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As the Journal of Tourism Futures celebrates its 10th Anniversary, Dr Stefan Hartman (head of department at the European Tourism Futures Institute, NHL Stenden University of Applied Sciences) interviews Bernadett Papp (senior researcher at the European Tourism Futures Institute (ETFI) at NHL Stenden University of Applied Sciences) about her recent work in tourism practice and academic and future perspectives on topics relevant to the future of tourism.

A personal interview was held on September 16, 2024.

Bernadett Papp draws attention to the importance of bringing equity into debates on tourism development and destination governance. She sees a crucial role for governments, the redesign of institutional frameworks, monitoring and data collection and rethinking systems of governance.

The interview provides unique insights into the viewpoints of Papp, highlighting the importance of the still understudied topic of equitable tourism. A topic that still requires a lot of work before hitting mainstream approaches to destination development, even though it should have been on the policy agendas for many years already.

As the Journal of Tourism Futures celebrates its 10th Anniversary, Dr Stefan Hartman (head of department at the European Tourism Futures Institute, NHL Stenden University of Applied Sciences) interviews Jeremy Sampson (CEO of The Travel Foundation) about his view on the evolution of the tourism industry and the need for systemic change.

A personal interview held on July, 16, 2024.

Jeremy Sampson highlights the importance of scenario planning and strategic foresight and its evolution. Sampson elaborates on his personal career journey, the approach of the Travel Foundation and how this informed a strong focus on the ground impact as well as systemic change.

The interview provides unique insights into the motivation of Sampson and The Travel Foundation and their approaches, aiming to be the change makers in the tourism industry. A role that is very much needed, perhaps particularly from a third sector organization such as The Travel Foundation.

As the Journal of Tourism Futures celebrates its 10th Anniversary, Dr Stefan Hartman (head of department at the European Tourism Futures Institute, NHL Stenden University of Applied Sciences) interviews Prof. Albert Postma, professor of Strategic Foresight and Scenario Planning) about Evolution and Future of Scenario Planning.

A personal interview held on September 12, 2024.

Albert Postma highlights the importance of scenario planning and strategic foresight and its evolution. Postma explains how he is taking a leading role in improving the impact of applications of scenario planning and strategic foresight in tourism practice.

The interview provides insights into the directions of scenario planning and strategic foresight applications in tourism practice and promising pathways for future academic contribution to the Journal of Tourism Futures.

Tourism areas are challenged to become adaptive areas in the context of a dynamic networked society and globalizing economy. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to an enhanced understanding and conceptualization of adaptive tourism areas by drawing attention to “fitness landscapes,” a metaphor that is used in complexity theories to visualize development trajectories of adaptive systems.

Fitness landscapes, and its underlying theories, are useful to conceptualize tourism area development as a stepwise movement through a dynamic landscape with peaks and valleys. Doing so allows us to highlight why adaptation is a crucial property for tourism areas that are embedded in dynamic contexts and offers a frame of thought for how tourism areas can be managed.

The article raises awareness about and draws attention to a set of factors and conditions that support tourism planners and managers in enhancing the capacity of tourism areas to adaptively respond to changing circumstances.

Introducing fitness landscapes contribute to the discussion on adaptive capacity building – a topic that contributes to managing uncertain futures and is likely to gain importance in the dynamic society. Moreover, it helps as well as stimulates tourism scholars to further develop this topic. Finally, it helps tourism planners to build adaptive capacity in practice.

A case study about the creation of four scenarios that were used to make sense of the fast-moving pace of COVID-19 and the consequences for New Zealand tourism.

Adapting global visitor economy scenarios, a set of New Zealand tourism scenarios were constructed using a “back of house Shell” method and were supplemented with an expert panel to test the reliability and validity of the scenarios.

