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There is a growing scholarly interest in the potential of regenerative tourism approaches to address sustainability challenges. Drawing from an ecological worldview that interweaves Indigenous and Western knowledge systems, regenerative tourism approaches seek to increase the capacity of support systems for fulfilling net-positive social-ecological effects. We argue that Western scientific paradigms drive current tourism research methodologies and are sometimes insufficient and unfit to (advance) regenerative tourism research. The extent to which new research methodological approaches can align with the ecological worldview and regenerative paradigm is an underpinning premise. As part of a broader study of the emerging regenerative tourism concept, a scoping review of 84 peer-reviewed and 116 grey literature articles, supplemented by consultations with nine regenerative tourism practitioners, six Indigenous practitioners and one cultural knowledge holder, identified nine research gaps that explicate this mismatch. An analytical framework guided the gap analysis and the formulation of a future research agenda. Findings suggest that tourism scholarship is not keeping pace with the evolution of regenerative tourism, requiring additional and new approaches. A transformational decolonial, transdisciplinary research paradigm is proposed that fully embraces the regenerative tourism paradigm and thus enables knowledge production that facilitates plural regenerative tourism futures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2019, Massey University in New Zealand hosted the world's first research conference on tourism and the Sustainable Developments Goal (SDGs). The aims of this conference were to bring together a wide range of stakeholders to discuss (i) challenges to tourism contributing to the SDGs, and (ii) ways in which tourism can deliver on its potential to be more inclusive, equitable and sustainable. The need for diverse actors to work in partnership to achieve the SDGs emerged as a key theme. This special issue presents several of the papers from that conference, as well as contributions from a broader range of scholars. As is evident in this collection, partnerships in tourism tend to be complex, multi-faceted, subject to multiple legal frameworks and governance arrangements, and are often cross-sectoral, transnational and cross-border. While these overlapping factors can make it challenging for tourism actors to develop effective partnerships to deliver on the SDGs, the articles herein suggest there is considerable promise where stakeholders have shared values and commitments. Tourism scholars need to reflect more on possibilities for constructive partnerships because, as the pandemic milieu has demonstrated, partnerships spanning governments, industries and communities are a fundamental requirement to producing more sustainable tourism futures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The framework of tourism: Towards a definition of tourism, tourist, and the tourist industry. By taking CES as the point of departure, this Special Section offers novel perspectives on enduring questions for tourism geographies regarding the practices, politics, and ethics of placemaking in tourism. In a time of rapidly shifting tourism geographies in which rising rents, the COVID-19 pandemic, and rural gentrification have triggered widespread urban-to-rural migration, placemaking in peripheral areas has become an increasingly critical research agenda for tourism geographers. [Extracted from the article]

The links between art events and sustainable development in rural contexts where revitalisation is pressing is becoming increasingly obvious. The village of Mitarai is an example of a small peripheral community in Japan faced with the impacts of depopulation, ageing and socio-economic decline. The urgency to stem further regression has seen art emerge as an antidote for community strengthening. Since 2017, Shiosai, a week-long community art festival has taken place with the underlying aim to rejuvenate the area's diminishing fortunes. It exhibits artworks paying homage to local islandscapes (Cheer, Cole, Reeves & Kato, 2017) and employs local cultural heritage as key elements. The extent to which bottom-up art events in small rural communities can serve as a vehicle for sustainable development is examined. Findings suggest that the Shiosai drives visitation to the area and has reinvigorated latent cultural heritage. The festival stimulates inward migration and enhances community resilience and vital social capital. However, as the festival is driven from the bottom-up without external support, the extent of future local-level involvement remains a critical success factor. The implications suggest that community engagement is a vital ingredient in the mobilisation of festivals in rural contexts, as well as in ensuring that sustainable development outcomes can be optimised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tourists put their trust in maps and guidebooks and they expect information within to be accurate. Unfortunately, vital information can often be incorrect such as the accuracy of altitude above sea level. Cartographic misrepresentations and the impact on tourism is the focus of this study. Altitude data from maps, guidebooks and summit signs were compared with professional measurements made by precise Global Navigation Satellite Systems receivers. Findings revealed significant discrepancies in reported peak altitudes ranging from a few and up to several hundred metres. Evidently, some of the highest summits of the mountain ranges are subject to degradation and/or change over time and this underlines cartographic misrepresentations. There are possibly other inaccuracies in scores of popular peaks around the globe and rectifying erroneous information is vital for peak-bagging visitors. The results of this exploratory stud have significant implications for the management and marketing of destinations when a mountain's popularity is based around being the highest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From the British Century of the 1800s to the American Century of the 1900s to the contemporary Asian Century, tourism geographies are deeply entangled in broader shifts in geopolitical power (Luce, 1999; Scott, 2008; Shenkar, 2006). This paper considers what the transition into the Asian Century means for some of the most urgent issues of our time such as sustainable development, human rights, gender equality, and environmental change. We critique Anglo-Western centrism in tourism theory and call on tourism scholars to make radical shifts toward more inclusive epistemology and praxis. In the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic, the significance of the themes addressed are more urgent than ever. The pandemic has hastened claims that the