the unprecedented circumstances and impacts of the COVID-19, demonstrate signs that this crisis is not only different, but it can have profound and long-term structural and transformational changes to tourism as socio-economic activity and industry. Indeed, the global and huge scale, the multidimensional and interconnected impacts challenging current values and systems and leading to a worldwide recession and depression are the most distinctive characteristics of this pandemic.

COVID-19 tourism impacts will be uneven in space and time, and apart from the human tool, estimates show an enormous and international economic impact: international tourist arrivals are estimated to drop to 78% causing a loss of US$ 1.2 trillion in export revenues from tourism and 120 million direct tourism job cuts representing seven times the impact of September 11, and the largest decline in the history ( UNWTO, 2020 ). Being one of the most important global employer (1 in 10 jobs are directly related to tourism, UNWTO, 2020 ) and the major GDP contributor for several countries, tourism and COVID-19 are the epicenter of all international discussions and economies.

Within the burgeoning industry discussions and research about tourism and COVID-19, there is an unanimous call to see and use the pandemic as a transformative opportunity ( Mair, 2020 ). Industry should not only recover but also reimagine and reform the next normal and economic order ( McKinsey, 2020 ), while researchers should not solely use COVID-19 as another context to replicate existing knowledge for measuring and predicting tourism impacts ( Gössling et al., 2020 , Hall et al., 2020 ). Although such studies are important for managing the pandemic, they do not advance knowledge and/or guide the industry to a step beyond. Moreover, because of the interlinked socio-cultural, economic, psychological and political impacts of COVID-19 of this magnitude, unforeseen trajectories instead of historical trends are expected and the predictive power of ‘old’ explanatory models may not work. Moreover, there is enough evidence to claim that both the tourism industry and research have matured to a good extent providing sufficient knowledge about how to study and effectively: (1) design and implement crisis recovery and response strategies (e.g. McKercher & Chon, 2004 ); (2) build resilience to address future crises ( Hall, Prayag, & Amore, 2017 ). What is still lacking is knowledge about how crisis can foster industry change, how companies can convert this crisis disruption into transformative innovation and how to conduct research that can enable, inform and shape the rethinking and resetting of a next normal.

Crises can be a change trigger, but none crisis has been so far a significant transition event in tourism ( Hall et al., 2020 ). Crises have also been used as a political tool to stabilize existing structures and diminish the possibility of collective mobilization ( Masco, 2017 ). As change can be selective and/or optional for the tourism stakeholders (e.g. tourists, operators, destination organisations, policy makers, local communities, employees), the nature and degree of crises-led transformations depend on whether and how these stakeholders are affected by, respond to, recover and reflect on crises. Consequently, to better understand, predict but also inform and shape change, tourism COVID-19 research should provide a deeper examination and understanding of the tourism stakeholders’ (behavioural, cognitive, emotional, psychological and even ideological) drivers, actions and reactions to their COVID-19 impacts. Research should also examine and understand the stakeholders’ lived and perceived COVID-19 experiences as well as their consciousness, mindfulness, capabilities and willingness to understand and act (pro-actively and re-actively) to the pandemic, as all these can equally influence their attitudes, behaviours and change potential.

COVID-19 tourism research should also advance our knowledge for informing, fostering, shaping or even leading such crises-enabled transformations. Otherwise, we will simply experience one crisis after the other ( Lew, 2020 ). Responding to the mushrooming euphoria of COVID-19 tourism related research, Gretzel et al. (2020) also plead for transformative e-tourism research that can shape tourism futures by making value systems, institutional logics, scientific paradigms and technology notions visible and transformable. To achieve scientific paradigm shifts, e-tourism research should embrace historicity, reflexivity, transparency, equity, plurality and creativity ( Gretzel et al., 2020 ). To avoid the bubble of the COVID-19 research orgasm and advance tourism research, others have also suggested to adopt inter-disciplinary ( Wen, Wang, Kozak, Liu, & Hou, 2020 ), multi-disciplinary ( Gössling et al., 2020 , Hall et al., 2020 ) or even anti-disciplinary ( Sigala, 2018 ) research to enable out-of-the-box, creative and flexible thinking that challenges and goes beyond existing pre-assumptions and mindsets.

To address these needs and gaps, this paper aims to critically review past and emerging literature to help professionals and researchers alike to better understand, manage and valorize both the tourism impacts and transformational affordance of COVID-19. To achieve this, first, the paper discusses why and how the COVID-19 can be a transformational opportunity by discussing the circumstances and the questions raised by the pandemic. By doing this, the paper identifies the fundamental values, institutions and pre-assumptions that the tourism industry and academia should challenge and break through to advance and reset the research and practice frontiers. The paper continues by discussing the major impacts, behaviours and experiences that three major tourism stakeholders (namely tourism demand, supply and destination management organisations and policy makers) are experiencing during three COVID-19 stages (response, recovery and reset). This analysis is useful because it provides an overview and understanding of the type and scale of the COVID-19 tourism impacts, while it also demonstrates that the way in which stakeholders and researchers understand, react and behave in each stage may form and set the next (new) normal in the post COVID-19 era. Responding to the call for transformative research, discussions are developed based on the rational that tourism research should go beyond replicating and reconfirming existing knowledge within the COVID-19 context; instead tourism COVID-19 research should see new things and see them differently to inform and guide tourism futures. Hence, the paper suggests potential new research areas and theoretical lenses that can be used for advancing and resetting industry practice and research. The paper does not aim to provide a fully comprehensive and inclusive analysis of all the impacts, theories, topics and tourism stakeholders that COVID-19 tourism research can examine. Instead, it aims to provide practical and theoretical implications on how to better research, understand, manage and transformative valorize COVID-19 tourism impacts.

2. COVID-19 circumstances and tourism: Shifting the research focus to challenge, reset and contradict institutional logics, systems and assumptions

Research investigating, measuring and predicting the COVID-19 tourism impacts is important in order to eliminate ‘casualties’, draft, monitor and improve response strategies (i.e. you cannot manage what you cannot measure). However, research focusing on the features and impacts of crises instead of their structural roots tends to conceal and stabilize the conditions and corollary social structures through which crises are produced ( Barrios, 2017: 151 ). Investigating the real roots of COVID-19 may go beyond the boundaries and scope of tourism research. Yet, the latter needs to look into and challenge the tourism ‘circumstances’ and structures that have enabled and sometimes accelerated the global spread and impact of COVID-19. Unfortunately, the economists downplay the pandemic as a purely natural event originating and operating outside of the economic system ( Nowlin, 2017 ). But, treating COVID-19 as an exogenous shock and phenomenon that has nothing to do with socio-economic structures and values, can perpetuate and strengthen the pandemic roots during the post COVID-era as well as constrain change and transformational processes.

