There is a growing backlash against extractive and exploitative forms of tourism that have unleashed what some argue as unacceptable levels of change on local communities and environments. Examples include the rise of ‘overtourism’, the environmental impacts of the cruise sector, and collaborative economy platforms that have contributed to concerns over housing affordability and availability. Anti-tourism activism is on the rise, and the need to rethink the economic, political and social organisation of tourism in a global world has never been more apparent. It is increasingly clear that we need to rework the values underpinning tourism and visitor economies and move the focus from its traditional emphasis on profit, jobs and growth towards new models of economic and social exchange. This book gives voice to a growing movement of scholars, activists and business leaders who acknowledge that we need to reinvent relationships between tourism production and consumption, and between labour, capital and resources. In the Global North, this exploration of alternative economic and political relationships in tourism has tended to be located at the margins of discussion. The Global South has much to teach the Global North about alternative economic models, different kinds of exchange, new relationships between labour, capital and resources, and resilience. Drawing from case studies in both the North and the South, this edited collection explores how some are reworking tourism, reshaping the economies of tourism, and in the process, how tourism can deliver social and economic wellbeing in a changing world. Reworking Tourism will be of interest to scholars of tourism and development, as well as tourism and economics. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of Tourism Planning & Development.

This book explores the relationship between tourism, culture and ethnic identity in Tibet in , focusing in particular on Shangrila, a Tibetan region in Southwest China, to show how local ‘Tibetan culture’ is reconstructed as a marketable commodity for tourists. It analyses the socio-economic effects of Shangrila tourism in Tibet, investigating who benefits economically, whilest also considering its political implications and the ways in which tourism might be linked to the negotiation and reassertion of ethnic identity. It goes on to examine the spatial re-imagining provoked by the development of tourism, and asks whether a tourist destination inevitably becomes a ‘pseudo-community’ for the visited. Can a fictitious name, invented for the sake of tourists, still provide the ‘natives’ of a place with a sense of identity? This book argues that conceptions of place are closely linked to notions of social identity, and in the case of Shangrila particularly to ethnic identity. Viewing the spatial as socially constructed, and place-making as vital to social organisation, this is a study of how place is constructed and contested. It describes how local villagers and monastic elites have negotiated the area’s religious geography, how agents of the Communist state have redefined it as a minority area, and how tourism developers are now marketing the region as Shangrila for tourist consumption. It outlines the different ‘place-making’ strategies utilised by the various social actors, including local villagers to create the communities in which they live, monastic elites to invent a Buddhist Tibetan realm of ‘religious geography’, agents of the People’s Republic of China to define the area as part of the communist state, and tourism developers to market the region as ‘Shangrila’ for tourist consumption. Overall, this book is an insightful account of the complex links between tourism, culture and Tibetanethnic identity in Tibet, and will be of interest to a wide range of disciplines including social anthropology, sociology, human geography, tourism and development studies.

The expansion of international tourism is changing the relationship between ethnic groups and states around the globe. Yet tourism’s importance for the understanding of ethnicity in the modern world has been generally neglected within the field of ethnic studies. This pioneering volume investigates how international tourism development, state policies of ethnic management, and the active responses of local ethnic groups intersect to reshape ethnic identities and ethnic relations in Asian and Pacific societies. It analyzes the ways in which the very meaning of ethnicity and culture are being contested and reworked in the wake of tourism’s impact. Following an introduction that explores the close but often ambivalent relationship between tourism promotion and state ethnic policies, individual contributors examine tourism’s varied effects in China, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, and the island Pacific in rich ethnographic detail.

The sustainability of tourism is increasingly under question given the challenges of overtourism, COVID-19 and the contribution of tourism to climate and environmental change. Degrowth and Tourism provides an original response to the central problem of growth in tourism, an imperative that has been intrinsic within tourism practice, and directs the reader to rethink the impacts of tourism and possible alternatives beyond the sustainable growth discourse. Using a multi-scaled approach to investigate degrowth’s macro effects and micro indications in tourism, this book frames degrowth in tourism in terms of business, destination and policy initiatives. It uses a combination of empirical research, case studies and theory to offer new perspectives and approaches to analyse issues related to overtourism, COVID-19, small-scale tourism operations and entrepreneurship, mobility and climate change in tourism. Interdisciplinary chapters provide studies on animal-based tourism, nature-based tourism, domestic tourism, developing community-centric tourism and many other areas, within the paradigm of degrowth. This book offers significant insight on both the implications of degrowth paradigm in tourism studies and practices, as well as tourism’s potential contributions to the degrowth paradigm, and will be essential reading for all those interested in sustainable tourism and transformations through tourism.

This comprehensive book focuses on how the COVID-19 pandemic is transforming travel and tourism, globally. Despite the devastation caused by COVID-19, authors argue that within the ongoing crisis, there is also an opportunity to positively transform the tourism sector in ways that contribute to a more hopeful future for tourism practitioners, tourists and host communities. As the world emerges from the shadow of COVID-19 there will not be a return to the "normal". Rather, the volume shares a vision of global transformation that is driven at least in part by the changing ways people in the post-COVID-19 era may travel and encounter each other and their environments. Individual chapters explore topics such as: regenerative economies, transformational travel, critical perspectives on pandemics and tourism, sustainable development and resilience post-COVID-19, re-discovering and re-localising tourism, global (im)mobilities, transforming tourism management, as well as new value systems for travel and tourism including the chance to strengthen social equity and social justice as tourism returns after COVID-19. In this edited volume, a series of senior and emerging scholars engage with debates on how to best contribute to more substantial, meaningful, and positive planetary shifts within the tourism industry. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the journal Tourism Geographies.

Heritage is a prized cultural commodity in the marketing of tourism destinations. Particular aspects of heritage are often more actively promoted, with others played down. The representation of heritage in tourism as static and timeless, derived since time immemorial from a distant past, is seductive. In Asia, a major part of the tourism market lies in the sale and consumption of highly orientalized images and versions of culture and history. In India’s marketing discourse, the state of Rajasthan symbolizes the nation in its heritage-laden, traditional and most authentic form. These images draw heavily on the British period in India – the Raj. In one sense, this vision of Rajasthan is ennobling, highlighting moments of cultural pride. In another sense, it demeans, by omitting and obscuring salient features of contemporary life. This fascinating book explores the cultural politics of tourism through interdisciplinary perspectives. Carol E. Henderson and Maxine Weisgrau demonstrate that tourism heritage privileges elite histories that recapitulate colonial relationships, compelling non-elites to collude in these narratives of subordination even as they advance their own alternative visions of history.