While tourism has been a core feature of the global economy for more than a century, over the past several decades, it has been a central component of a worldwide process of neoliberalization in particular. Neoliberalization describes a political-economic programme of ‘free trade’ embodying interrelated principles of deregulation, decentralization, marketization, privatization and commodification. Grounded in a critique of the post-war welfare state, it was first introduced into public administration in the US and Western Europe in the 1980s, then spread worldwide in the next decade via structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) incorporated into international development planning. As one of the world’s largest industries, tourism development has been a key component of this process. In this way, tourism policy in many places has been progressively neoliberalized, while in turn tourism development has thus served as a key component of neoliberalization more generally, helping to progressively bind the world within a single integrated economy. Hence, tourism can be understood not only as a key site of neoliberalization, but a central means by which neoliberalization spreads as well. In the process, tourism development has played a key role in helping to stabilize a neoliberal capitalist economy riddled with fundamental contradictions that subject it to periodic crises. This article explores how this dynamic developed, where it stands at present, and how it is likely to evolve in the future as the contradictions underlying neoliberal capitalism continue to unfold.

This paper rethinks tourism and its spatial implications under the terms of the Anthropocene. This rethinking recognises our intricate dependencies with each other and the places and spaces we make in the everyday. The paper argues for the need to create thick and rich stories, stories which can counter the current dominant consumptive desires. Herein stories of ‘earthly attachments’ and ‘conviviality’ are proposed, centred on care, responsibility and reciprocity. The place of tourism geographies is arguable in valuing multiple perspectives from the more-than/non-human world and the other in their myriad manifestations and geographical variability. Realising the virtual potential of earthly attachments, makes each and every place rich, meaningful and a source of inspiration for us all. Telling stories thereof, enlivens the senses and thereby offers a way to penetrate the desiring machine of consumptive capitalism which at current animates our needs and wants and is leading to the climate catastrophes of the Anthropocene.

Second homes are essential resources for tourism and recreation. Climate change is projected to transform tourism geographies and threaten economic and recreational activities. Based on building and housing register data and national models for climate change hazards, this paper investigates whether second homes in Denmark are potentially affected. Five different hazards are used to describe climate risk based on the RCP8.5 scenario: sea level rise, storm surge events, coastal erosion, flooding from watercourses, and terrestrial groundwater. It is estimated that between 2020 and 2070 a significant number of second homes will potentially be affected by one or more of these hazards, with terrestrial groundwater being the most frequent. GIS-analysis shows the detailed geographical distribution of the affected second homes, while regional grouping highlights the most affected regions. A compound risk analysis demonstrates that a significant proportion (approximately 25%) of the Danish second homes will be affected by either one or more hazards. The analysis thereby highlights how amenity rich geographies are threatened by climate change, which could cause these areas to become risk prone. This provides a background for discussing the implications for land use policy of transforming geographies. The article highlights a need for strategic planning and active engagement with second to protect the recreational potential of second homes and local economies in coastal zones.

Scholars have long paid attention to tourism’s impacts. Yet despite the considerable extant body of knowledge relating to tourism’s economic, sociocultural, and environmental effects in numerous destinations, similar mistakes are repeated on a regular basis in localities throughout the world. A downside when it comes to tourism’s effects is that scholars and practitioners commonly take these for granted and rarely examine these critically in a holistic, systems-based approach. After first examining the history of tourism impacts, this paper discusses trends that have influenced this study area before suggesting further research directions. Especially, it highlights the importance of better comprehending how tourism’s effects are shaped by contingent socio-spatial, economic, and regulatory frameworks. Rather than continuing to uncritically laud sustainable tourism’s potential for overcoming the phenomenon’s negative effects, the paper argues for a perspective that focuses on tourism’s role in in overall sustainable development.

Consumer drones can be increasingly spotted in tourist sites, and arguably the aerial technology has transformed how tourism in Singapore is experienced and represented. This investigation explores in empirical detail how the videomaking practices of DroneTubers contribute to the diversification of tourist encounters. Based on evidence from ethnographic fieldwork in the Southeast Asian metropolis and on digital platforms, this article maps tourist encounters facilitated by drone tourism and illuminates the formation of a platform ecology for travel drones. In recent years drone videos featuring Singapore’s urban landscapes have rapidly gained popularity on YouTube. Drawing on analyses of situated drone practices in Singapore’s Marina Bay and its audiovisual representation on digital platforms, this case study demonstrates how the platformization of drone tourism facilitates participatory gazing. This form of gazing made possible a prolonged negotiation of the meanings that the researched travel influencers and their audiences attributed to tourist attractions. The frequent use of travel drones in Marina Bay gave rise to an additional space of representation for the urban landscapes of Singapore. The ethnographic study finds that the videomaking practices of DroneTubers extended the scope of tourist encounters by establishing an everyday lived space where the allure of tourist attractions is negotiated through online co-presence. The findings of the study call into question long-standing conceptualisations of tourist encounters as place-bound practices and indicate how drone tourism established new interdependencies among local tourism professionals, tourists and platform audiences.