COVID-19 is a crisis of the economized societies rooted in the growth-paradigm ( Ötsch, 2020 ). COVID-19 is also a result of the intersection of broader processes of urbanisation, globalisation, environmental change, agribusiness and contemporary capitalism ( Allen et al., 2017 ). The nature of tourism (requiring traveling) and its evolution and growth paradigms are a significant contributor to such circumstances and the current socio-economic system accelerating the spread and impact of this contagious and infectious virus. Tourism is a result but also responsible for: our highly interconnected and global world; pollution, waste and climate change; global, national and regional economic development and growth; superiority of capitalism values in people’s and business decision-making but also policy and politics formulations. As climate change increases the frequency of pandemics and outbreaks, pandemics are expected to become more common in the future ( World Economic Forum (2019) (2019), 2019 ), which in turn highlights the interwoven nature and vicious circle forces between the biological, physical and socio-economic systems.

Moreover, the economic system and mindset contributing to the COVID-19 has also been guiding and shaping the COVID-19 response and recovery strategies of governments, institutions, businesses and people alike. This can significantly perpetuate and repeat crises as we are treating their symptoms and not their roots. For example, economic priorities for maintaining business continuity and jobs, resume and recovering to the old ‘economic success growth’, have been driving governments’ policies and practices such as: economic support (e.g. subsidies, tax reliefs) to tourism businesses and employees; debates for relaxation of restrictions for re-opening and re-starting economies at the expense of a second way and human lives. Similarly, people have engaged in panic buying and (over)-consumption of online experiences (e.g. virtual entertainment, dining, drinking, traveling) during lock-downs, that demonstrate their persistence, preference and fear of loosing to their ‘consumerism’ traditional lifestyles deemed essential for their success and happiness. Early COVID-19 tourism research also reinforces a similar mindset, e.g. many studies trying to measure the economic impacts of COVID-19 trading them off to socio-cultural and biological impacts, studies aiming to predict and measure when tourists will start traveling again and when we can reach the old tourism targets. As governments race to minimise economic losses, and be the first to reopen borders and (tourism) businesses, and financial markets, investors, cash liquidity and financial survival are equally pressing multinational and small tourism enterprises, they are all also looking for tourism research that can ‘feed’ and ‘reconfirm’ their mindset and help them resume operations based on the old paradigms and business models they are founded. Debates and research are based on trading between economic benefits and losses in exchange of human rights, lives, morals and ethics. There is no discussion why trade-offs are the best methodology and mindset to decide, no one has re-imagined ‘solutions’ enabling co-existence or regenerative forces between these concepts.

Overall, research, education and our socio-economic and political system (which they shape and are shaped by each other), have all framed our mindset on how we research, measure, understand, respond and aim to recover from the COVID-19. Consequently, we have converted COVID-19 from a biological virus contagion to a financial crisis contagion and recently, an economic race to re-build our old financial competitiveness. To avoid such perpetuations, tourism research should assume more responsibility in informing, driving and leading sustainable futures. To that end, COVID-19 tourism research should not be solely seen, conducted and used as a useful tool to help resume old states. Instead, COVID-19 tourism research should also challenge our growth-paradigms and assumptions that have led to the current situation and enable us to reimagine and reset tourism (e.g. Ioannides and Gyimóthy, 2020 , Gössling et al., 2020 , Hall et al., 2020 , Higgins-Desbiolles, 2020 ). To achieve this, COVID-19 tourism research should criticize ontological and epistemological foundations and assumptions that underpin the current science and growth paradigms ( Brodbeck, 2019 ). It should also deconstruct and challenge the mechanisms and systems that sustain the deleterious unsustainable tourism evolution ( Higgins-Desbiolles, 2020 ). But to regenerate and transform tourism and its socio-economic system, tourism research should not only support new ways and perspectives of researching, knowing and evolving. COVID-19 tourism research should also inspire, motivate and inform all tourism stakeholders alike to adopt new ways of being, doing and politicising. For example:

At a macro-level, COVID-19 tourism research should generate dethinking, rethinking and unthinking of pre-assumptions and mindsets including ( Higgins-Desbiolles, 2020 ): globalisation as an unstoppable force; neoliberal capitalism as the best system and decision-making tool for organizing and allocating resources; growth as the sole way for development and success. It should also challenge the ‘surveillance capitalism’, whose institutionalisation and normalisation is perceived as inevitable and unstoppable because of forces including ( Zuboff, 2015 ): institutionalised facts (e.g. data collection, analytics and mining); leading tech and disrupting companies being respected and treated as emissaries of a better future solving the “faults of capitalism” (e.g. sharing economy platforms ‘democraticing’ micro-entrepreneurship); and people seeing technologies as a necessity requirement for social and civic participation, securing employment and addressing the increasingly stressful, competitive, and stratified struggle for effective life. The COVID-19 is accelerating the institutionalisation and acceptance of this algorithmic governance, management and society, previously contested as violations of human rights, privacy and laws ( Zysman, 2006 ), but now becoming normalised in the name of health and common good.

Technology is at the core of solutions for combating the COVID-19 and re-opening tourism and the economy (e.g. mobility tracing apps, robotised-AI touchless service delivery, digital health passports and identity controls, social distancing and crowding control technologies, big data for fast and real time decision-making, humanoid robots delivering materials, disinfecting and sterilizing public spaces, detecting or measuring body temperature, providing safety or security), while technology is seen as a panacea to our COVID-19 driven-needs to normalise surveillance, to ensure health and safety, to collect and analyse personal data for fast decision-making. Although COVID-19 tourism research cannot stop these technological advances, it should fight this digital trojan horse from the inside by questioning and resetting their purposes, designs and affordances, interpretations and application ethics. Technologies are constituted by unique affordances, whose development and expression are shaped by the institutional logics in which technologies are designed, implemented, and used ( Zuboff, 2015 ). COVID-19 tourism research could simply investigate and advance our information and technological capabilities to collect, analyse and use (big) data for better knowing, predicting, controlling, and modifying human behavior (e.g. tourists and employees behaviour) as a means to produce revenue and market control ( Zuboff, 2015 ). But such research will simply further support the making of everydayness qua data imprints an intrinsic component of organizational and institutional life and a primary target of commercialization strategies ( Constantiou & Kallinikos, 2015 ). Technologies have always been an enabler, a catalyst of innovation and change, a disruptor of tourism, as well as a tool to build tourism resilience in crisis ( Hall et al., 2017 ). The COVID-19 has further enhanced the role of technologies in the recovery and reimagination of tourism, while it reinforces existing paradigms in the e-tourism evolution. Developmental trends and adoption of smart destinations and tourism services, AI, robotics and other digital advances are now accelerated to combat the COVID-19 tourism implications. COVID-19 tourism research should reimagine and re-shape the purposes, usage and means of such technological advances that significantly form how our societies and economies are being transformed, how tourism is being practiced, managed and evolves with the help and/or because of the COVID-19.

