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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]

Given tourism's economic importance, its potential to create positive social change is often promoted, including the possibility for it to become a force for cross-cultural understanding through empathy. Because of its capacity to open new forms of intersubjective understanding, it is believed that empathy can harness more ethical relations between hosts and guests. Allied to these ideals is the following question: to what extent do tourists in less developed contexts actively engage with hosts (or the Other) through empathy? By using a case study of a ten-day pro-social cycling tour in Cambodia, this study examined the conditions that governed and shaped empathy between hosts and guests. Findings suggest that the key condition that harnesses empathy in host–guest relationships materializes when there is an opportunity to engage in bilateral conversations in situations where power differences are reduced. However, the role of empathy as a 'necessary' element for cross-cultural understanding remains open to contestation and remains ripe for further research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]