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Reinventing the local in tourism: Producing, consuming and negotiating place

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Abstract

This book investigates the way localities are shaped and negotiated through tourism, and explores the emerging success of local peer-produced hospitality and tourism services which are transforming the tourist experience. Tourists are now being brought into much closer contact with locals and have new opportunities to experience the community at their destination. This book examines these place experiences and travel-sharing arrangements that have now spread globally due to the use of social communication platforms such as Airbnb. It analyses the existence of global communities of ‘place experts’ that are redefining the organisational structures, value systems, market opportunities, affordabilities and geographies in travel and tourism. This volume brings together the work of established tourism scholars as well as early career researchers and is one of the first books to examine the global-local relationship at tourism destinations and the way that the rapidly developing field of peer-to-peer tourism is transforming tourist destinations. © 2016 Antonio Paolo Russo, Greg Richards and the authors of individual chapters. All rights reserved.
Russo, A.P. and Richards, G. (2016) Reinventing the Local in Tourism:
Producing, Consuming and Negotiating Place. Bristol: Channel View
Publications.
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION
Antonio Paolo Russo and Greg Richards
This volume intends to break new ground in relation to a classic topic in tourism
studies, namely the transformation of places through tourism. This theme has
continuously attracted the attention of academics from different scholarly
domains, but today it is being addressed within radically new conceptual and
analytic frameworks - challenging established disciplinary boundaries and
calling into question the very epistemological bases of tourism research.
The original objective of the book was to compile a number of studies presented
at recent conferences and expert meetings held by the Association for Tourism
and Leisure Education and Research (ATLAS), which analyze the boom of
virtual tourism platforms and peer-to-peer tourism consumption. Homestays,
house swaps, short term rentals, and other products are offered by ‘lifestyle
entrepreneurs’ to connected and expert travellers, bypassing conventional
tourism distribution chains. New tourism products and experiences such as
eating with locals, home exchanges and co-created tours have become
embedded in popular culture and are receiving increasing attention in the
media. Indeed, collaborative and relational forms of travel seem to represent the
next step in the evolution of tourism; a new layer of ‘societal innovation’,
combining with the technological and organizational breakthroughs which have
largely driven the transformation of the tourism industry in recent decades. To
some extent, we are returning to the societal foundations of tourism. The rise of
mass tourism created a culture of mass leisure mobility in western society and
the current ‘knowledge society’ or ‘network society’ is creating a culture of
‘collaborative tourism’, which is now beginning to compete with the conventional
mass tourism industry from which it originated.
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Only a few years ago, the topic of collaborative tourism was hardly on the
research agenda. But the rapid growth of new networks and platforms
supporting peer-to-peer exchange of resources has led to a progressive
restructuring of the tourism marketplace. Rather than the previous emphasis on
the ‘hard’ factors of tourism development (such as resorts, hotels or attractions,
for example), research is shifting towards the value of ‘soft’ local knowledge,
creativity and intangible resources. Put simply, there is a new paradigm of
‘tourism without development’ which emphasizes the role of the host community
rather than external developers (Andriotis & Agiomirgianakis, 2013).
A number of scholars have begun to engage critically with this new paradigm,
such as contributors to Hospitality and Society, a cross-disciplinary journal
launched in 2011. Such studies hint at more pervasive foundational shifts in the
social sciences, stretching to the more general question of the engagement of
multiple hybrid mobilities with places that are – or are becoming – cosmopolitan.
This approach sees the ‘local’ as being co-constructed rather as an immanent
quality of tourist destinations, and therefore as being dependent on the power of
agency of individuals and communities. A lot has already been written about
how the tourism industry builds/transforms/appropriates space. But in today’s
post-touristic world the key question is how society as a whole creates tourist
space. This question also focusses attention on communities of practice –
involving citizens and tourists, workers, migrants, cultural minorities, etc. – as
key agents of the transformation of tourist space. From this perspective tourism
studies have become important for a full understanding of the relationship
between place and society.