At a micro-level, COVID-19 tourism research should question and reset why tourism is viewed, practiced and managed as a way to ‘escape’, ‘relax’, ‘socialise’, ‘construct identities/status’, ‘learn’ and reward themselves from a routine, unpleasant and meaningless life. Why tourism should be researched and practiced as an escape from a boring life, instead of life being rewarding and meaningful itself? Why people have to travel thousands of miles away from home to ‘learn’ and ‘be happy’? Why companies have to commercialize and commoditize communities, people and their tangible and intangible resources as tourism attractions ‘please’ the tourists’ needs and drive economic development? Tourism paradigms and mindsets like this, have led and intensified crises like COVID-19 and this cannot be sustainable for much longer. Consumerism and tourism should not be seen as the sole way to achieve happiness, self-expression, and (economic) development. COVID-19 tourism research should inspire tourists, businesses and destinations alike to re-imagine and reset new mindsets, frontiers and behaviours such as: how to use and develop tourism to valorize and not consume tourism resources, to generate well-being, sustainability and transformational learning; how to study and practice environmental/sustainable management not as a legal necessity for lobbying and formulating policies, not as marketing tool to build brands’ and people’s identities, not as an expense to be minimized, but as a mindful business investment and personal lifestyle for a responsible future.

Overall, COVID-19 tourism research should not only be the mean to overcome the crisis and resume previously chartered economic growth trajectories. It should lead the refocusing, repurposing, reframing and re-interpretation of research questions, methodologies and outcomes, so that tourism stakeholders can in turn re-direct their actioning, conduct and evolution. To that end, COVID-19 tourism research will be benefited by embedding, adapting, reflecting and expanding the theoretical lenses and perspectives of a much greater plurality of disciplines and constructs to guide and implement research. Transformative (service) research, philosophy, criminology, ethics, law, anthropology, behavioural and religious studies, political science and diplomacy, governance, bioethics, rhetoric. Researching within unchartered waters, COVID-19 tourism research may also need to apply new methodological approaches and tools that are capable to combat roots and not symptoms of tourism crises and use the latter as transformational opportunity to reset research agendas and re-imagine and re-shape unthinkable tourism futures. Due to the newness of the field qualitative approaches such as (cyber)ethnography and the need for urgent, fast and real-time research processes and outcomes, COVID-19 tourism research may also need to intensify and advance “new” methods of (big) data collection, analysis and interpretation/visualization, such as participatory sensing (i.e. using tourists as sensors for data collection).

Paradox research, as a meta-theory and/or methodology, can also be very instrumental for informing and supporting COVID-19 tourism research. Originating in philosophy and psychology (e.g. Aristotle, Confucius, Freud), paradox research (also frequently requiring multi-disciplinarity) has helped to inform, advance and transform management science research ( Schad, Lewis, Raisch, & Smith, 2016 ) and organisations ( Cameron & Quinn, 1988 ) alike. As a meta-theory, paradox research offers a powerful lens for enriching extant theories and fostering theorizing processes in management science, because it provides deeper understanding and conceptualisation of constructs, relationships, and dynamics surrounding organizational tensions. By investigating contradictions between interdependent elements that are seemingly distinct and oppositional, one can better unravel how one element actually informs and defines the another, tied in a web of eternal mutuality. As a methodology, the paradox lens encourages researchers to approach organizational paradoxes paradoxically ( Cameron & Quinn, 1988 ). Incorporating paradox research into COVID-19 research may also be inevitable, as the COVID-19 circumstances, impacts and debates have uncovered and intensified existing paradoxes, but also generated new ones. Paradox research is also paramount to COVID-19 tourism research, if the latter is to become innovative and transformative. These are because (adapted by Schad et al., 2016 ):

• Interruptions in socio-economic life can reveal structural contradictions and paradoxes, and by studying and understanding them, one can make the crisis positive and transformative
• paradoxes intensify, grow and intensify, as contemporary organizations and their environments become increasingly global, fast-paced, and complex; the evolution and circumstances of tourism and COVID-19 are a strong evidence of a highly interconnected, fast paced and complex world
• paradox is a powerful meta-theorizing tool: opposing theoretical views may enable vital insights into persistent and interdependent contradictions, fostering richer, more creative, and more relevant theorizing
• paradox identifies and challenges our pre-assumptions: as antinomies, theoretical paradoxes remain perplexing, even paralyzing, when researchers are confined by the past and/or assumptions
• paradox help us think creatively and out-of-the box, because contradictions provoke established certainties and tempts untapped creativity

Paradox research is limitedly used within tourism research, but its applicability, versatility and value are shown already in investigating: macro-level tourism and destination management issues ( Williams & Ponsford, 2009 ); business operations ( Sigala, Airey, Jones, & Lockwood, 2004 ) and tourism demand ( Mawby, 2000 ). However, as the present and post COVID-19 era is a fertile ground of persistent and new paradoxes in tourism, tourism researchers should seriously consider adopting a paradox lense. For example, the circumstances of COVID-19 (e.g. stay at home lockdowns, social distancing) have necessitated and accelerated the use of technologies by both tourists (e.g. information about travel restrictions, online crisis communication, online COVID-19 alerts and hygiene measures) and businesses (e.g. online food delivery, virtual dining, virtual wine experiences, festivals/events, virtual visits of museums, destinations). However, persistent ‘paradoxes’ (e.g. increase use of social media and loneliness, democratisation of information accessibility and information darkness, technology and (small) business empowerment/equalizing competition rules) are questioning the effectiveness of such technology solutions and have fuelled debates on whether they are a ‘cure’ or a ‘fertiliser’ and “diffuser’ of the pandemic. Not everyone has access to technology and those that they have do not necessarily have the capabilities and knowledge to effectively use the technology tools and information. The persistent digital divide found in consumers and businesses (which mainly represents a socio-economic divide of citizens and size of businesses), has converted the pandemic to an infodemic (e.g. lack or mis-information, diffusion of fake COVID-19 news and advices, emotional contagion of global depression and mental health) and a tool deepening the economic divide and competitive gap between larger and smaller tourism operators. Digital inequalities in tourists potentiated their vulnerability to COVID-19 (e.g. putting themselves and their loved one in health risk while traveling or willing to travel during and after the COVID-19), while COVID-19 vulnerability potentiate to enlarge the digital inequalities [e.g. those who have the tools and means to easier go through the COVID-19 impacts will also be the only ones who can pay and access virtual tourism experiences, who will be well informed on how, where and when travel and who will be able to afford to travel in the future, as increased (hygiene and technology) operating costs and transportation oligopolies may increase costs of tourism]. Similarly, digital inequalities in tourism businesses potentiate COVID-19 vulnerability (as larger operators that were technology ready and ‘inherited’ by size resilience, were the first and maybe the only ones to be able to virtualise operations and experiences for maintaining business liquidity, surviving, re-opening and recovering post COVID-19), while COVID-19 vulnerability increases digital and economic inequalities in the tourism competitive landscape (e.g. larger companies/destinations which are characterised by greater cash liquidity, know-how, technology readiness and resilience and so, have lower COVID-19 vulnerability, will be the ones to survive and thrive post COVID-19). Paradox research that can investigate such contradictions between the abovementioned distinct and oppositional, but also elements interdependent elements can better define, understand, manage and address their concepts and the dynamics of their web of eternal mutuality.

