The New Responsible Tourism Paradigm: The UNWTO’s Discourse Following the Spread of COVID-19

Sabrina Tremblay-Huet,Dominic Lapointe

doi:10.3390/tourhosp2020015

Sabrina Tremblay-Huet, Dominic Lapointe

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/tourhosp2020015

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Abstract

The UNWTO’s discourse has focused on managing the effects of COVID-19 on tourism mobility since the outbreak was taken over by the WHO, as tourism is prominent amongst the hardest hit sectors. Emanating from the UNWTO as one of the dominant stakeholders in tourism discourse construction, an interesting component is the new meaning attributed to ‘responsible tourism’, which coincides with severe sanitary measures in this moment. Through critical discourse analysis and the theoretical framework offered by Iris Marion Young on responsibility for justice, this article will first demonstrate how the reappropriation of the term is in line with the UNWTO’s neoliberal perspective on tourism. The result is the promotion of sanitary measures for the protection of tourism as a consumer industry, rather than for the protection of the individuals involved. It is also cementing the pedestal on which the UN agency places the tourist-consumer, namely through the International Code for the Protection of Tourists project. This paper closes with thoughts on how the emerging dominant discourse on responsible tourism is internalized by tourism stakeholders as the new normal, which would gain in being explored through the lens of Foucault’s work on the concept of biopolitics and the neoliberal subject.

Highlights

It has become a truism to state that tourism is hard-hit by the COVID-19 pandemic
As the concept of ‘responsible tourism’ is reappropriated to include sanitary considerations, we must ask: who does this benefit, who is restricted by such considerations, and what other aspects of ‘responsible tourism’ does this marginalize? We argue that the elites, both those who benefit economically from tourism and those who benefit from tourism in leisure terms, remain the main actors shaping tourism recovery to match their interests
Strict sanitary measures aim at safeguarding tourism as an industry, notwithstanding the professed concerns expressed by the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) for tourism workers

Summary

Methodology

Our paper mobilizes the methodology of CDA, guided by a theoretical framework inspired by Young. Different stakeholders shape the discursive field of tourism, who in return shape the possible practices, which is especially true of international organizations within the hegemonic neoliberal project [19,20,21] In this context, the UNWTO is one of the major discourse shapers in the global tourism system, its statements being relayed through various paths by NGOs, academia, nation states and local administrations in their decisions, actions and policies. Attention to unequal power relations characterizes the ‘critical’ dimension of CDA [25] In this sense, we mobilize CDA in order to render explicit the hierarchies implicitly present in the UNWTO’s discourse on responsibility in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our CDA focuses on: Whose responsibility is stressed by the UNWTO in the COVID19 related discourses? Through which measures responsibility is called upon? How does this discursive and historical moment of the UNWTO shape tourism in its actual and future forms?

Analytical Framework

Responsibility and Responsible Tourism to Answer to COVID-19

The Evolution of Responsibility within the UNWTO Discourse

Findings

Closing Remarks