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This special issue of Journal of Heritage Tourism on dark tourism aims to encourage and advance theoretical, conceptual, and empirical research on dark tourism. The call for papers was inspired by the editor’s theoretical and research interest in dark tourism studies. The collection of articles in this special issue provides original, innovative and international tourism research that is embedded in interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary theoretical and methodological thought in the study of dark tourism. Finally, this editorial will address a few lines of future research directions focusing on the experience and emotions of visitors at ‘dark tourism’ sites.
The current development of tourism is environmentally unsustainable. Specifically, tourism's contribution to climate change is increasing while other sectors are reducing their greenhouse gas emissions. This paper has two goals: reveal the main structural cause for tourism's emission growth and show the consequences thereof for (mitigation) policies. It is reasoned that the main cause for tourism's strong emission growth is the time-space expansion of global tourism behavior. Contemporary tourism theory and geography fail to clearly describe this geographical development, making it difficult to understand this expansion and develop effective policies to mitigate environmental impacts. Therefore, this paper explores some elements of a 'new tourism geography' and shows how this may help to better understand the causes of the environmentally unsustainable development of tourism with respect to climate change and devise mitigation policies.
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In less than two years, the concept of overtourism has come to prominence as one of the most discussed issues with regards to tourism in popular media and, increasingly, academia. In spite of its popularity, the term is still not clearly delineated and remains open to multiple interpretations. The current paper aims to provide more clarity with regard to what overtourism entails by placing the concept in a historical context and presenting results from a qualitative investigation among 80 stakeholders in 13 European cities. Results highlight that overtourism describes an issue that is multidimensional and complex. Not only are the issues caused by tourism and nontourism stakeholders, but they should also be viewed in the context of wider societal and city developments. The article concludes by arguing that while the debate on overtourism has drawn attention again to the old problem of managing negative tourism impacts, it is not well conceptualized. Seven overtourism myths are identified that may inhibit a well-rounded understanding of the concept. To further a contextualized understanding of overtourism, the paper calls for researchers from other disciplines to engage with the topic to come to new insights.
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In this review article, the authors contextualize the contemporary practice of medical tourism in terms of the concept of worldmaking, which was introduced (in this journal) with two articles a year or two ago by Hollinshead. Here, the authors first contextualize medical tourism in terms of "worldmaking" per medium of the observations of the corporeal realms identified by Alexis de Tocqueville almost 200 years ago. In 1835, de Tocqueville wrote with enthusiasm tinged with nostalgic regret about the new world of American democracy that he then saw as the world of the future. A serious rupture in history took place of which he became a most relevant critic. But there have been (according to Mainil, Platenkamp, and Meulemans) many ruptures since then: that is, there have been short periods of "in-between worlds" that became ever more anchored in the timeline of Western history. Today, they argue that tourism as a field of expertise, practice, and knowledge is intertwined with several other networks of expertise. It is responsible (itself) for many small "ruptures" in these modern times. Mass tourism can be seen as such a shift. Sustainable tourism and the attention paid to climate change would be another such shift. And the authors of this review argue that an interesting and deep-seated case in this regard is medical tourism. They argue here that medical tourism has a great deal of worldmaking capacity, especially by means of the Internet and international marketing tools. It arises in the interstices of the interacting networks of a global world. It crosses borders in line with emerging power structures in a global network, but it also meets local resistance or regional obstacles that are related to other networks. In between these worlds of human experience, various interactions of perspectives on the concept of health itself come to the surface. Within the field of medical tourism different stakeholders play a role in a worldmaking process. Our reviewers from the Low Countries thereby argue that medical tourism itself is responsible for a Tocquevillean rupture within and across our global network society. In their view, medical tourism also constitutes a new hybrid-that is, as a hybrid medical paradigm that seems to be appearing within the performative and productive world of tourism.