The COVID-19 fortified and generated many other paradoxes, which are also identifiable at all tourism management levels (macro, meso and micro) and COVID-19 tourism research can investigate for advancing and transforming research. Table 1 provides some ideas for applying such paradoxes in COVID-19 tourism research.

Paradox Research: advancing and transforming COVID-19 tourism research.

3. COVID19: Dismantling and re-mantling tourism in three stages

It is widely accepted that crisis management needs to be implemented before, during and after a crisis. Table 2 provides an overview of the impacts and implications of COVID-19 on three major stakeholders (tourism demand, tourism operators, destinations and policy makers) under three stages (representing the respond, recovery and restart stage from the pandemic) to incorporate a transformational stage envisioned in the post COVID-19 era. COVID-19 tourism research does not have to address issues in the last stage in order to be transformative. It can equally be transformative if it re-examines ‘existing’ issues and relations but through new theoretical lenses and/or methodological approaches by embedding a plurality of ‘new’ disciplines into the research designs. By doing this, one can significantly unravel unknown issues and dynamics, provide a better explanatory power and understanding of concepts and relations as well as identify and test new ‘remedies’.

COVID-19 and tourism in three stages: major impacts and some ideas for future research.

3.1. Tourism demand

Tourists have experienced themselves, through their loved ones and/or through the shared experiences of others (e.g. user-generated-content) significant disruptions and health-risks in their travel and bookings plans. The tourists’ experiences and/or exposure to others’ experiences (that are also magnified through the emotional contagion and information diffusion of the social media) can have a significant impact on their travel attitudes, intentions and future behaviours. Psychiatric research investigating the impact of traumatic experiences on people’s life, behaviours and experiences of places and services (e.g. Baxter & Diehl, 1998 ) can provide a useful theoretical lenses for understanding the travel behavior and attitudes of tourists that have been exposed to own or others’ COVID-19 travel trauma. Tourism research has mainly focused on studying how tourists develop their perceived risk and the impacts of the latter on tourists’ decision-making processes, future intentions and segmentation profiles (e.g. Dolnicar, 2005 , Aliperti and Cruz, 2019 , Araña and León, 2008 ). Others have also examined the impact of the tourists’ perception of crisis management preparedness certification on their travel intentions (e.g. Pennington-Gray, Schroeder, Wu, Donohoe, & Cahyanto, 2014 ). Such research is important, as risk perceptions are important for predicting future tourism demand and drafting appropriate recovery strategies ( Rittichainuwat & Chakraborty, 2009 ). It is also relevant for COVID-19 tourism research because of the new COVID-19 standards and certification rules that companies are now required to adopt. Research has shown that perceptions of risks may differ between tourists with different origin-country, final destination, age, sex and the typology of travel ( Rittichainuwat & Chakraborty, 2009 ). However, the impact of crisis communication and social media on perceived risk has been totally ignored. Some research is done for examining the impact of social media use on tourists’ mental health ( Zheng, Goh, & Wen, 2020 ) and crisis information systems and communication – social media ( Sigala, 2012 , Yu et al., 2020 ), however, given the increasing role and impact of social media on crisis communication and people’s health and risks perceptions, this is an area where more research is granted. As a vaccine for COVID-19 may take long to be developed and travelers may need to live with it, tourism research might benefit from medical and health research investigating how people behave, live and cope with chronic and lifestyle-related diseases (e.g. AIDS).

During lockdowns, people have experienced and become familiar with virtual services and tourism experiences. Research in technology adoption would claim that increased technology familiarity and trialability will increase its adoption. But will this apply for the controversial technologies introduced by COVID-19? Political economy and law research explaining how people react and accept human rights ‘violations’ (e.g. surveillance measures, freedom of speech, lockdowns) under conditions of ‘state of exception’ like terrorism or the COVID-19 ( Carriere, 2019 , Bozzoli and Müller, 2011 , Scheppele, 2003 ) can provide a new lenses for studying adoption of the COVID-19 controversial technologies and restrictions Research on political ideologies could further enlighten why people’s ideologies and political values may further perplex their reactions and behaviours to such interventions in their human rights.

It is claimed that while experiencing low pace, new lifestyles and working patterns, people are reflecting and recalibrating their priorities and social values. Is that true in relation to their travel behavior? Would people require and expect greater responsibility and sustainability from tourism operators and destinations? Would they be motivated to travel more but for a meaningful purpose? Or would people go back to their previous travel behaviours and preferences? Past research ( Pieters, 2013 ) has shown that consumers face a “material trap” in which materialism fosters social isolation and which in turn reinforces materialism. This might explain why during lockdowns people increased their online shopping and consumption of virtual entertainment and probably they might not have reflected and reset their values. Is that true and what is its impact on tourists’ behaviours? Consumer psychology and behavioural science explaining how people wish to align the time they spend with their values (congruence theory) can provide useful insights into such investigations. In addition, religion and spirituality studies can further enlighten the impact of COVID-19’s living conditions on tourists’ tourism sustainability preferences and attitudes as well as responses to tourism operators’ and destination sustainability practices and communications. This is because religion and spirituality is found to play an important role in influencing individuals’ thoughts and behaviors ( Laurin, Kay, & Fitzsimons, 2012 ).

