Search results
1 – 10 of 128This paper aims to revolve around two problems which, though imagined as different, can be addressed altogether. On one hand, the advance of terrorism as a major threat to the…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to revolve around two problems which, though imagined as different, can be addressed altogether. On one hand, the advance of terrorism as a major threat to the tourism industry, while – on the other – we discuss the ontological nature of tourism as a rite of passage, which is vital to keep the political legitimacy of officialdom. At the time, paradoxically, social scientists shrug off tourism as a naïve commercial activity, while the main tourist destinations are being attacked by jihadism. This suggests the disinterest of ones associates to the interests of others.
Design/methodology/approach
The author holds the thesis that tourism derives from ancient institutions, which illuminated in the growth of Occident and the formation of hospitality. Capitalism hides the importance of tourism as a mere trivialization as a bit-player. However, a closer look reminds precisely the opposite. The recent attacks perpetrated at main destinations reveal tourism as an exemplary (symbolic) center of the West, a source of authority and power for the existing hierarchal order.
Findings
The issue captivates the attention of scholars, officials and policymakers, and at the same time, epistemologists of tourism receive a fresh novel debate regarding the origins of tourism.
Originality/value
It is a great paradox that tourism would be selected as a target for jihadism but at the same time a naïve activity for social scientists or at the least by the French tradition. Despite the partisan criticism exerted on tourism as an alienatory force, this work showed two important aspects, which merits to be discussed. At a closer look, tourism should be understood as “a rite of passage” whose function associates to the revitalization of those glitches happened during the cycles of production. Second, and most important, tourism accommodates those frustrations to prevent acts of separatism or the rise of extreme conflict among classes.
Details
Keywords
Maximiliano Emanuel Korstanje and Babu George
The present conceptual paper evinces a new understanding of the present and future of the tourist city in a post-COVID-19 world. The pandemic has wreaked havoc in the tourism…
Abstract
Purpose
The present conceptual paper evinces a new understanding of the present and future of the tourist city in a post-COVID-19 world. The pandemic has wreaked havoc in the tourism industry as well as global trade. The world, at least as we know, is debating the next recovery steps for 2023.
Design/methodology/approach
In this conceptual paper, the authors explore the substantial shifts faced by the urban areas during and post-COVID-19 pandemic. The disposed [and imposed] restrictive measures have affected negatively not only mobilities but also the urban landscape. The tourist-city, at least as it was imagined by J. Urry, has invariably set the pace to a ghost-city. In this new landscape, citizens are confined to be at home.
Findings
The tourist city has faced substantial changes. The authors dubbed the term ghost city to give some reflections on the radical changes urban zones are experiencing during 2020 and 2021. Classic notions as “the Other,” “globalization” and the “city” are in motion. The borders of some nations are being re-drawn while some radicalized voices and movements flourish.
Research limitations/implications
The authors introduce readers to the literature about the tourist city, which offers a perfect landscape for attraction, consumption and protest. The tourist city has been developed by scholars as a sign of a globalizing process that laid the foundations toward a new understanding of urban zones.
Practical implications
The present paper discusses critically the problem of COVID-19 and its severe restriction of free circulation and the forms in which the city is lived and dwelled. We were pressed to live our proximity through the lens of a screen or using digital media. The basic rights that are historically characterized by the legal architecture of the nation-state – which is based on high mobilities and the right of traveling – were suddenly suspended.
Originality/value
The authors deal with the problems of sociology to study the ghost city, which include not only the dilemmas revolving around the health passport but also the introduction of technology in formalizing the creation of a surveillance society that scrutinizes and, at the same time, entertains modern citizens, in a new culture where the “Other” becomes an undesired guest.
Propuesta
la presente nota intenta explicar el futuro de la ciudad turística en un contexto posterior al COVID-19. Habiendo dicho eso debe destacarse que la pandemia ha hecho estragos en la industria turística como así también en el comercio global. Los especialistas sugieren que el mundo global a los niveles iniciales anteriores a la pandemia se recuperará a mediados de 2023.
Metodología
el presente trabajo es una discusión conceptual que focaliza en los efectos del COVID-19 en la imagen de la ciudad turística.
Alcances
la ciudad turística atraviesa por estos días cambios radicales que afectan su naturaleza. Usamos el término ciudad fantasma [ghost city] para referirnos a los efectos socio-culturales a largo alcance de las medidas restrictivas para frenar el avance de la enfermedad. Nociones clásicas como “el Otro,” y la globalización deben ser re-conceptualizadas a raíz de la reconfiguración de las nuevas fronteras y de discursos racistas y radicalizados tendientes a negar a ese “Otro” diferente.
Implicaciones
el trabajo introduce a los lectores en la literatura especializada destacando las tensiones entre la ciudad turística y la ciudad como lugar de protesta y negociación. La ciudad turística es una creación directa del proceso globalizador que ha configurado las zonas urbanas.
Implicaciones prácticas
el presente trabajo discute críticamente como la crisis del COVID-19 ha marcado la forma de relacionarnos en la circulación. Estamos forzados a vivir nuestra proximidad por intermedio de las redes digitales, y un televisor, alterando las bases mismas del estado de libre tránsito y los derechos fundamentales a la circulación.
Originalidad
entre unos de los temas más originales que aborda el trabajo se encuentra el pasaporte sanitario, documento emitido por el estado para dar movilidad al sujeto. El pasaporte sanitario transforma no sólo la forma de validad la identidad, sino que introduce la tecnología al servicio de vigilancia del estado sobre el sujeto. En el mundo post COVID-19 el turista se transformado en un huésped indeseado.