Indeed, the last 10-15 years have been exciting times for the small world of
tourism research. As a body of knowledge, tourism studies has for some time
been incapable of producing new breakthrough developments which would
relate to the emerging issues of tourism in the contemporary age. While the
dimensions of the tourism phenomenon have been growing relentlessly, the
problems and challenges that were specific to certain places have assumed
global dimensions.
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To start with, the environmental threats posed by tourism-induced development
in specific localities – demanding local solutions – are today attributed to
mobility writ large. This hints at a problematic tension between travel as a
fundamental right of individuals and a vector of democratization, and the fact
that tourism is one of the most important contributors to global climate change.
Similarly, the cultural and social transformations produced by tourism were
previously addressed largely in relation to the north/south divide and mostly
relegated to postcolonialist approaches. But these transformations are today
experienced by any host community even in the relatively wealthy advanced
western countries, and point to a higher order of tensions in the production of
space by heterogeneous societal groups.
Finally, the economic benefits promised by tourism to areas with few other
pathways to development, are today pursued by almost any place in the world,
irrespective of the questionable contribution that tourism often offers to local
communities and workers. This concern brings out to the open the
unimaginative character of local politics and their increasing subordination to
the agendas of the global tourism industry. In many instances societies and
civic movements are reclaiming their right to place in the face of the perceived
aggression of the tourist ‘growth machine’.
Confronted with such challenges, it often seemed that tourism studies were one
step behind. On the one hand, academia was hardly able to contribute effective
solutions; on the other, it was struggling to provide models of universal validity
to interpret reality and anticipate foreseeable developments. Tourism was also
experiencing increasing difficulties in gaining recognition within and across the
tight boundaries of its parent disciplines, like geography, management and
economics, planning, sociology, anthropology and cultural studies.
However, a new generation of scholars, building from wider paradigms in the
social sciences, has started to breathe new life into the study of travel and
tourism, defining and embracing a number of epistemological and
methodological innovations or ‘turns’. Eschewing solid positivist entrenchments
in favour of post-disciplinary, post-constructivist and critical approaches, they
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felt the urge to go back to the roots and raise questions about the basic nature
of tourism as a social and economic practice, what the object of tourism studies
should be, and who or what are we doing this for.
These developments led to a real revolution in research, which gives new
strength to tourism as ‘analytics’ (Minca and Oakes, 2011). Tourism studies,
marginalized because of its focus on the ‘exceptional’ or ‘ephemeral’ in social
behaviour, is increasingly occupied with the mundane, everyday life and
everyplace. In these terms, analysis of tourism may give new keys to
understanding place and society in general. This shift is not without
consequences for the position of tourism research in the social sciences, with
an unprecedented volume of new publications and journals, a flood of
educational and research programmes in universities all over the world, and a
newly-gained recognition of its transcendence across once impermeable
disciplinary frontiers. In short, tourism today is a bigger (and probably different)
issue and a trendier academic field than it has ever been.
Among the breakthrough developments which repositioned tourism studies so
dramatically (critical and radical studies, postcolonial studies, gender studies,
etc.), we will mention three, whose impact has arguably been quite pervasive in
reorienting the agenda of tourism studies (Mansfeldt, 2014).
The first, and probably the one with the most profound effects on the discipline,
is the mobilities turn. This new approach to the study of tourism, owing much to
the recent work of John Urry, is first and foremost a paradigm change in the
social sciences as a whole. It suggests that in a world in which the mobility of
people and objects have come to structure any domain of human life, we cannot
study society as if it were ‘sedentary’ or having a sticky relation with place. We
need to deal with people in a state of mobility, translating space and place in
their mobile lives, and recombining their livelihoods all the time in a state of flux.