Social distancing imposed by COVID-19 includes actions such as, reducing social contact, avoiding crowded places, or minimizing travel. Social distancing can significantly impact how people experience and evaluate leisure and travel activities like hiking, outdoor activities and nature-based tourism or even personal services like spas, dining, concierge services. Social distancing or better physical distancing may influence tourists’ perceptions of health hazards, insecurity and unpleasant tourism experiences. But how ‘far’ away is enough for tourism employees and other customers to be from each other without compromising sociality, personal service and perceptions of social distancing measures? Social distancing has not been studied before in service provision, while law and criminology research on ‘sexual’ consent may provide a different perspective on how people define social space and the ‘invasion’ or not of others into it.

Tourism is heavily a hedonic and sensorial experience. Servicescape design plays a major role in tourism experience by influencing customers’ emotions, behaviors, attitudes and service evaluations. However, COVID-19 operating standards require servicescapes to be redesigned eliminating or inhibiting sensorial elements and ‘changing’ tourism experiences, e.g.: smell of cleanliness instead of fragrance; social distancing and number of co-presence of clients in restaurants, festivals and other tourism settings will influence new standards of psychological comfort and acceptable levels of perceived crowdness; raised voices may generate a wider “moist breath zone” increasing viral spread; warmer temperatures create relaxing environments encouraging customers to stay and spend more, but poorly ventilated or air-conditioned indoor spaces may spread COVID-19. Would tourists and tourism firms change their behaviour and attitudes towards these new COVID-19 servicescapes? What new service etiquettes, customer expectations, behaviours and experiences would COVID-19 determined servicescapes and operational procedures may generate?

These and many other fields of research have been raised due to COVID-19 conditions, and as explained a plurality of theoretical lenses can be beneficial to provide a better understanding of these new concepts introduced in tourism research.

3.2. Tourism supply – Businesses

Tourism businesses have been racing to ensure the safety of their employees, customers, brand image and cash liquidity. To re-start, tourism companies are re-designing experiences (e.g. winery experiences, museum visits, tours, sports events, in-room dining and entertainment instead of hotel facilities) to feature smaller groups of tourists, outdoor activities and/or private experiences complying with social distancing and gathering restrictions and travellers’ expectations. Tourism companies have already upgraded their cleaning procedures by adopting new standards and restraining staff. Many of companies promote their hygiene certifications accredited by health expert associations. Tourism professionals are being trained to become ‘contact tracers’ obtaining relevant certifications confirming their skills to identify cases, build rapport and community with cases, identify their contact and stop community transmission. Restaurants, hotels, airports, public spaces are re-engineering their operations to make them contact-free or contactless. Mobile apps (for check-in, check-out, room keys, mobile payments, bookings-purchases), self-service kiosks, in-room technologies for entertainment and destination e-shopping (e.g. virtual reality for destination virtual visits to museums, attractions and destinations, movies), robots (for reception and concierge services, food delivery museum guides), artificial intelligence enabled websites and chatbox for customer communication and services, digital payments (e.g. digital wallets, paypal, credit cards). In addition, the new operating environment enforced by COVID-19 measures require firms to adopt new technologies and applications to ensure management of crowds and number of people gathered in public spaces (e.g. airports, shopping malls, museums, restaurants, hotels), human disinfectors and hand sanitiser equipment, applications identifying and managing people’s health identity and profiles.

Research can conduct a reality check and benchmarking of the effectiveness of the various respond and recovery strategies adopted by tourism operators. Research can also investigate the role and the way to build resilience to fast develop and implement such strategies. However, such research is useful and important but probably not enough for investigating the resetting of the next tourism industry normal. Transformative COVID-19 research should help industry to reimagine and implement an operating environment that is human-centred and responsible to sustainability and well-being values.

3.3. Destination management organisations and policy makers

Governments and destinations have been providing stimulus packages and interventions (e.g. tax reliefs, subsidies, deferrals of payments) to ensure the viability and continuity of tourism firms and jobs. Governments have intervened in mobility restriction and closures of businesses. Because of these, COVID-19 has resulted in a greater intervention of governments in the functioning and operations of the tourism industry. The government has also become a much bigger actor in the tourism economy (e.g. re-nationalisation of airlines and other tourism firms and tourism infrastructure like airports). This is very unique for COVID-19, as previous crises have generated research and institutional interest, but they did not have policy impact, specifically in tourism ( Hall et al., 2020 ). Would such government interventions and role sustain in the future? How will this influence the structure and functioning of the industry at a national and global level? Debates have already started questioning the effectiveness of such interventions, their fairness and equal distribution amongst tourism stakeholders ( Higgins-Desbiolles, 2020 ), their long-term impacts in terms of austerity and cuts of public expenditures. Future research looing into these issues is highly warrantied. In their CIVID-19 reactions and responses governments and destinations seem to have acted individually and nationalistic and recently selectively (e.g. bilateral and multilateral agreements amongst tourism bubbles). However, systems theory and crisis management, would argue that crises need to be addressed collectively. What would be the impact of such governmental behaviours on the future of tourism and destinations tourism policy making and strategies? As it seems, COVID-19 has raised political, geopolitical and governance issues that frameworks and concepts from these disciplines would need to be used to enlighten such research.

4. Conclusions: What is more and what is next

COVID-19 resulted in numerous socio-cultural, economic and psychological impacts on various tourism stakeholders, some of them for years to stay. Consequently, the pandemic has created a ‘fertile’ new context whereby tourism researchers can conduct research with valuable end-user benefits. However, COVID-19 tourism research should try to avoid the ‘publish or perish’ old mantra that has been driving and mushrooming tourism research ( Hall, 2011 ). Although studies conducting a reality check of impacts, predicting tourism demand, and benchmarking good and best practices are very useful and contextually interesting to assess COVID-19 impacts on various geographies sectors and stakeholders, they potentially offer limited scope to advance our knowledge on crisis management as well as to potentiate the pandemic’s affordance to reset our research agendas and expand the contribution and frontiers of tourism research and industry. It is the aim of this paper to inspire tourism scholars to view and use the COVID-19 as a transformational opportunity for reforming their mindsets in designing and conducting research and for the tourism institutions to reset their standards and metrics for motivating and evaluating the purpose, role and impact of tourism research. In addition, crises also accelerate technology innovation and change ( Colombo, Piva, Quas, & Rossi-Lamastra, 2016 ). However, these should not be viewed as inevitable, unquestionable and impossible to re-shape and re-adjust to serve real needs and meaningful values. It is the responsibility scholars to ensure that COVID-19 tourism research can ensure the latter.