Asian century has further accelerated given the contrasting successes of many Asia-Pacific countries, especially as compared to their Euro-American counterparts (Park, 2020). As critical tourism scholars, we are faced with an unprecedented situation, even as the pandemic looks set to become globally endemic and the true extent of its fullest impacts are only beginning to emerge, with more to surface in the years ahead. That the world faces increasing turmoil is abundantly clear. Yet, amidst the disruption to the everyday, it is hope and compassion, but also political-economic restructuring that is needed to reset the tourism industry in more sustainable, equitable, and ethical directions (Cheer, 2020; Lew, Cheer, Haywood, Brouder, Salazar, 2020; Mostafanezhad, 2020). While in no uncertain terms, the pandemic has forever changed the tourism industry as we once knew it, it is our hope that we can collectively build on the momentum of the inclusive scholarship that Critical Tourism Studies-Asia Pacific is renowned for (Edelheim, 2020; Pernecky, 2020) as we pause to reflect on the possibilities and challenges of tourism in a post-pandemic Asian Century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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As the planet remains in the grips of COVID-19 and amidst enforced lockdowns and restrictions, and possibly the most profound economic downturn since the Great Depression, the resounding enquiry asks—what will the new normal look like? And, in much the same way, tourism aficionados, policy makers and communities are asking a similar question—what will the tourism landscape, and indeed the world, look like after the pandemic? As casualties from the crisis continue to fall by the wayside, the rethinking about what an emergent tourism industry might resemble is on in earnest. Many are hopeful that this wake-up call event is an opportunity to reshape tourism into a model that is more sustainable, inclusive and caring of the many stakeholders that rely on it. And some indicators, though not all, point in that direction. In line with this, the concept of 'human flourishing' offers merits as an alternative touchstone for evaluating the impacts of tourism on host communities. Human flourishing has a long genesis and its contemporary manifestation, pushed by COVID-19 and applied to travel and tourism, further expands the bounds of its application. Human flourishing has the potential to offer more nuanced sets of approaches by which the impact of tourism on host communities might be measured. The challenge remaining is how to develop robust indices to calibrate human flourishing policy successes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Overtourism is a contemporary phenomenon, rapidly evolving and underlined by what is evidently excessive visitation to tourist destinations. This is obvious in the seemingly uncontrolled and unplanned occurrence of urban overtourism in popular destinations and arguably a consequence of unregulated capital accumulation and growth strategies heavily associated with selling cities as tourism commodities. The vested interests of social movements has converged into growing protests against overtourism and associated degrowth campaigns have emerged out of this activism that calls for alternative governance and management measures that eschew touristic monoculture and simplistic economic growth-oriented models. Accordingly, we explore the evolution of the tourism degrowth discourse among social movement activists in Barcelona, and in particular, where this is related to claims associated with overtourism and the extent to which this might be influencing a paradigm shift from 'tourism growth' to 'tourism degrowth'. Methodologically, we draw from an overarching framework that leverages long-term ethnographic research in Barcelona. Here, we employ in-depth semi-structured interviews, participant observations, informal conversations and retrospective evaluation of field diary entries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Global tourism growth is unprecedented. Consequently, this has elevated the sector as a key plank for economic development, and its utility is deeply embedded in political, economic and social-ecological discourse. Where the expansion of the sector leverages natural and cultural landscapes, this applies pressure to social and ecological underpinnings that if not reconciled, can become problematic. The way this plays out in Australia's Shipwreck Coast and the wider Great Ocean Road region, especially the implications for community resilience, is the focus. Emphasis is placed on the vulnerability of peripheral coastal areas to development that withdraws from destination endowments, yet fails to provide commensurate economic yield as a suitable trade-off. This is obvious where tourism intensification has led to concerns about the breach of normative carrying capacities. Temporal overtourism driven by seasonal overcrowding is countenanced as emblematic of tourism in the Anthropocene where focus tends to be largely growth-oriented, with much less attention given to bolstering social-ecological resilience, especially community resilience. At stake is the resilience of regional areas and their communities, who in the absence of garnering commensurate economic returns from tourism expansion find themselves in social and ecological deficit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the prevalence of modern slavery practices in tourism. Topics discussed include the aspects of critical tourism geographies research according to authors R. V. Bianchi and S. Britton, the geographies of marginalization in host communities, and the contemporary problems associated with tourism including gender equality, sex tourism and social justice concerns.

The revival of colonial heritage is a particular feature of former British and French colonies in Pacific and Asian settings. This is exemplified by the redevelopment and rejuvenation of what were exclusive ‘comfort zones’ for the ‘colonial classes’ and is central to the consumption of colonial nostalgia via tourism. The political and semiotic implications of renewing colonial era constructions for tourism are manifold. The key argument is that this can re-politicise what was hitherto benign colonial heritages. Furthermore, this can aggravate tensions within what are already fragile ethnic landscapes. This is especially so when the setting is one where the various publics have been steeped in economic, cultural and sociopolitical changes, and where political and civil upheavals are recent occurrences. If the restoration of colonial heritage for tourism (in this case for heritage hotels) in former colonies is conducted oblivious to the legacies and meanings instilled in such heritages, the exacerbation of social and political sensitivities is likely. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]