Details
Keywords
Social sciences have discussed the host–guest relation from many theoretical lenses and perspectives. Violence as well as local crime has been studied as one of the major risks…
Abstract
Purpose
Social sciences have discussed the host–guest relation from many theoretical lenses and perspectives. Violence as well as local crime has been studied as one of the major risks concerning tourism security. Anyway, less attention was given to homeless people and their interaction with foreign or local tourists. The purpose of this paper is oriented to explain how globalization has winners and losers, in which case, as noted, thousands of persons are excluded from the formal labor marketplace or the economic system year by year.
Design/methodology/approach
This is a conceptual paper that discusses critically not only the recent advances of sociology in urban tourism but also the connection between homeless people and tourists.
Findings
There is an urban underclass formed by those who have been excluded from the economic system. What is more important, such an underclass situates nearby luxury hotels and tourist destinations creating serious contradictions or zones of disputes. These contradictions have been approached by different sociologists since the turn of the 20th century.
Research limitations/implications
The question of sustainability, as well as the idea of liveable cities, and the efficient organization of the city, have occupied a central position in the academic debate, above all after the COVID-19 pandemic. In the present paper, the authors put in dialogue the contributions of Marc Auge with Zyggy Bauman toward a new understanding of this postmodern phenomenon.
Originality/value
Based on the metaphor of vagabonds and tourists, we give a snapshot of the problem of homelessness in Buenos Aires city and its effects on the tourism industry. Unlike other English-speaking countries where the cities are actively organized by the state, Buenos Aires city lacks a planned program to regulate and relocate homeless people. They dwell in nonplaces nearby tourists sleeping in the streets near luxury hotels (but for sure escaping any planning or governmental control).
Details
Keywords
The present book chapter deals with the problem of dark tourism as well as the resilience forms of consumption in post-disaster context.
Abstract
Purpose
The present book chapter deals with the problem of dark tourism as well as the resilience forms of consumption in post-disaster context.
Design/Methodology/Approach
The turn of the century characterised a radical change in the forms of tourism consumption. New forms of tourism as dark or thana tourism have captivated the attention of scholars and journalists. This book chapter centres efforts in dillucidating what are the key factors that determine the formation of a dark site. The text is inspired in my own ethnographies in Cromañon, Argentina and the Ground Zero, US.
Findings
As Phillip Stone puts it, not all dark shrines or sites welcome tourists. While some sites are reluctant to mass tourism, others are mainly organised around the figure of the tourist. La Republica de Cromañón is a night club where in a fire died 194 young. The site is today refurbished as a sanctuary to remind the victims. At a closer look, there is a tension between stakeholders at the time of promoting dark tourism in Cromañón. In the opposite the ground zero is fully designed to be visited by thousands tourists.
Originality/Value
The originality of this research consists in the contraposition of two study cases which answer the question to what extent dark tourism is desired by locals. The findings lay the foundations towards the specialised literature in dark tourism studies. We discuss critically the nature of thanatopsis.
Details
Keywords
Cláudia Seabra and Maximiliano E. Korstanje
The recent COVID-19 virus outbreak, as well as many other global risks, has put the tourism industry on the brink of collapse. Even if interesting advances have been seen the…
Abstract
The recent COVID-19 virus outbreak, as well as many other global risks, has put the tourism industry on the brink of collapse. Even if interesting advances have been seen the light of publicity based on risk perception, no less true seems to be that the current theory is not enough to understand and describe the impacts of new global risks that may destroy the industry in question of weeks. This introductory chapter gives a snapshot on the fragile conditions we are moving today and interrogates further the future of tourism.
Since it was adopted from psychology just after the turn of twentieth century, risk perception theory has multiplied and successfully evolved in the fields of tourism research. A dearth of studies has focused on risk perception over the recent decades. We have certainly identified three clear-cut traditions: demographical school, psychological school and critical perspective. With benefits and problems each theory has shed light trying to measure the impact of global risks in the tourism and hospitality industries.
This book keeps the originality to update what has been published in the earlier decades. We are incorporating new topics to the discussion as well as new epistemologies and methodologies. Gathering different high-quality products authored by well-renowned authors coming from different countries, it lays the foundations to a new understanding of risk perception and tourism safety-security debating the next steps and the real challenges posed on the industry in a not so long near future.
Details
Keywords
Maximiliano E. Korstanje and Hugues Seraphin
An increasing number of studies claim on the decline of hospitality in the West. These works focus on the lack of tolerance or expressions against foreigners as the clear sign…
Abstract
Purpose
An increasing number of studies claim on the decline of hospitality in the West. These works focus on the lack of tolerance or expressions against foreigners as the clear sign that something is changing. Of course, the COVID-19 pandemic mainly marked a type of intolerance with the foreign tourists. This book chapter brings reflection on the plot of HBO Saga Westworld to understand the ways forms of hospitality in a post-modern world.
Design/Methodology/Approach
The present book chapter is based on the technique of content analysis or film ethnography which dissects elements of films and movies. In so doing, film ethnography occupies a central position in the constellations of qualitative methods.
Findings
The present piece is a critique on what specialists dubbed as robot tourism. Westworld shows not only the cautions policymakers should have on robot tourism but also how the depersonalisation process works. Basically, Westworld speaks us of a dystopian amusing park where rich guests travel to torture and victimise humanoids (hosts) who are unable to retaliate. Westworld brings reflection on the decline or the end of hospitality, at least as we know it.
Originality/Value
Just after 9/11 some critical voices alerted Western hospitality was in decline. This chapter goes on in the same direction. Westworld brings the problems of free choice, the liberty as well as hospitality into the foreground.
Details