The present analysis is not exhaustive in terms of the COVID-19 impacts, while impacts may not be uniform across all the actors of the same tourism stakeholder group. For example, the COVID-19 has different impacts on tourism operators based on their characteristics such as, the nature of the tourism sector (intermediaries, event organizers transportation, type of accommodation or attraction provider), their size, location, management and ownership style. Similarly, the highly heterogenous tourism demand (e.g. leisure and business travelers, group and independent tourists, special interest tourists such as religious, gay & lesbian, corporate travelers) also means that different COVID-19 impacts and implications are anticipated and worthy to be investigated for different market segments. COVID-19 tourism research should not only disclose such differentiated COVID-19 impacts, but it should also provide an enriched explanatory power about the roots of such disparities with the scope to envision and/or test any suggestions on how to address any inequalities and disadvantages that they may cause to various groups of tourism stakeholders. The analysis did not also include other major tourism stakeholders such as tourism employees, local communities, tourism entrepreneurs and tourism education (scholars, students and institutions alike). Recent developments and pressures faced by some of these tourism stakeholders were further strengthen by the COVID-19, which in turn place them in a more disadvantaged situation. COVID-19 research related to these stakeholders is equally important.

For example, COVID-19 has worsen the already difficult situation (e.g. high labour flexibility but at the expense of low salaries, lack of job security, insurance and other benefits) faced by an increasing number of tourism micro-entrepreneurs (e.g. food delivery people, ‘Uber taxi drivers’, “Airbnb hoteliers”) ( Sigala & Dolnicar, 2017 ). Algorithmic management, increased pressure and work stress are some of the negative impacts of the gig economy, which become more evident and fortified due to the COVID-19 (e.g. food delivery employees have no health insurance or coverage of lost salaries in case they get infected while working; ‘micro-hoteliers’ risk loosing their homes, as they cannot collect ‘accommodation fees’ to pay off home mortgages). Being an unofficial and sometime black economy/employment, gig tourism workers may not even be entitled to governmental subsidies provided to COVID-19 vulnerable employees or businesses. As the COVID-19 is expected to continue and reinforce contemporary paradigms and trends of this ‘causalisation’ of tourism employment (due to the upcoming economic recession and greater operating costs of tourism firms), COVID-19 tourism research needs to urgently investigate issues of employee psychological, mental and physical health, engagement, working conditions (e.g. remote working, virtual teams and virtual leadership) and other human resource issues within the COVID-19 setting. For example, traditional leadership, recruitment, management, and motivational incentives may not inspire, engage, motivate, and attract employees who have recalibrated their personal values and priorities during the COVID-19 lockdown and remote working.

The COVID-19 impacts on tourism employment create further pressures on tourism education that has severely affected by the pandemic. Apart from the virtualization of teaching and learning processes, tourism students and graduates have to also address the halt of industry interships, recruitment and questionable career paths. Tourism programs and universities are faced with reduced students’ intakes, industry and government sponsorship and research funding. Tourism researchers need to find new ways and sources for conducting research addressing social distancing, respecting the mental health and privacy issues of COVID-19 affected stakeholders. Investigating pedagogical issues such as how to make the design and delivery of tourism curricula more ‘resilient’, agile and updated to develop graduates with flexible and transferable skills to other industries is also equally important. For example, new online and offline courses and certifications have already emerged training graduates to become professional ‘contact tracer’ possessing the technical, emotional/social and ethical skills to manage customers and employees in situations of contact tracing, isolation, and quarantine (e.g. how contact tracing is done, how to build rapport with cases, identify their contacts, and support both cases and their contacts to stop transmission in their communities ( https://uh.edu/medicine/education/contact-tracer/ , https://www.coursera.org/learn/covid-19-contact-tracing?edocomorp=covid-19-contact-tracing , https://sph.uth.edu/news/story/trace ). However, is that just an opportunistic educational offering and/or a new ‘skill and qualification standard’ that tourism industry and demand would expect alike?

Many other specialized topics also warrant research within the domain of COVID-19. For example, the social entrepreneurship has been booming in tourism during the last decade ( Sigala, 2019 ) for several reasons including the 2008 economic recession. COVID-19 has boosted such tourism social ventures aiming to create social value, solve social problems created by the COVID-19 and provide help to people in need (e.g. marketplaces enabling the repurposing of various tourism unutilized resources such as labour, hotel and function space, food, cleaning material, e.g. HospitalityHelps.org ). The mushrooming of COVID-19 related tourism social ventures provides many opportunities to study and better understand this phenomenon within new and various ecosystems, stakeholders and circumstances.

Marianna Sigala is Professor at the University of South Australia and Director of the Centre for Tourism & Leisure Management. She is an international authority in the field of technological advances and applications in tourism with numerous awarded publications, research projects, keynote presentations in international conferences. In 2016, she has been awarded the prestigious EuroCHRIE Presidents’ Award for her lifetime contributions and achievements to tourism and hospitality education. She is the co-editor of the Journal of Service Theory & Practice, and the Editor-In-Chief of the Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Management. Professor Sigala was also appointed as CAUTHE Fellow in 2020.

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Tourism Management Research Project Examples

Disclaimer: Some posts on Tourism Teacher may contain affiliate links. If you appreciate this content, you can show your support by making a purchase through these links or by buying me a coffee . Thank you for your support!

In my recent post ‘ how to get inspiration for your research project topic ’ I gave lots of tips on way to think of a great research project idea that suits you. In this post I will give you some tourism management research project examples to give you some guidance on what makes a suitable research project topic .

Tourism Management Research Project Examples

Remember, you can use a hypothesis or a research question, you will find examples of both below. Visit this post for more on the difference between a research question and a hypothesis .