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Epistemological relativism in tourism studies has been conceivably paralyzed by the concept of a, or, the "paradigm." In this review article, Platenkamp metaphorically identifies these paradigms with the islands that Odysseus visited (all those centuries ago) during his well-recorded journey to Ithaca. In this context, therefore, Ithaca is changed (by Platenkamp) from being just an idyllic Greek homeland into a contemporary, hybridized world like-in our time-of the multilayered network society in Africa of the capital of Ghana, Kumasi. The basic question for Platenkamp, then, is that of how tourism studies researchers can (or ought?) leave their safe islands (i.e., their paradigms) and organize their own paradigm dialog (after Guba) with others around them on their uncertain and risky voyage to Kumasi. In an attempt to clarify this vital kind of dialog, Platenkamp introduces Said's principles of reception and resistance, but also focuses on the distinction between different modes of "knowledge production" that have been introduced into the social sciences since the 1990s. In this light, to Platenkamp, the uncertainty of this ongoing/unending epistemological quest remains crucial: to him, all (almost all?) believers in a, or any, paradigm within tourism studies are unhealthily "overimmunized" by the tall claims and the perhaps undersuspected strategies of the particular "paradigm" they follow. (Abstract by the Reviews Editor).
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Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to report the grounded theory empirical validation on key categories within a design-led methodology to envision urban futures. The paper focuses on the editorial products and the design concepts that constitute the heart of the approach. An original elaboration of trend clusters is presented as an exemplification of the outcome of this trend research approach. Although the approach was not created from the viewpoint of tourism and leisure, bibliographic notes on place-making complement it for this journal. Design/methodology/approach: The paper presents empirical findings extracted by the means of the grounded theory, with the purpose to empirically validate two key categories (product and process) of a urban futures methodology. The methodology is an application of High Design, the process in use at Royal Philips BV for two decades. This methodology is contextualized within the constructivist episteme, as defined by the editors of this journal in a separate publication. Bibliographic references to place-making complete the paper. Findings: The following findings are provided: empirical validation of the city.people.light communication platform (qualitative research); empirical validation of the city.people.light workshop practice (qualitative research); and bibliographic descriptions of the design process governing city.people.light and newly developed urban futures trend clusters, at European level, as an exemplification of the program/approach outcome. Research limitations/implications: The paper is structured according to a multi-layered editorial focus. Empirical findings were generated at primary research level in a 2013-2015 grounded theory projected by the author. Furthermore, the author directed the research processes and products that are the object of empirical validation. Newly defined elaborations and a discussion thereof is offered, taking into account contemporary place-making issues. Practical implications: The original design-based methodology is a structured practice in urban futures from applied sciences and corporate innovation viewpoint. In this paper, its key categories are empirically validated through the grounded theory. Additionally, outcome from the original foresight programs is presented and a bibliographic review is provided from the viewpoint of place-making. Social implications: The co-creative methodology herein empirically validated is socio-cultural centered, with a strong drive to coutnerbalance the positivist and engineering corporate mindset through a humanistic concern for people. The framework in terms of place-making takes into account postmodern evolutions of the field. Originality/value: The paper benefits from a unique mix of: epistemic note on tourism, leisure, and the future; original urban futures scenarios and design concepts from a world class corporate innovation program; and the actual empirical core of the grounded theory validation as performed in a dedicated research project. These three separate streams are mutually related.
This paper adopts a problematising review approach to examine the extent of mitigating climate change research in the sustainable tourism literature. As climate change has developed into an existential global environmental crisis and while tourism's emissions are still increasing, one would expect it to be at the heart of sustainable tourism research. However, from a corpus of 2573 journal articles featuring ‘sustainable tourism’ in their title, abstract, or keywords, only 6.5% covered climate change mitigation. Our critical content analysis of 35 of the most influential papers found that the current methods, scope and traditions of tourism research hamper effective and in-depth research into climate change. Transport, the greatest contributor to tourism's emissions, was mostly overlooked, and weak definitions of sustainability were common. Tight system boundaries, lack of common definitions and incomplete data within tourism studies appear to hamper assessing ways to mitigate tourism's contribution to climate change.
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