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Research in sustainability transformations has emphasized technological innovation and large structural changes. Less attention has been paid to enabling approaches which emphasize the role of reimagination and collaborative exploration of alternative futures, involving agency, emancipation and care. In this research we took an enabling approach to sustainability transformations and worked with stakeholders in collaborative workshops to invite their experience of the COVID-19 pandemic and its transformative potential in envisioning and co-producing sustainable futures. In the workshops, stakeholders discussed their understandings of sustainable tourism development. What was evident among stakeholders was a caring for people—employees, locals, tourists. Although nature was another focus (often in the context of the new-found interest in tourism in proximate environments), care did not go all the way to redefine human and non-human relationship—missing a deep ecological understanding. This study expands knowledge on sustainability transformation and disruptive research that creates processes for re-imagination.

This contribution elaborates on the theoretical and practical implications of the circular economy in tourism and hospitality through an inter-disciplinary approach advancing novel possibilities for future research. Acknowledging the literature gap on circular economy in tourism and hospitality as an under-researched and under-theorised area of research, this contribution identifies a set of theoretical lenses that can help to elaborate the notion of circular economy and unpack it through an inter-disciplinary approach for future research. It does so by discussing the notion of circular economy through a micro-meso-macro framework combining practice theory, network theory, complexity theory, and the spatial and mobilities turn in social sciences. The originality of this work lies in its inter-disciplinary approach based on a micro-meso-macro theoretical framework offering novel opportunities to discuss, envision, and operationalize circular regenerative processes in tourism futures in terms of multidimensional, networked, complex, practice-based, and localised processes and operations.

Tourism scholars have looked on degrowth, non-growth and rightsizing debates (Hall, 2009) to emphasise the need for limits to growth and an alternative to existing developmental models. Degrowth debates challenge dominant discourses of development and modernity including sustainable development, and advocate on a transition from consumerism towards cooperative and circular economy to reduce inequalities and environmental impacts (Ludmark, Zhang and Hall, 2020). Although degrowth strategies have been criticised as very difficult to adopt and implement, it remains the challenge to reduce tourism experiences consumption and especially those involving air-transport (Prideaux and Pabel, 2020). For several authors, there is no other way in reducing carbon emissions and tourism’s contribution to global warming, than reducing non-essential air travel and thus degrowing tourism (Gössling, Hall, Peeters, and Scott (2010) as cited in Becken 2017; Sharpley, 2020). 

The aim of this research is to discuss discourses of a disputed tourist project in rural Sweden as communicated in mass media. More specifically, the research is examining the case of Sälen mountain resort and look on how the development process of a new international airport, inaugurated in 2020, was presented and debated in newspapers. The project was considered controversial with many proponents as well as opponents raising conflicting interests and points of view. To capture the public discourse, we have analysed newspapers articles, mainly from local papers, for the duration of the period from the announcement of the project in 2008 to the inauguration of the new airport in December 2019. Findings indicate that the development of an international airport was presented as hopeful and good. Pro-growth discourses around increasing numbers of international tourists and job generation, rurality and peripherality mitigation, or even of positive environmental impacts were evident in the media. Opposition on the other hand, came as debate articles and develops around tax-payers money, responsibility to future generations and environmental concerns. Discourses of weak and strong approaches and pro-growth vs degrowth become part of the discussion of the results to inform the theoretical framework of analysis. 

Governance research has discussed the role of flexible structures and partnerships between the public and the private sector, often inviting residents and other stakeholders to become part of the process. The aim in those collaborative processes would be to strengthen acceptance decisions and a democratisation of the process and thus contribute to sustainability. However, a number of scholars have criticised governance models as eventually diminishing the role of governments and of the public sector to public management and enabler of private plans and thus enhance neoliberalism. Metagovernace has developed around that critique aiming to foster a more critical understanding of government and governance in the complex, globalised world that tourism operates.

Similarly, research around governance and resilience has focused on networks, human agency (both individual and collective), diversity, and social learning to examine policies and planning for destination sustainability. Nevertheless, also resilience has been criticised for boosting neoliberal understandings with its focus on individual agency while it might also relate to robustness and resisting change instead of transformations for sustainability.

In this research we employ a theoretical framework based on resilience, governance and metagovernace to critically discuss governance structures and strategies’ focus in Munich. We use data collected from on of the researchers during the period 2018-2022 through qualitative interviews with DMO representatives of Munich. We take this critical perspective on governance to look at Munich and the role of the local government as well as its relationship to actors (understood broadly as businesses, individuals, residents or tourists). We critically discuss also how resilience is understood in that context. We aim to contribute to the discussions of reliance and governance in tourism destinations.