When this perspective is used to analyze the role and position of tourism, as in
many of Urry’s works (2000), of some of his collaborators (such as Hannam,
2008, Larsen, 2001, Sheller and Urry, 2004), other established authors in
tourism studies (Hall, 2005) and (by now) countless other scholars, this is seen
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as a heterogeneous form of mobility, which is driven by, interacts with, and
interferes with, many others. At least since the seminal works of Italian
sociologist Guido Martinotti (1993) the social construction of places can be
analyzed through the convergence and overlapping of different mobilities.
However, the mobilities literature represents a genuine step forward in tourism
studies, in that it focuses on people and objects in a state of mobility and on
places as ‘porous’ to such heterogeneous mobilities as proposed by Amin
(2002) and ‘assembled’ through them. In this domain new ‘mobile’ methods
have started to be endorsed by the tourism research community, and the object
of research has progressively shifted to the multiple agencies of mobility, which
are also, in themselves, utterly mobile, like capital and technology.
The second ‘turn’, which relates strongly to mobilities but which more explicitly
focuses on the material processes of construction of place, is the performative
turn. This was introduced into the geography of tourism by authors such as Tim
Edensor, Michael Crang, Jørgen Ole Bærenholdt, Adrian Franklin, and others.
Departing from a critique of MacCannell, and endorsing Massey’s (1994)
relational approach to the construction of place and the role of power
geometries, this theoretical framework conceives (tourist) places as non-fixed
entities (in opposition to established ontological separations between the visited
‘object’ and the visiting ‘subject’) that are enacted and continuously transformed
through the performance of multiple actors. The performative turn ‘does not see
tourism as an isolated island but explores connections between tourism, the
everyday and significant others’ (Urry & Larsen, 2011, p. 194, quoted in
Mansfeldt, 2014), and, as such, it ‘dislocates attention from symbolic meanings
and discourses to embodied, collaborative and technological doings and
enactments’ (Haldrup & Larsen, 2009, quoted in Germann Molz, 2012, p.165).
Tourism research is thus shifted to a mobile, ungrounded domain whereby
tourism, tourists, and destinations co-determine each other. This repositioning
of tourism also hints at a fundamental reset of the relationship between tourism
and everyday life, as it is now seen as integral to wider processes of economic
and political development and even constitutive of everyday life (Edensor 2007;
Franklin 2003; Hannam, 2008).
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Again this turn has produced fundamental advances in the way in which tourism
and tourists are studied, hinging upon non-representational methods that insist
on the materiality of such enactments. Among these is actor-network theory
(ANT), introduced in this field by authors such as Van der Duim (2005),
Jóhannesson (2005) and Ren (2011). ANT invites us to ‘explore the universe of
possibilities’ from the myriad of hybrid relations that bundle up space (Van der
Duim et al. 2012), mapping relations that are simultaneously material (between
things) and semiotic (between concepts). ANT has remarkably shifted the
attention of research from ‘the tourist’ to people, animals, objects, machines,
and events which through their multiple relations shape the ‘place’ in which
tourists intervene.
The third innovation that took place in tourism studies and helped reformulate
the research agenda is the ’creative turn’. Building on works on the experience
economy (Pine & Gilmore, 1999) and on creative cities (Landry, 2000;
Hannigan, 2005), this new concept has been forged and popularized by Greg
Richards (2000; 2011), and picked up by other authors like Brouder (2012),
Evans (2007), Maitland (2010) and Pratt (2008). More pragmatically than the
other turns illustrated above, creative tourism repositions cultural tourism as
encounter, relationship and negotiation within the symbolic/cultural domain in
tourist destinations. This has a bearing on how tourism experiences are
organized and promoted, as the target is shifted from object and place to the
actors of the cultural landscape and their interaction in a process of exchange.
Yet it also hints at a restructuring of the processes of construction of tourist
places, criticizing mainstream practices of development of ‘tourist places’ (i.e.
places and products that are meaningful for tourists or that attract tourist
consumption), which unavoidably lead to a stereotyped and banalized
landscape (and experiences of it). Instead it proposes that ‘creativity’ as the
essence of the cultural act in which tourists are involved is an ‘antidote to the
serial reproduction of culture and places’ (Richards and Wilson, 2006).
