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Research on the rise of Airbnb and similar sharing economy platforms is gaining momentum, yet it predominantly focuses on urban or mature coastal destinations. To date, research on these platforms in second home destinations in rural areas is limited. In particular, the impact of sharing platform users on countryside second home communities is mostly understudied. The phenomenon of second homes in rural areas across Europe is closely tied to the imagery of rurality in opposition to urbanity. Over the years, small townships in the countryside saw the rise of second homeowners, resulting in changes in the local socio-economic environment. While the second home tradition, particularly in Scandinavia, is often tied to historic seasonal population movements from city to rural areas for utilitarian reasons, recent second home acquisitions are often tied to shifting populations, particularly from rural to urban areas. Second homes in these areas are often a mix of inherited familial homesteads and purpose-bought properties, both underpinned by feelings of place attachment. While there exists literature on the interactions of second home communities and primary residents, we argue that the influence of sharing platforms within this mixed community injects an additional level of spatial interaction and conceptualization of place. To this end, this chapter presents evidence from two established second home destinations (Snowdonia in the UK and specific areas of the Dalarna, Härjedalen and Jämtland regions in Sweden), where the proliferation of properties listed on Airbnb is currently contributing to the reframing of the existing rural landscape. The need for research into sharing platforms and second homes has been noted in the literature (Marjavaara, Müller, & Back, 2019), and our research seeks to fill this noted gap, albeit with a specific focus on rural areas. The emphasis on the rural allows for a more focused comparative analysis of these two contexts where Airbnb is at different stages of development without the spatial and population complexities inherent in urban environments. Using available data covering the period from 2013 to 2019, this study suggests that there is a separate but connected layer of spatial interaction inherent in rural environments that house these communities, and this, in turn, is mediated by the varying levels of place attachment and perceptions of rural space of the three user groups: primary residents, second homeowners, and Airbnb users. Based on the findings from this comparative analysis, recommendations can be made in order to enhance the social sustainability and resilience of these rural communities. More specifically, this work will articulate the complexities of different user types inhabiting the same space but interpreting it differently, which will in turn allow for rural community planners to mediate potential problems and develop strategies for future developments in order to ensure sustainable user behaviour.

The current COVID-19 pandemic has severely affected global travel and tourism, particularly international and urban tourism. The spread of the virus and the measures of lockdown in urban areas considerably decreased the flow of international visitors to year-round urban destinations like London, Paris, New York and Shanghai. However, as lockdown measures eased in the second half of 2020, questions should be asked as to whether the rhetoric of "reigniting tourism" is appropriate for urban destinations. Re-opening for summer holiday tourism with an emphasis on a return to “normal”, arguably, poses a threat to urban spaces and a return to pre-COVID tensions as a result of overtourism and tourismphobia. This chapter provides a critique to the emerging narrative in tourism crisis and post-COVID management in urban destinations and calls for alternative approaches to reposition cities as liveable spaces for local communities.

The 2010-11 earthquakes severely damaged the city of Christchurch and most of its key attractions, with direct consequences for the visitor economy. The subsequent rebuild is highly contested, while many local stakeholders wanted inclusive, liveable and mixed redevelopment for the benefit of residents and city users in general, central government opted for an anchor project rooted redevelopment strategy to enhance international appeal and market-led recovery. As a result the rhetoric of tourism has been used to legitimize the redevelopment agenda and the design and delivery of key anchor projects, including a new international convention centre, and sports and event infrastructure. The aim of the chapter is therefore to examine stakeholders’ roles and policy discourses emerging from the city rebuild which embrace much of the discourse surrounding new urban tourism. Using documentary sources and interviews this study provides a longitudinal appraisal of key episodes of governance that have shaped the Christchurch rebuild, with accounts from residents, civic society and recovery authorities. The chapter finds that the rebuild has implications not only for Christchurch as a tourist city but, in a wider context, to the use of tourism in a post-disaster context and the reshaping of urban tourism practices to enhance real estate values. The research therefore problematizes the notion of new urban tourism and argues that recent changes in the trajectory of everyday social and economic practices of city users can be best understood as a further extension of the processes of contemporary neoliberal capitalism rather than a distinct new form.

Despite the long tradition of fieldwork in tourism studies, there is only limited reflection on the role of fieldwork in current literature. A great extent of excellent methodological notes is not published in academic journals and those few contributions that are eventually published are often in an abbreviated and sanitized form to meet the aims, scopes and readership of such journals. In addition, methods literature is surprisingly scant when it comes to the relationships between researchers and the so-called elites. This is further evident in urban studies with regards to post-disaster recovery and the rebuild of urban tourist spaces. This manuscript seeks to fill the current gap in the flied by providing a reflective methodological account on fieldwork and elite interviewing for tourism governance in post-earthquake Christchurch, New Zealand. It does so by implementing a framework addressing key points in elite interview process, with emphasis on access to fieldwork, power relations, positionality, rapport and ethical issues. The manuscript presents aspects of fieldwork, spatiality and power relations that tend to be overlooked in the literature. Albeit being context-specific, it is argued that the evidence from this study can also have relevance to the understanding of fieldwork in other urban tourism contexts.

Destinations face nowadays increasing pressure from ever-growing tourist visitation driven by an overall increase in expendable income and the emergences of new tourism markets. This places considerable stress on both the ecological and social fabric of both established and emerging tourist locales. Recent calls for more sustainable and responsible tourism practices have trended towards degrowth as a viable alternative to traditional economic activity. However, the application of these policies can be complicated in mature destinations that are very economically reliant on tourism. Similarly, emerging destinations may overlook the signs of growing resource depletion in the name of steady local economic growth. This chapter presents degrowth policies and practices with evidence from a mature World Heritage destination (Cinque Terre, Italy) and an emerging World Heritage destination (Northern Dolomites, Italy), where recent ecological disasters as well as tourist congestion concerns have led to a shift towards the implementation of certain degrowth measures. These examples will be used to critically examine the concept of degrowth within mature and emerging World Heritage destinations.

Over the last few years, complex systems and insights from planning theory have gained momentum in tourism planning and local community development. Resilience and vulnerability are structural properties of complex systems and have started to stretch from ecology to the wider domain of social sciences, including into tourism and development. Hence, the need arises to design and implement embedded models that encourage tourism projects rooted in the know-how of communities and their interrelation with institutional knowledge and third-order change. This chapter presents and applies the Harmonic Tourism Methodology as an alternative for community-based and community-led tourism planning. The methodology considers the interplay of rational and traditional knowledge emanating from a diagnosis of a complex system as the basis of community tourism projects. Two subsystems (biophysicist and anthropic) are acknowledged in the methodology, as environmental and socio-ecological embeddedness are at the heart of livelihoods. Data was collected from key stakeholders, the research community and a review of rational information through a multiscalar longitudinal perspective. The methodology was applied in four communities in Mexico and one community in Colombia. NVivo qualitative software was used to allow the interrelation of the vernacular-rational knowledge. This chapter concludes that the Harmonic Tourism Methodology can be an alternative territorial tourism planning that allows communities to adapt to system vulnerabilities and resilience in recovering and preserving natural and cultural resources for future generations.