Surfing ecosystems—surf breaks and their surrounding areas—can provide multifaceted benefits, including support for tourism industries, personal and social wellbeing and shoreline protection. Previous research has predominantly concentrated on quantifying direct expenditures, sidelining non-market values, and failing to consider the interactions between multiple ecosystem components. To address these gaps, this paper provides a review of key principles of environmental economics and natural resource management in relation to surfing ecosystems. We examine how the value of surfing ecosystems can affect (and be affected by) factors related to environmental sustainability, tourism demands and economic development. We propose a novel framework for characterizing the values of surfing ecosystems and conducting economic assessments, based on six main features: (i) surf breaks, (ii) surfing resources, (iii) surfing ecosystems, (iv) economic values, (v) economic valuation, (vi) equity and sustainability. This structured approach may serve to improve decision-making processes concerning environmental changes that impact surfing ecosystems, including tourism management plans and environmental regulations. Our study aligns with broader global initiatives to better account for ocean-based values and support sustainable, nature-based tourism.

According to the Association of African American Museums (AAAM), there are more than 200 African American history and cultural museums—or other sites with substantial African American collections such as libraries and archives—across the U.S. Many of these museums had their start shortly after the height of the Civil Rights Movement, with a surge in establishments in the 1970s. Black museums serve to decenter White stories of America and refocus on Black experiences. While geographers have studied an array of memory, heritage, and tourism sites, museums remain understudied and under-theorized. Building upon the subfields of Museum geographies—particularly by considering the concept of museums as theatres of pain—and Black geographies, our research examines the ways these museums are integral to the relationships between Black placemaking and the tourism landscape, which remains steeped in anti-Black racism. Using museum exhibit documentation, semi-structured interviews of museum staff, and content analysis of online travel reviews (primarily TripAdvisor and Google Reviews), this paper analyzes two case studies: The National Afro-American Museum and Cultural Center in Wilberforce, Ohio, and The Colored Girls Museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Through our two case studies, we show how Black museums enact curatorial practices of commemorative geographies and create redemptive spaces that cultivate not only a homeplace for visitors, particularly for Black Americans and people of the African diaspora but also serve as sites of belonging and joy.

Welsh and coal heritage may seem synonymous in the context of Welsh identities. One of seven national museums, Big Pit and its associated memory work reflect and shape the intertwined dynamic discourses of Wales and coal for visitors. We explore these discourses through a mixed methodology, highlighting the changing and transcalar nature of Wales itself, particularly the devolution of the tourism, heritage, and culture sector in 1997 from the UK Government to the Welsh Government. How have the discourses of National Museum Wales and Big Pit shifted in conjunction with devolutionary power transfers? This paper reflects upon the complicated and fluid discourses of Welshness within the museum’s landscapes. Migration, the dialectic of capital industrialization, and the romanticization of the banal activity of work are all central to these discourses at the Big Pit. Transcalar relationships of tourism and heritage fuel and challenge these discourses as the Big Pit sits on the edge of a UK National Park, on the European Route of Industrial Heritage, and as a central institution of the Blaenavon Industrial Landscape UNESCO World Heritage Site. These interscalar and geopolitical relationships of memory, heritage, and tourism emerge from our multisensory analysis and speak to questions echoing across the United Kingdom and other multi-nation states navigating spatial and temporal shifts in the geopolitics of their tourism sectors. All industrial heritage sites navigate national identities in overt and covert ways. The relationships between resources, heritage sites, the state, and visitors shape the landscapes of industrial heritage sites and their embeddedness into community and national narratives. As Big Pit has transitioned from a small industrial heritage site managed by the UK-overseen National Museum of Wales towards a major tourist attraction and equal member of the seven-site Welsh-overseen National Museum Wales, we identify geopolitical shifts in coal and national heritage.

The concept of ‘overtourism’ has boomed in the past five years as the latest term to refer to anti-tourist sentiment in tourist hotspots. News media’s widespread use of the term suffers from conceptual slippage and a tendency to incite moral panic. However, a deeper theorization of overtourism as embodied, place-based social conflicts shows that this phenomenon is not about absolute visitor numbers or particular tourist activities, but rather about the connection between place, class and the political economy of tourism. Drawing on Urban Political Ecology and qualitative case-studies of freedom camping in two urban areas of Aotearoa New Zealand, we examine how social conflicts between tourists and hosts erupted in poorer urban areas as NIMBYism in privileged areas with greater access to state resources pushed freedom campers out. Both hosts and tourists are agentic in these encounters. Locals frustrated with tourist behaviour they deem visually invasive and physically polluting ‘police’ freedom campers, ranging from facilitating formal police action and governance regulation to vigilante behaviour. Freedom campers subvert these acts of policing, often through the very rules and technologies that are in place to regulate and monitor them. At the heart of these issues is a problem of neoliberal governance which stresses tourism’s ‘economic benefit’ to the regions, while placing responsibility for managing tourist/host relations on local territories.

This article focuses on the complex relationships among mobility, aging, and well-being among seasonal retired tourists. By adopting the notions of mobility turns and enabling places, it investigates how seasonal retired tourists maintain their well-being between their hometowns and destinations throughout their seasonal mobility. The cities of Sanya and Harbin in China were selected as study sites, and 54 retired tourists who engaged in annual seasonal mobility between these cities were interviewed. Four situations of seasonal retired tourists’ experiences of well-being in their home and destination were identified based on the characteristics of tension, balance, interpenetration, and reconstruction. This study demonstrates the dynamics and complexities of how seasonal retired tourists mobilize and assemble material, social, and affective resources, which further influence their well-being experiences between their homes and destinations. Its findings contribute to the literature by mobilizing the enabling places perspective to explain how seasonal retired tourists construct relations, generate enabling resources, and maintain well-being between different places.