Tourism Geographies Podcast

https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2025.2495192AbstractThe global rise of heritage tourism has intensified struggles over the ownership, meaning, and spatial governance of religious sites, yet the contested interplay of ideology, power, and sacred space remains understudied. This article addresses this gap through a longitudinal analysis of China’s Famen Temple, where two decades of state‑led tourism development have reconfigured sacred space through historical reinterpretations, institutional transformations, and spatial negotiations. Drawing on critical heritage studies and qualitative fieldwork, the study reveals how official discourses strategically reframe religious pasts to align with contemporary economic and ideological agendas, manifesting in spatial restructuring, ritual commodification, and redistributed power among stakeholders. Heritage tourism here emerges as a contested process: state and commercial actors leverage tourism for territorial control and economic growth, while monks and local communities navigate, resist, and adapt to these changes. The tensions between economic imperatives, religious traditions, and authoritarian governance illustrate that sacred sites are neither passively secularised nor sacralised but continually redefined through socio‑spatial contestation. By framing religious heritage as arenas of political negotiation, this study advances critical debates on tourism’s role in spatialising state power, arguing that such transformations reflect broader global struggles over cultural legitimacy, authority, and the right to define “heritage” itself. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2025.2502507AbstractThis paper utilises bibliometric data on peer-reviewed publications to examine the characteristics and dominant narratives in overtourism research to date. Departing from earlier state-of-the-art reviews, it introduces a spatial perspective with a distinct focus on spatial processes and geographical scales. The analysis identifies six overarching themes in the literature, which predominantly centre on metropolitan contexts and are characterised by a normative critique of tourism. While the literature often identifies the causes of overtourism at either the global or local scale, proposed solutions tend to emphasise local-level responses, particularly through planning and destination management. The paper makes two key contributions: first, it highlights the need to broaden overtourism research beyond its current urban and metropolitan focus to encompass a wider range of geographical contexts; second, it emphasises the significance of engaging with geographies of scale to address overtourism not merely as a local planning challenge, but as a structural and systemic issue demanding multi-scalar interventions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2024.2404643 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2025.2515098AbstractTourism is vital in ensuring thriving communities in peripheral areas of the Arctic. However, many Arctic destinations have seen a dramatic increase in visitors, raising concerns about their ability to withstand tourism pressures. Simultaneously, socioecological systems in the region are undergoing rapid transformations with significant implications for future development. This study, based on qualitative research conducted from 2020 to 2024, explores how tourism actors at Arctic destinations navigate these changes and engage with various scales of tourism governance. Our findings highlight divergent approaches to governance: Svalbard’s top-down regime focuses on strict environmental preservation but faces resistance from local tourism actors, while Greenland is prioritizing tourism as a development strategy, aiming to balance national goals with local community needs. Despite differing views on regulation, tourism actors in both destinations seek greater involvement in tourism decision-making. We argue that employing place-based, collaborative, and adaptive governance approaches is essential to address common challenges such as sustainability, climate change, and (over)tourism in Arctic regions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2025.2516098AbstractIndividual preferences are known to be influenced by people’s lived experience at home and on holidays, however, the factors contributing to higher or lower resource demands by hotel guests are not well understood. We advance a practice-based ‘Resource Cultures’ framework and examine the daily energy and water consumption rates of hotel guests from geographically diverse climates vacationing at a ecolodge in tropical North Queensland, Australia. Specifically, guests’ (n = 395) ‘home’ climate zone and continental origin, as a proxy for cultural background, are examined as potential drivers of resource consumption. The results show that climatic origin is a stronger determinant of resource use than cultural origin. Guests originating from tropical and arid climate zones used significantly more water and energy than those from warm temperate zones. Electricity consumption was highest among guests from humid tropical and subtropical climate zones, whilst those from arid climate zones used the most water. The findings provide empirical evidence of the influence of origin-related drivers of resource consumption patterns with tangible implications for accommodation providers. Considering guests’ climatic and cultural origins in targeted pro-environmental communication will enhance the effectiveness of operators’ sustainability programs. Furthermore, these factors should be considered when benchmarking resource use among comparable hotels. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2025.2519331AbstractProjects are a standard strategy for rural tourism development. This study builds on the premise that sustainable rural tourism is conditioned by the involvement of key stakeholders and entrepreneurs’ ability to creatively and responsibly utilise local resources for tourism purposes. Accordingly, this research explores the project format as a framework for facilitating engagement and entrepreneurship. The empirical context is Visit Village, a collaborative tourism initiative in rural Sweden. This qualitative case study has followed the Visit Village project closely for nearly three years. Data was collected from observations, reviewing documents, in-depth interviews, and informal conversations. The analysis focused on the actors involved in the project, their respective roles, and the interactions between them. This study applies the Civic Wealth Creation (CWC) theoretical framework for stakeholder engagement. The framework directs the analysis to the meso level of the entrepreneurial ecosystems, where interactions generate value and promote positive social impact. The findings indicate that projects can be a fruitful setting for entrepreneurship by providing access to resources, knowledge, and support and forming communities and creative spaces; concurrently, the findings corroborate the difficulty of involving key stakeholders. The intricacy seems to lie in the incompatibility of the project format and the modus operandi of small-scale entrepreneurs and the local community. The analysis suggests generating a sense of progression, kinship, and ownership to adjust the project to the stakeholders’ logic of action. Owner-managers of local tourism businesses emerge as natural CWC promoters, and the study recommends entrusting embedded and entrepreneurial individuals with formal responsibilities in tourism projects. The analysis also underlines the need for project leaders to redefine their roles throughout the process. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2025.2504039AbstractAirbnb research has focused primarily on a small number of Western countries. This study examines Airbnb and its hosts in a destination in the Global South—Bocas del Toro, Panama. Through an exploration of the nexus between Airbnb hosting and lifestyle migration, the study introduces the phenomenon of ‘Airbnburbs’—new geographical spaces shaped by external property investment, situated outside major population or touristic centres, and characterized by a plethora of short-term rentals. The research entailed a descriptive case study with two parts. The first part involved analysing the growth and current footprint of Airbnb in Bocas del Toro. Next, interviews with twenty local Airbnb hosts were conducted to investigate their motivations, experiences, and perceived impacts. The findings show that Airbnb has expanded quickly throughout Bocas del Toro, particularly in areas beyond traditional tourist centres. Interviews found that younger hosts were motivated to use Airbnb primarily to minimize work hours and facilitate their desired lifestyles. Hosts also tended to concentrate in ‘Airbnburbs’, often developed by converting forested land into foreign-owned enclaves. Such neighbourhoods were largely controlled by lifestyle migrant entrepreneurs to suit their lifestyle and income demands, while generally failing to create income-generating opportunities for locals. This research suggests ways these spaces might become more inclusive and proposes new areas for future research. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2025.2495175AbstractCultural memory, which shapes a collective understanding of historical experiences and influences identity, is crucial in the Indigenous context but has been understudied in tourism. This study examines the role of the Guthi system, a cultural space of Indigenous Newars from Khokana, Nepal, in the construction and sustenance of cultural memory across time and location. Employing a multi-phased qualitative approach, the study reveals how the Guthi system, rooted in the Indigenous Newars’ relational ontologies, integrates spiritual, cultural, and societal elements into a living archive of traditions and practices. The findings elucidate the processes of enacting and sharing cultural memory, demonstrating its impact on collective sensemaking within Indigenous tourism contexts. Moreover, the study identifies key factors influencing this process, including adaptive preferences, path dependence, and Indigenous values, which shape community engagement with tourism opportunities. This novel contribution to Indigenous tourism research illuminates the intricate relationship between cultural memory, collective sensemaking, and the translation of Indigenous knowledge and practices into tourism initiatives. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14616688.2025.2525815AbstractThe commercial spaceflight industry is progressing rapidly. Yet, there is a lack of research theorising what the spatio-temporal contours of sustainability look like if the biosphere, along with its finite resources and limited ability to sustain continued population growth, constitutes a boundary that can be readily transcended. Informed by the concept of sustainable trajectory, this paper presents a conceptual model that extends the traditional spatial (e.g. national, global) and temporal (e.g. near future, intergenerational) scales that sustainability discourses in geography are typically predicated upon. We conducted a critical narrative literature review to analyse the implications of space tourism in the context of sustainable trajectory. Our analysis highlights deep tensions between the perspectives of sustainability typically promulgated in academic spheres and the path dependencies currently being formed by private spaceflight companies. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14616688.2025.2506523?src=AbstractThe ‘working holiday’ model of youth mobility has evolved alongside backpacking in recent decades. Increasingly, backpackers on working holidays are seen as a potential labour source in many nations, due to the flexible and highly mobile capacity which suits much agricultural work. We discuss the evolution of Australia’s Working Holiday Maker visa program, which highlights the tensions between tourism, labour, and migration. The term ‘backpacker’ is widely used in Australia interchangeably with the ‘Working Holiday Maker’ visa, identifying both a tourist subculture and what has become an essential migrant worker cohort in horticulture and a staple part of rural tourism and economies. But their presence, and the agricultural industry’s dependence on them, manifests what we identify as a ‘tourism-migration nexus’, that is, where labour chains, tourist flows, and the complexities of bilateral government agreements influence the migration trajectories of these working visitors. We draw on scholarship across backpacking, tourism and migration, in dialogue with recent policy and government inquiries, in order to trace the evolution and changes in the Australian Working Holiday Maker visa and the implications that this has on tourist mobilities as well as longer-term migration journeys. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14616688.2025.2516837AbstractThis paper examines the political geography of land use management in developed western economies. It explains why tourism stakeholders continue to struggle to gain legitimacy in many protected area management decisions. The reason is that the politics of public land management, in general, and protected area management, in particular, are highly polarised between well-established stakeholder coalitions that try to influence government policy, but espouse contrasting strong or weak sustainability ideologies. Tourism is a disruptive force that sits awkwardly in this dyad, neither fully belonging to nor alienated from either camp. The net result is that tourism interests are often viewed with suspicion, for while they may share much in common with other stakeholder groups, its unique needs also pose a threat to traditional, long standing inter-organisational coalitions that dominate the politics of public land management. The issue is complicated further by the diverse nature of what ‘tourism’ entails, for the range of commercial activities varies from operators with a strong ecologically based focus, through to higher impact horse and vehicular access tourism and high impact roofed accommodation, resort development and consumptive forms of tourism. As such, tourism stakeholders struggle to gain trust from other stakeholder groups in the political arena. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

AbstractSince the launch of Tourism Geographies in 1999, annual international tourist arrivals have surged from 664 million to 1.4 billion, with greater numbers of domestic tourists traversing within borders. Transportation improvements have made travel more efficient, affordable, and accessible, while the digital revolution has introduced social media, the sharing economy, GPS technology, and artificial intelligence to travelers. This forward-thinking collection offers the latest research in tourism geographies, drawing from a collective body of work developed over the last quarter century. During this period, the subfield has evolved from a convergence of geography and tourism studies into a critically engaged, multidisciplinary branch of the social sciences. With roots in social and cultural geography and cultural studies, tourism geographers offer a critical approach to tourism studies, which foregrounds the role of place, space, people, and the environment. This collection illustrates how contemporary tourism geographies scholarship has built on this critical foundation to transcend the disciplinary walls of geography. Tourism geographies has long existed on the verge of disciplinary borders, accounting for the broad range of scholars and scholarship from social science disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, history, environmental studies, and planning, among others. This collection provides essential frameworks for foundational and emerging themes in tourism geographies, deepening understandings of tourism discourse and practice and setting the stage for the subfield’s next act. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14616688.2025.2493776?src=exp-laAbstractThis study explores how local communities in Fiji perceive the portrayal of their home in films. Yet little is known how local communities collectively construct and interpret the cinematic representations of their homeland. This is important given the need for local community support for tourism. Through in-depth interviews with 22 Fijian residents, and drawing on social representation theory, the study reveals that locals use anchoring to interpret film depictions through their existing cultural values and experiences. While residents take pride in scenic locations featured in films, they also express disappointment, confusion, and concern over the lack of cultural authenticity and the perpetuation of stereotypes. These social representations shape how locals engage with film-induced tourism and influence their relationships with visiting film-induced tourists. The findings highlight the importance of cultural sensitivity and collaboration with local experts in film production to ensure an accurate and respectful portrayal that aligns with the host community’s collective identity and shared understanding of their land and way of life. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2025.2502997AbstractThis paper explores the intersection of dark tourism and spectral geographies, offering a critical examination of how spaces of death, disaster, trauma, and painful memories are shaped by hauntings and spectral presence. Drawing on hauntology and the work of Derrida, as well as on work in spectral geographies, it proposes spectrality not as a metaphor to analyse places connected with literal ghosts and supernatural presence, but as an analytical framework that reconfigures our understanding of temporality, spatiality, and presence within dark tourism sites. This article, as introduction to a collection of works on the nexus between dark tourism and spectral geographies, argues that spectrality offers a qualitative and transformative rethinking of dark tourism, revealing how disruptions in linear understandings of absence and presence, and past-present-future temporalities can produce sites that are emotionally and politically charged, and ethically complex. The collection interrogates how ghostly traces—whether of colonialism, disaster, or ecological loss—complicate linear historical narratives. It positions spectrality as a transformative and generative lens through which to engage with dark tourism’s critical potential in negotiating memory, justice, and intergenerational trauma. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2025.2495179AbstractMacau is a Special Administrative Region (SAR) located in the south of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). Settled by the Portuguese it was the last European colony in Asia. Over the centuries as a maritime city Macau saw its fortunes coming as trade boomed in the 16–17th centuries; however, with the establishment of Hong Kong as a port city the importance of Macau decreased. The authorities resorted to gaming and tourism as key sources of tax revenues eventually in 2000s becoming ‘Las Vegas’ of Asia. As the pandemic hit China and the rest of the world, Macau was isolated, gaming revenues declined temporarily and the Macau authorities decided to diversify its offer of tourist attractions. Although Macau has already been recognised as a UNESCO heritage site with a well-preserved historic core since 2005, two new attractions were developed to help reposition Macau as a city with a rich cultural history. The two new sites that opened in 2023 were the long abandoned Iec Long firecracker factory (益隆炮竹厂) in Taipa and dilapidated Lai Chi Vun shipyards in Coloane. Iec Long firecracker factory is unique, as it blends an interface with nature (green space dominated by the century old trees), a public space and interpretative displays of how the industrial activities were performed. In this paper we use mixed methods approach to provide a ‘thick description’ of Iec Long firecracker factory as an interplay of affective and material elements. Drawing on the existing literature we further advance how assemblage thinking can contribute to analysis of industrial heritage sites as tourist attractions. Additionally, drawing on the first-hand empirical data and the context of ongoing urban revitalization in Macau we scrutinise heritage-tourism dichotomy and demonstrate how we can better understand the meanings of heritage co-created from below. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14616688.2025.2462222AbstractOver the past twenty-five years, conceptualisations regarding where, when and how tourists travel have undergone profound changes. For many years, surveys, maps relying on tourists’ recall, and physical surveillance were the only means through which the mobility of tourists could be tracked. The internet, cellular phone networks and satellite-based technology has facilitated new methods to collect data, including Bluetooth tracking, Wi-Fi tracking, mobile phone data, social media and GPS location-based data. It has also facilitated new forms of data, including big data, real-time data collection and continuous tracking data. Moreover, it has enabled new forms of data analysis including automation, artificial intelligence, and predictive analytics. As a result of these innovations, researchers have extended theoretical knowledge within tourism geographies, particularly in relation to tourists’ spatiotemporal