Tourism resilience in the ‘new normal’: Beyond jingle and jangle fallacies?

Abstract

In this conceptual piece, I share my thoughts on tourism resilience in the ‘new normal’ and outline both opportunities and challenges for the tourism industry and academia in understanding and applying resilience as a tool for improved individual, organizational, community and destination outcomes. Drawing from engineering, ecological and socio-ecological resilience perspectives, I propose a theoretical model that can be applied to various destinations to strengthen linkages between resilience that may exist at different socio-spatial scales. As argued in the paper, socio-ecological system resilience finds its relevance mostly, and can be more important, at the tourism-system and destination levels whereas engineering and ecological resilience can be more important and adequate, in the short-term, at the individual and organizational levels to navigate unexpected changes. From these, I draw a research agenda that would guide tourism researchers in advancing tourism resilience research in the ‘new normal’.