Regenerative tourism: a state-of-the-art review

Abstract

Regenerative tourism is a nascent, often misunderstood concept in tourism scholarship and practice. Therefore, this state-of-the-art review attempts to clarify the concept by analysing the discourse development and critical influences shaping it. Our analysis draws from the emerging regenerative tourism literature and our observations. Firstly, a brief account of regenerative tourism’s evolution is outlined to ground the concept’s lineage emphasising the prominent thinkers and underpinning ideas. Secondly, we examine the regenerative tourism discourse and synthesise the critical misunderstandings or distortions of the concept. The review reveals that the concept’s evolution in tourism scholarship is hampered by simplistic and superficial understandings such as ‘leaving a place better than it was found’. The dominant pattern of centring tourism and its fiscal growth further impedes regenerative tourism’s capacity to progress tourism system transformations. Furthermore, few scholars have aligned their conceptualisations with the regenerative paradigm and have instead perpetuated the centralisation of scientific tourism knowledges in Western academia. Thirdly, promising paths forward are proposed for advancing the concept in line with the regenerative paradigm’s lineage. We argue that regenerative tourism should centre place and its communities to restore harmonious and reciprocal relations between humans and the rest of nature. Consequently, tourism geographers have a critical role in ensuring the concept maintains its integrity by adhering to the ecological worldview and regenerative paradigm while drawing from plural place-sourced, Indigenous, and other aligned knowledge systems.