activity including visitation patterns, activity within specific locations, dispersal patterns and the impact of mobility upon emotions. This paper reviews the history of tourist tracking over the last 25 years, along with conceptual findings that have emerged from innovations in technology. It argues that there have been four stages of tourist tracking, namely: the pre-technology era, the tourist tracking 1.0 era characterised by the emergence of Global Positioning Systems technology, the tourist tracking 2.0 era whereby mobile phone, internet, and location-based technologies were developed, and the recent 3.0 era that is characterised by artificial intelligence, physiological sensors, mobile eye tracking and real time tracking. The paper concludes by highlighting future research needs, including predictive analysis, ethical considerations and use of tracking technology to encourage activity change. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2024.2412550AbstractDigital volunteer tourism (DVT) has emerged as a viable alternative to positively impact destinations when travel is impossible during times of crisis. This leaves volunteers, the ‘agents’ in volunteer projects and development work, who might often identify with a destination or specific cause, without a tangible link to the locality. Raising the important question of what role being physically connected to the locality plays in voluntourism; this study focuses on volunteers’ perception of their own impact in an out-of-reach destination. Through online fieldwork during an eight-week internship with a volunteer organisation in Fiji, this paper offers first insights into the phenomenon of digital voluntourism by discussing the role that a link to the destination and a sense of place play in still feeling to be making a difference. Furthermore, this debate reveals whether and how DVT intends to stimulate a sense of belonging of those volunteers to foster their sense of responsibility, while juxtaposing these digital programmes to in-situ voluntourism. This paper, therefore, constitutes one of the first contributions conceptualising the geography of digital voluntourism, arguing that while DVT has its merits in contributing to the sustainable development agenda, the physical distance and isolation from the place where this impact should be felt compromise their feelings of achievement and understanding of the locality even more than in usual voluntourism projects. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

AbstractHow effective are podcasts in disseminating academic research and engaging audiences beyond traditional scholarly channels? This study investigates the Tourism Geographies Podcast to assess its value as a research communication tool. The objectives were to explore how podcast participation shaped academics’ approaches to dissemination, the visibility and feedback they received, and the comparative benefits of podcasting over conventional outputs. Data were collected from 29 podcast guests across three seasons through written, audio, and interview responses (29.9% response rate). Thematic analysis revealed three main outcomes: the need for simplification and clarity, greater awareness of diverse audiences, and enhanced reflexivity about the broader relevance of research. While large-scale professional impacts were limited, participants reported increased visibility, recognition, and confidence in public engagement. Podcasts were consistently valued as accessible, conversational, and democratic. These findings suggest that podcasting fosters knowledge translation and offers a participatory, socially responsive complement to traditional dissemination. This algins closely with and contributes to the emerging field of Digital Humanities and Social Science. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, the Tourism Geographies Podcast editors reflect on the first three seasons, highlighting what they enjoyed most about the producing the podcasts. Further, the editors reflect on different trends in tourism geographies scholarship. Thanks for listening. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14616688.2025.2462777AbstractThe polar areas have long endured as an exotic playground for adventure in the wilderness. Tourism figures have remained low and hence the regions hold a marginal position in the global tourism system. Today, climate change and its significant impact on ecosystems and communities in high latitudes as well as geopolitical change drive attention to the polar regions. Increasing tourist numbers manifest this. While early travel records and diaries are an integral part of the history of exploration, academic research into tourism cannot be found to any greater degree prior to the 1980s This review highlights major traits in polar tourism research to date and identifies potential avenues for future research within the field. It shows that polar tourism research is a well-established orientation for tourism research today. However, great variations are in place, and far-fetched generalizations about the two polar regions are growing increasingly problematic. In this context, geographical perspectives should be utilized in order to understand polar tourism and its repercussions in a wider context of development, on different geographical scales, and even beyond the polar regions. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.