Tourism management is a broad subject and you have the flexibility to explore a wide numbers of areas that interest you. Here are some previous topics that I have supervised to give you an idea of a suitable tourism management research project topic:

Perception and attitude towards ecotourism in Albania among tourists .
Does ecotourism economically benefit local communities: The Case Study of Nicaragua .
Sustainable tourism practices in developing countries.
The role of destination management organisation in promoting tourism in the European Union .
Prices versus the environment: An analysis of consumer motivations.
The sustainability practices within Formula One tourism.
Why do young tourists prefer dynamic packaging to traditional package holidays?
What can be done to help the fragile ecosystems of the Hawaiian Islands’ endangered plant and animal species?
Does visiting a site of suffering and death socially and commercially benefit local communities?
Perception and attitude of tourists towards the Jack the Ripper site.
The ethics of dark tourism in Cambodia.
Perception and attitude of foreign tourists towards the Edinburgh Dungeon.
How to develop a marketing plan for the London Dungeon.
Why do customers choose leisure hotels when they plan overseas holidays?
Perception and attitude of British customers toward the Hilton Hotel in London.
The impact of hotel brand on consumer choice in the UK.
Examining the implications of the Internet towards online travel agents: The case study of Lastminute.com.
The growth of the easy brand and its’ impact on market share.
Examining perception and attitude of British customers towards online travel agents.
Motivations for solo travel amongst millennials.
Perception and attitude of millennials toward cruise holidays.
Perception and attitude of tourist experiencing the sex economy in Thailand .
Role of global terrorism in shaping the image of tourism destinations – Case study of Egypt .
Perception and attitude toward Beijing’s world heritage tour among British tourists.
Use of sporting events to develop tourism branding – Analysis of Qatar with regards to the FIFA World Cup.
Perception and attitude toward extreme plastic surgery makeovers in South Asia among British customers.
Emergence of Poland as medical tourism destination.
How British customers choose medical tourism destinations for dental tour packages.
Perception and attitude of international students towards work and study in the UK.
The impacts of a gap year on skills and competencies in the workplace

Things to remember when choosing your tourism management research project topic

Whilst you might like the sound of some of the tourism management research project examples given above, remember that they might not always be feasible. Here are a list of things to consider:

Can I gain access to the respondents that I will need?
Can I complete this research project given the word count?
Can I complete this research project given the time-frame?
Is this research project realistic in terms of access (i.e. if you need to travel to a particular destination, is this possible?)
Am I able to develop a conceptual framework to form a literature review?
Is this a topic that is worthy of investigation?

For more guidance on writing your research project you might be interested in my posts how to write awesome aims and objectives and the difference between a research question and a hypothesis . I also recommend that you use some of the excellent research methods books available to you- I recommend Social Research Methods by Bryman and Research Methodology: A Step by Step Guide for Beginners by Kumar .

Do you have any good tourism management research project examples? I’d love to hear them- drop them in the comments box below!

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Tourism Research Paper

View sample tourism research paper. Browse other research paper examples and check the list of history research paper topics for more inspiration. If you need a history research paper written according to all the academic standards, you can always turn to our experienced writers for help. This is how your paper can get an A! Feel free to contact our custom writing service for professional assistance. We offer high-quality assignments for reasonable rates.

The first tourists traveled ancient lands to festivals and sites of religious or ancestral significance, their movements facilitated by the building of roads and ships. Upper-class men began to tour the world for education and scientific study in the late fifteenth century. Modern tourism, or leisure travel, developed along with more accessible and efficient means of transportation, such as railroads, steamships, automobiles, and airplanes.

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Tourism is a relatively new field of study within the discipline of history. Its connection with trends in social, cultural, and economic history, however, means it is a valuable research area. Tourism is generally defined as travel outside a person’s usual environment, primarily for leisure, but the term can also be applied for other purposes. Though the term “tourism” was first coined in the early nineteenth century, the activity has much deeper historical roots. Technology has facilitated changes in travel over the centuries, and, from ancient times, leisure, trade, pilgrimage, and empire have seen people travel across regions and cultures forging connections and contacts. A chronological look at the history of tourism shows its transformation over the centuries from travel only occurring out of necessity, through its association with leisure as a privilege of the upper classes, to an industry of own in the twenty-first century.

Most sources point to the Sumerians (Babylonians) and their development of trade around 4000 BCE as the birth of travel (Goeldner and Ritchie 2009). Initially merchants traded locally and then, after the development of ship technology, traded further afield, across the Mediterranean Sea and Indian Ocean (Casson 1994). Trade remained the major motivation for travel over the centuries with the vast trading networks of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Even though this may not come under the banner of what we think of tourism today, travel through trade often saw movement across vast distances and cultures. The Silk Roads are a prime example here, as traders traveled from Europe to China over a number of different routes. From the fourth century BCE, the Silk Roads saw travel link Asia and the Mediterranean through trade, military movements, and religion. Travel was difficult and dangerous, however, and was only conducted when necessary. Trade, military, and administrative purposes were the main motivations for travel in the ancient and medieval periods, although religious festivals, pilgrimage, and other leisure travel were also evident and more of a reflection of modern tourism.

From the time of the ancient Egyptians, pilgrimages and festivals have taken travelers across borders. Tourism, as in travel for pleasure, is evident in Egypt from 1500 BCE onward (Casson 1994). The pyramids were a site of pilgrimage for Egyptians, and, even though this travel was still relatively local, it demonstrated the importance of pilgrimage as an instance of early tourism. Travel for pilgrimage in also evident in many Asian countries, particularly in China, where a culture for travel can be seen from an early period (1350–1050 BCE) when people journeyed to the mountains and rivers to visit their ancestral gods and spirits (Sofield and Li 1998). Travel, however, was still a disjointed experience and a difficult undertaking on treks over long distances.

The building of roads during the Roman Empire facilitated a new medium for travel. A network of about 80,500 kilometers (50,000 miles) of roads had been built by the first century BCE spreading across the empire. Roman roads allowed travel across northern Europe in Britain and Germany to southern Europe into Egypt. As a result, travel for leisure across Europe gained popularity among Romans, and the new road technology meant greater distances could be covered at a greater speed. Romans traveled to sites and monuments across the empire to sightsee at popular destinations, including the pyramids and the sites of Greece. But this trend did not last, and after the collapse of the Roman Empire and the division of Europe, roads were no longer maintained and travel once again became difficult and dangerous.

Despite this, pilgrimages continued across Europe during the medieval period with travelers crossing regions to visit shrines, churches, relics, and other sites of religious significance. Consequently, as the main sources of hospitality along the road, churches and monasteries allowed travelers to overcome the dangers of travel. There are many surviving accounts of pilgrims’ journeys and guide books with information and instruction for travelers. Pilgrimages often took travelers across borders and put them in contact with cultures they would not normally have encountered. This sometimes caused conflict, and the domination of religious travel eventually faded, giving way to travel as a search for knowledge and culture.