The creative turn has a number of consequences for tourism research and more
notably for tourism planning and policy:
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the connotation of any place as a (potential) destination for creative
tourism in opposition to the ‘dressing up’ and representation of certain
categories of places as cultural tourism attractions (e.g. heritage cities
and historical city centres, large scale and ‘flagship’ cultural
infrastructure);
the emphasis on the intangible (i.e. process) layer of cultural
(re)production acquired through practice and engagement over tangible
cultural objects ‘to be seen’;
the power of spontaneous, grassroots manifestations of culture over
legitimate, authorized, ‘pacified’ narratives of place;
the importance of mundane spaces, where everyday life represents a
context for the establishment of culture-laden relationships, over
specialized tourist spaces which have been emptied of their original
social fabric.
Most importantly for the current volume, the creative perspective also highlights
the importance of ‘points of connection’ between the culture of visitors and the
culture of locals that can be constructed through activities and events (like
gastronomy, collective performances, mobility), spaces of interchange (public
space, private homes) or be immanent in the social construction of a
cosmopolitan place and its collective rituals (shopping, nightlife, socio-political
rituals).
These three turns thus suggest that we should consider a different way of
looking at and understanding tourism – the heterogeneous mobilities of people
and objects – as inherently tied to the morphological, social and symbolic
characteristics of the spaces in which tourism take place and their
transformation. These turns also invite us to take nothing for granted: what is
generally attributed the label of ‘tourist’ – often in opposition to a different
domain, that of the ‘local’ – is in fact continuously negotiated and reconfigured in
a wider context of non-fixed entities which produce the space determining what
in fact tourism is really about.
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In a recent PhD thesis, Mansfeldt (2014) draws from these and other innovative
approaches to develop a reflection on the concept of ‘inbetweenness’, a term
originally introduced by Bærenholdt et al. (2004). Inbetweenness identifies the
‘untouristic’ in the sense of being detached from the formal production of tourist
experiences, but ultimately influencing it: metaphorically, not the hotel or the
attraction, but the transit between the two; not the time spent at sights, but the
idle moments of rest, not the planned, purposeful ‘tourist’ place but that which
comes to be ‘touristed’ by the spontaneous enactment of people and objects.
Mansfeldt extends this notion to the spatial, analytical, relational and
experiential dimensions of tourism experiences, dismantling the dichotomic
oppositions characteristic of tourism analysis and illustrating the relevance of
the ‘interstices’ between them. Similarly, Quaglieri Domínguez and Russo
(2010) map out different ‘inbetween’ collectives that populate the urban space
and analyze the spatiality and co-evolutionary character of their relationships.
Mansfeldt and Quaglieri Domínguez and Russo’s studies, together with many
others presented at recent ATLAS sessions, have been important entry points
for this book. The central theme is the transformation of place as produced by
the practices of mobile communities that operate across the ontological
separation between origins and destinations. Its title evokes that the very notion
of ‘local’, a frequently used brand in place marketing, The notion of the local is
today a shifting construct, which has more to do with the transits and
interconnections of global actors than with the ‘immanent’ characteristics of
places and their societies, transcending frontiers of tangible/intangible,
public/private, personal/collective.
The three ‘turns’ introduced above are useful conceptual and methodological
backgrounds to unravel this apparent paradox. The mobilities turn helps in
situating tourists within a conceptual web of mobilities that today cross and
enact any space. For example we characterize expert tourists as a community
of global ‘dwellers’ who are keen to eschew ‘formal’ touristscapes and who tend
to establish connections of familiarity in mundane spaces (such as home,
residential neighbourhoods, creative quarters, etc.) and with peer
cosmopolitans. The performative turn helps us to understand how those very
8
spaces are constructed as scenarios of interaction, diluting their distinctiveness
but also preserving the multiplicity that distinguishes them from spaces
‘designed’ for tourism. The creative turn also helps in understanding how such
encounters have become central in the promotion and representation of tourism
at the margin of formal marketing strategies. In short, most tourist experiences
nowadays take place in an undefined ground in which the ‘local’ is both
produced and staged through global actors and discourses, and then translated
to the domain of the mundane and conventional. It is not ‘local’ anymore but it
might be the everyday, the inbetween, and as such, forces us to think about
tourism in an altogether different way.