The four scenarios constructed were based on two critical uncertainties, namely economic recession and the moral dilemma of the consumer. Four scenarios were portrayed using film and TV titles to help participants visualise the scenarios. Crazy Rich Asians: Recovery represented many of the attributes of tourism in New Zealand prior to COVID-19 i.e. a focus on high value tourists from Asia. Contagion: Survival of the Fittest represented the reality of the COVID-19 pandemic. This Side of Paradise: ReThinking Tourism focused on rebuilding tourism based upon the principles of sustainability. The Colony: Gated Communities represented fortress destinations trying to keep COVID-19 at bay. Each scenario portrayed several features including a unique narrative, tourism, the tourist, vision, strategy and risks. The paper highlighted the trade-offs and conflicts between the scenarios as COVID-19 unfolded in different directions.

In a fluid situation, the paper reminds readers of the value of scenarios as framing devices to understand the fast-moving pace of COVID-19 when New Zealand was in unchartered waters. Thus, this study highlights how a scenario-planning process builds resilience and foresight to help stakeholders and actors make sense of crisis situations.

This paper brings together the literature on theories of complexity adaptive systems (CAS), develops an analytical framework, applies this framework to the development of tourism destinations and critically reflects on the use of this perspective.

This paper elaborates on a CAS perspective on destination development, to further develop complexity thinking in tourism studies. This approach enables to identify policy avenues geared towards improving destination governance and contributing to sustainable tourism development.

Theories of CAS offer an analytical lens to better understand destination development, drawing explicit attention to (1) the levels of the individual, (emergent) structures, the structure-agency interface and the system level, (2) the steps related to the process of adaptation that is critical for systems to survive and thrive in times of change and (3) the undervalued importance of considering the factor of time.

Applying CAS theories help to address a range of (policy) avenues to improve destination governance, contributing to a shift in focus from reactively fixing problems to proactively addressing the structural issue of adaptive capacity building. It shows that managing tourism destination as complex systems involves a set of conditions that are critical as well as difficult to meet in tourism practice.

The purpose of this paper is to develop an enhanced understanding of the evolution of actor networks for destination development.

The paper is based on observations and field notes of the authors regarding evolving organizational structures in the Dutch tourism industry and the conceptualization of this stepwise evolutionary process.

The authors observe and conceptualize recurring patterns in the ways in which coalitions emerge and develop (Figure 1) and which activities they pursue.

New insights are provided into the emergence and evolution of multi-actor networks that are driven by sustainable destination development. These insights are useful learnings for other destinations that pursue similar goals.

The purpose of this paper is to share the trend observed around irresponsible behavior by tourists in nature areas and how this may affect future policy.

This paper illustrates the trend observed based on three major observations from Norway and links the observed trend to the micro-level to meso- and macro-trends.

As a result, it was found that due to irresponsible behavior the Norwegian allemansratten (Right to Roam) system is under pressure. Because of this, the freedom to enjoy the Norwegian nature risks to be limited by regulations.

The insights presented in this paper contribute to the debate on nature-based tourism, sustainable and responsible tourism and link with the debate on overtourism in the context of nature areas.

In this viewpoint paper, the authors explore and discuss how Kate Raworth's (2017) Doughnut Economy perspective and accompanying “Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist” can be applied to rethink the future of tourism destination management for the better.

The authors take a “transferability” approach, being a process performed by the authors as readers of existing work noting its specifics in order to compare them to the specifics of an environment with which they are familiar. In this viewpoint paper, the authors apply the work of Raworth to the environment of tourism destination development.

The Doughnut Economy perspective and the accompanying “seven ways” help forward tourism destination management in the future, even more when it is interpreted and tailored to a tourism context and reconceptualized as the Doughnut Destination as presented in this paper.

The work of Kate Raworth has been gaining interest and support throughout academia, society and in various (economic) policy domains. Surprisingly, it has not been applied to the tourism context to its full extent, even though it offers much potential in recent discussions on overtourism, carrying capacity and limits of acceptable change as well as offering a possible framework to structure monitoring effects in the pursuit of developing smart tourism destinations.