The Grand Tour

In Europe, from the early modern period, travel and tourism were seen as part of expanding and acquiring knowledge. From the late fifteenth century, the sons of the upper classes were sent to tour abroad as a means of completing their education. As tutors took their young male charges to cultural sites, the process evolved as an induction into gentlemanly society. The Grand Tour, as this practice would become known in the late seventeenth century, caught on. Over the course of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, thousands of Britons, Germans, French, and Russians traveled around the continent, principally to France, Italy, Switzerland, and Germany. Wealthy Britons especially, inspired by the aesthetic principles of the picturesque and Edmund Burke’s Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757), moved between the mountainous regions and the major places of cultural importance as ascribed by the many guidebooks published in the period. (The English term “tourist” was first coined in the late eighteenth century to describe them.) Tourists often brought back souvenirs during this period, and collections of geological, archaeological, and other items picked up on tour were common in homes of the wealthy all across Europe. (The term wunderkammer (“cabinet of curiosities”) was used to describe such collections.) The Grand Tour elicited a deliberate “seeking out” of culture in an effort to broaden the mind.

The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries saw travel more through the lens of scientific exploration and expedition. The Age of Enlightenment transformed the approach to natural history, and scientists—particularly naturalists and botanists, both professional and amateur—traveled across the world in search of new information and a reordering of existing classifications through new biological systems. People from Britain, France, Germany, and America traveled to Asia and Africa exploring and collecting. Empire played a major role in this practice as Europeans traveled to their nation’s colonies discovering new species of plants and animals, reported on the cultures of indigenous populations, and mapped the territories. Despite the curiosity for discovering new cultures throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth century, travel was used as a means of dominating the landscape and native people, particularly in colonial Africa, Asia, and South America. Travel was still very much a privilege of the upper classes, but this changed during the nineteenth century.

Trains and Steamships

The Industrial Revolution’s impact on technology and work patterns transformed tourism in Britain and northern Europe. In particular, the revolution in transportation technology and the emergence of a tourism industry opened up leisure travel to greater numbers of people and made the process of traveling much more organized.

The railway, in Britain and later in Europe and North America, allowed greater access to a destination at greater speed. Thomas Cook’s organized trip from Leicester to Loughborough in 1841 saw the start of mass rail travel for pleasure trips. During newly allocated holiday time, factory workers from the industrial heartlands of England were able to travel on the specially built railway lines to seaside resorts. These trends were also evident in North America. As the population spread west over the course of the nineteenth century, roads and then railways were constructed to facilitate travel across the country. Sailing ships were replaced by steamships and allowed greater access to the world, not only for trade and scientific exploration but also for leisure. Other developments, such as the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 also facilitated this movement abroad. From the late nineteenth century, travel to America and Australasia was a popular undertaking by the more wealthy members of the European population. In a continuation of the Grand Tour, people moved around the major cities and sites of interest. The technology of the Industrial Revolution, accompanied by the emergence of a tourism industry, opened up the world. The emergence of tour operators and travel agents in Britain and America, particularly Thomas Cook (in the United Kingdom), and the international financial services of American Express (which began issuing the Travelers Cheque in 1891), brought further organization to tourism. In Britain, Thomas Cook provided organized trips to spa towns and seaside resorts and then, in 1855, to Europe and further afield, eventually providing tours to Australia and New Zealand beginning in the 1880s. These developments over the nineteenth century made tourism accessible to broad swathes of society and paved the way for the growth of the tourism industry in the twentieth century.

Automobiles and Airplanes

The relative peace in Europe in the late nineteenth century meant that these trends in tourism continued, and a growth in travel occurred up until World War I. In the years after the war, the motor car emerged as the new technology to dominate tourism. The popularity of the car for leisure travel began in the United States and moved to Europe over the course of the 1920s and 1930s. Once again linked to the fashions of the Grand Tour, motoring holidays saw tourists seeking out picturesque sites and points of interest. The car was much more dominant in the United States than in Europe; the first half of the twentieth century saw the car emerge as the main form of transport and the construction of highways and motels facilitated this desire for travel. The majority of car travel was domestic, challenging the dominance of the train, while the emergence of passenger air travel in the mid-twentieth century saw a dramatic shift away from surface transport for longer trips.

Just as roads, steam power, and cars had previously, airplanes transformed the way people traveled and opened up new regions, cultures, and populations to tourism. Initially used for commercial purposes, airplanes began taking passengers in the 1920s. Air travel for tourism took off after World War II with the development of the jet engine, which increased the speed and range of aircraft, making international travel more accessible. With greater affluence on both sides of the Atlantic from the 1950s onward, the tourism industry responded to demand for overseas travel by introducing cheap package holidays. This heralded the industrialization of the industry and the onset of mass tourism in the second half of the century.

The Twenty-First Century

The twenty-first century has seen fundamental shifts in tourism, caused primarily by the role of the Internet and the use of tourism as a target for terrorism. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, had a big impact on international tourism, heralding a new regime of travel security. Globalization means that while historic trends in tourism will continue, new players are emerging, particularly China, which is set to become the largest generator of international tourism in the world. These trends are set against a background of (i) short-term reductions in demand for tourism caused by the global economic recession of 2008 onwards, (ii) ongoing concerns that the consequences for tourism on the environment are unacceptable, as for example the impact on the flora and fauna of sensitive areas, and (iii) a longer term concern over climate change and whether, in fact with its significant contribution to carbon emissions, tourism should continue at all. Of course, the tourism sector in the twenty first century is attempting to mitigate these impacts through alternative formats such as eco-tourism and sustainable tourism and these trends are set to intensify in the future.

Despite vast differences from the industry it is today, tourism as a process can be traced back to ancient times. Changes in technology, trends, and fashions have facilitated a transformation in the way people travel over the centuries. From the early periods of ancient history, travel, whether through trade, pilgrimage, a search for knowledge or for pleasure, has seen the exchange of ideas, populations, and trends.

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Tourism Impacts on Destinations: Insights from a Systematic Review of Literature
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Tourism is a relatively new field of study within the discipline of history. Its connection with trends in social, cultural, and economic history, however, means it is a valuable research area. Tourism is generally defined as travel outside a person's usual environment, primarily for leisure, but the term can also be applied for other purposes.

Transformational tourism – a systematic literature review and research agenda

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Impact of tourism development upon environmental sustainability: a suggested framework for sustainable ecotourism

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Smart tourism: foundations and developments

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Tourism and COVID-19: Impacts and implications for advancing and resetting industry and research

1. Introduction: Setting the necessity and parameters for tourism COVID-19 research

2. COVID-19 circumstances and tourism: Shifting the research focus to challenge, reset and contradict institutional logics, systems and assumptions

3. COVID19: Dismantling and re-mantling tourism in three stages

3.1. Tourism demand

3.2. Tourism supply – Businesses

3.3. Destination management organisations and policy makers

4. Conclusions: What is more and what is next

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