These issues are analyzed in this book by a mixed group of young scholars and
more experienced researchers, whose work sits comfortably in the post-
disciplinary intersection of mobilities, place and space. Such mixing defines well
the expanding field of tourism studies today. Most of the authors are long-time
active members of the ATLAS network, but others have entered the field
relatively recently and brought their fresh outlooks and ideas with them.
The book is organized in three parts, which primarily focus on products, people,
and places, brought together in a new ‘localness’ by the rituals and technologies
of mobility. The points of connection between these three domains are
numerous and obvious, such as the ‘networked hospitality’ platforms and
services, and the conception of tourist space as relational and performed.
The first part of the volume, entitled ‘New products and hospitality models’, is
organized around the theme of the new information platforms and products that
have taken centre stage in tourism. This group of chapters addresses the
relationship between the virtual environments which serve simultaneously as
meeting places and co-production spaces, and the ‘marketplaces’ of the
communities of practice that they tap into. These chapters also analyze the
strategies of transmission of ‘local’ knowledge which such services entail.
The new marketplace for tourism provided by home exchanges is analyzed in
Chapter 2 by Antonio Paolo Russo and Alan Quaglieri Domínguez. Variously
9
defined as a ‘pure peer-to-peer’ model or a model that engenders ‘tourism
without development’, the home exchange platform is explored in terms of the
activation of new spatial practices both across and within tourism spaces. The
chapter presents some empirical evidence on the home exchange marketplace,
which reveals peculiar structures of relationships and agency. These operate
both across types of places and countries, and at destination level, contrasting
with those ascribed to commercial tourism and the dual nature of ‘mainstream’
tourismscapes.
In Chapter 3 Paula Bialski examines the topic of networked hospitality
platforms, but takes a step back to explore the role of digital infrastructures in
enabling, shaping, and mediating such tourist practices. Through unraveling the
specific design elements of Airbnb, she shows the deep entanglement of the
technological and the social, exploring the way in which digital infrastructures
enforce certain regimes of practice, and providing a critical analysis of the logics
and negotiations involved in this new tourism service. Drawing from
ethnographic and survey research among Airbnb users in Berlin, the chapter
contributes a deeper, multi-dimensional analysis of peer-to-peer tourism sites
which challenges their authority, authorship, and authenticity.
Francesca Forno and Roberta Garibaldi (Chapter 4) illustrate how post-touristic
host-guest relationships produce a new ‘market space' in which various
subjects have reinstated themselves, building new alliances to oppose an
oppressive system of power and privileges. The point is made through the
presentation of Addiopizzo Travel, a branch of one of the most well-known anti-
racket civic platforms, which organizes tourism activities in Sicily as a way to
fight the mafia through the branding of ‘racket-free’ products and experiences.
The success achieved by this initiative points to the importance of new forms of
market-based activism, providing insights on the role of ethical tourism in place
and space construction.
The first section of the book concludes with Chapter 5 by Monica Gilli and Sonia
Ferrari. This also presents a new hospitality concept originating from Italy, the
‘diffuse hotel’, which is gaining increasing recognition as a model which has
10
stopped the decline of semi-abandoned historical villages. At the same time it
restructures the concept of the local value chain towards closer involvement of
the local community, which also acts as a ‘mediator’ of such places to guests.
The chapter presents an overview of the emergence and success factors of the
diffuse hotel, focusing on the most emblematic and interesting cases from the
point of view of tourism.
