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Abstract
Purpose The rapid growth of tourism prior to the COVID-19 pandemic prompts the need for critical reflection of tourism’s “local-global” responsibility in the wake of that pandemic. Conceptually driven by the ancient Greek notion of hubris, this study reflects on the perception of tourists as actors disconnected from citizens’ necessities, safety and well-being. In so doing we develop further knowledge on the relationship between the spaces of tourism and citizenship and how this might build a sustainable future-proof tourism. Design/methodology/approach Data were collected daily for two weeks via three Google Alert queries set to mine Italian online news media contents immediately after the Italian Government’s adoption of mobility restrictions due to COVID-19. This study uses a thematic narrative analysis to examine the contents related to tourists during the COVID-19 outbreak. Findings The exploratory findings reveal how tourists are largely presented as taking over the space of local residents and, by breaking the rules set by national and local authorities, as disregarding those residents’ safety and well-being. Hence, they appear disconnected from any sense of belonging to a local or global community, and from a space to which they owe a duty of care. Originality/value By framing tourists as hubristic subjects ontologically belonging to a neoliberal leisure space disentangled from the citizenship space, this study establishes a novel theoretical grounding from which a sustainable future-proof tourism that is rooted in citizenship space can be rethought.
Highlights
The rapid growth of tourism (UNWTO, 2020) has spurred debate on the global challenges and issues triggered by the tourism industry in a neoliberal globalized world characterized by an intense mobility of people, capital and goods (Boluk et al, 2019)
In the context of the mobility restrictions instigated during the COVID-19 outbreak, the division between the spaces of tourism and of citizenship is highlighted in the constant representation of tourists as subjects taking over the space of local residents; as invaders consuming and abusing that space, which is depicted more as a commodity than in relational terms (Massey, 2005, 2009)
In this study we constructed novel theoretical ground through which to articulate the “tourism syndrome” of the 21st century globalized world, and thence to establish a foundation for a future sustainable tourism rooted in the space of citizenship
Summary
The rapid growth of tourism (UNWTO, 2020) has spurred debate on the global challenges and issues triggered by the tourism industry in a neoliberal globalized world characterized by an intense mobility of people, capital and goods (Boluk et al, 2019). The tourism industry is highly representative of the neoliberal global economy and is largely understood as an expression of a fluid society characterized by fragmentation, growing injustice and social and economic inequalities (Bianchi, 2018; Burrai et al, 2019; Higgins-Desbiolles et al, 2019; Jamal, 2019). While that crisis has raised new uncertainties and fears with regards to the future development and state of our society, the global economy and personal freedom, it represents an opportunity for a deeper reflection on the future of tourism, as has recently been extensively discussed in the Tourism Geographies Special Issue “Visions of travel and tourism after the global COVID-19 Transformation of 2020” (Lew et al, 2020).
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