Recent studies question whether ubiquitous connectivity via mobiles represents an enhancer and facilitator in nature-based tourism experiences or a potential destructor to disconnect from. We argue that extant research approaches cannot fully grasp the complexity of the connectivity-disconnection dilemma, specifically how tourists appropriate, reinterpret, reshape, and negotiate with meanings inscribed in mobiles and how such negotiations link to valuations of nature-based experiences. This research adopts an interpretivist approach and uses actor-network theory to investigate negotiations of connectivity and their experiential meanings through field interviews in Fulufjället National Park, Sweden. Results reveal translations of social connectivity, facilitation of information and orientation as thematic cores of tourists’ embodiments of mobile connectivity. Results also show how the comprehensive tourismscape where such embodiments find meaning contributes to tourists’ definitions of disconnection. Such definitions comprise human and non-human actors on site, off site, and cannot be exhausted by essentialist dualisms between being plugged and unplugged.

The last two years, the world experienced a major health crisis and a pause in world economic activities, including tourism. In the awake of the pandemic, measures taken to combat its adverse effects should not be at the expense of long-term environmental goals (Hall et al., 2020). Critical voices alarm also on the need to reflect on the sustainability of tourism practice and not least of tourism scholarship towards transformative approaches considering global environmental challenges (Prideaux et al., 2020; Gretzel et al., 2020). Transformative approaches in research underline the importance of reflection and action, and the integration of theory and practice, and of multiple world views. 

In this research, we aimed at bringing this experience, embodiment, and new ideas generated during the pandemic into workshops where stakeholders in two destinations in Sweden (Dalarna and Gotland) worked collaboratively to develop a vision and a path to a more sustainable future. We worked with action research and co-design methods to enable a discussion between tourism stakeholders around understandings of tourism development, vulnerability, climate change, and sustainability, and stimulate creativity. 

As the analysis of the two workshops has shown, tourism stakeholders, envisioned a sustainable future which would not be based on growth but rather on a better distribution of visitors in time and place. Fossil free destinations, diversification (of the product, of distribution channels) to be resilient was also part of their vision, together with an appreciation of the importance of people; people understood as locals, visitors but also employees. Staycations and workcations were also part of a vision to diversify and attain a more sustainable future. The role of nature as a quality-of-life aspect, which also enables togetherness and proximity in staycations was also discussed. We discuss these findings considering transformative research approaches and we reflect on the research process and the method of the collaborative workshops as a customised method to the wide array of transformative codesign research approaches to explore and reimagine alternative futures (Liburd et al., 2020; Duedhal, 2021). 

References

Duedahl, E. (2021) Co-designing emergent opportunities for sustainable development on the verges of inertia, sustaining tourism and re-imagining tourism, Tourism Recreation Research, 46:4, 441-456, DOI: 10.1080/02508281.2020.1814520

Gretzel, U., Fuchs, M., Baggio, R., Hoepken, W., Law, R., Neidhardt, J., & Xiang, Z. (2020). e-Tourism beyond COVID-19: a call for transformative research. Information Technology & Tourism, 22(2), 187-203.

Hall, M., Scott, D. and Gössling, S. (2020) Pandemics, transformations and tourism: be careful what you wish for. Tourism Geographies. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2020.1759131

Liburd, J., Duedahl, E. & Heape, C. (2020) Co-designing tourism for sustainable development, Journal of Sustainable Tourism, DOI: 10.1080/09669582.2020.1839473

Prideaux, B., Thompson, M. & Pabel, A. (2020) Lessons from COVID-19 can prepare global tourism for the economic transformation needed to combat climate change, Tourism Geographies, DOI: 10.1080/14616688.2020.1762117

Governance and complexity have increasingly become subjects of interest within research on sustainable tourism. Governance has been marked by a turn to more corporatist and networked policymaking structures. At the same time, the use of the concept of complexity in research on tourism destinations and governance is gaining momentum in an effort to address the links in increasingly networked systems as well as the interrelatedness of the multiple features of a tourist destination. Meanwhile, resilience has emerged as a new buzzword in research on sustainable development and governance which denotes the ability of a destination to cope with and adapt to change. This article reviews the literature on destination governance to identify critical issues and trends and discusses the relevance of complexity approaches. Evolutionary studies and research on resilience in a sustainability context are becoming part of this discussion. The review sheds light on the limitations and merits of each of these concepts, as well as on their nexus. The article concludes with some key areas for future research on destination governance. The aim of the review is to contribute to conceptual clarity and to advance the application of complexity approaches in research on destination governance.