The second part of the volume, ‘Flows and communities’, focuses on
communities of travellers that are mobilized by such emerging hospitality
models and the growth of the relational economy. These chapters deal with the
motivations and expectations of such new collectives, their performances in and
of space, their engagements with the ‘local’, as well as the potential tensions
which may lie behind the ambiguity of ‘prosumption’.
In Chapter 6, Ilaria Pappalepore and Andrew Smith contribute to the current
debate on performance and co-creation as the bases of tourist places, bridging
to key theories and critical issues in tourism geographies. Such issues include
the blurring boundaries between tourism and everyday life and between ‘hosts’
and ’guests’; the role of social interaction and performativity; and the
development of new forms of virtual and non-virtual mobilities facilitated by
peer-produced tourism platforms. Drawing on qualitative research conducted in
East and Southeast London, it illustrates such concepts on the ground and
discusses how the very experiences of urban tourists are co-created through
direct encounters with other ‘tourists’ and ‘locals’.
Simon Milne, Carolyn Deuchar and Karin Peters (Chapter 7) draw on the case
of the ‘Get Local’ programme of urban tourism development in Auckland, New
Zealand, to shed light on processes of community engagement in urban place
making and tourism development. They argue that community engagement
works best when an enabling environment is created to encourage activities
that originate from the grassroots community level. The chapter illustrates how
Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) and community informatics
can be used to enhance collaboration between urban community members by
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tapping into what locals love about their place and what, in turn, they would like
to share with others.
Cody Morris Paris and Kevin Hannam examine the topic of ‘mobile lives’ and
their multifaceted enactments of place, focusing on the use of social media
during a disaster or crisis event in Chapter 8. They present case studies of the
Chilean earthquake in 2010 and the violence surrounding the protests in
Bangkok in the same year. In both cases backpackers travelling in the midst of
the crisis have used social media to engage and disengage with the local. The
development of such virtual backpacking communities allows an increased
engagement with the local, but it also makes this engagement somewhat
fleeting, as backpackers maintain connections with their virtual community and
subsequently disengage with the local after the crisis has abated.
Chapter 9 by Melanie Smith and Anita Zátori examines the relationships
between so-called ‘hosts’ and ‘guests’ in the context of urban ethnic tourism.
Their work questions such reductionist binaries when investigating
contemporary forms of tourism, as in the case of cosmopolitan cities with their
unique and complex blend of indigenous residents, visitors, immigrants and
tourists. They present a case study of Budapest, Hungary, a city that is
diversifying its tourism product to include alternative and ethnic tours, most of
which take place in the emergent ‘creative hub’ of the city. Drawing on research
focusing on experience creation in such tours, these authors examine the
nature of the relationships between hosts, guests, residents, visitors, tourists
and intermediaries in the context of ethnic tourism.
The third part of the volume, ‘Built environments and “glocalized” spaces’,
discusses and analyses the way new mobilities ‘touch down’ in their places of
transience and become embedded in physical landscapes. The different
contributions to this section also analyze the power of agency in relation to
mainstream tourism development.
In Chapter 10 Davide Ponzini, Stefan Fotev and Francesca Mavaracchio reflect
on ‘mobilities of knowledge’. Focusing on the practices and talent that have in
12
recent years circulated through international architecture firms, they show how
these are producing very similar solutions in very different cities which are being
‘dressed up’ as global tourist destinations. Their case studies of the
transnational transfer of mega-structures and masterplans highlight an evident
paradox: at a local level these projects are often intended to generate unique
landscapes and distinctiveness in order to attract visitors and capital, but
globally they also tend to dramatically homogenize the urban landscapes of
cities.
Greg Richards turns again to look at hospitality forms in Chapter 11, addressing
the growth and professionalization of the provision of accommodation for youth
travellers. He highlights the growth of youth accommodation in the centre of
major cities, often at the initiative of large companies, and its qualitative
evolution with design values, restaurants, art exhibitions, bars and
entertainment now forming part of the youth hostel product. These new spaces
are increasingly being used as meeting places by young people in cities: not
just their clients, but also other tourists and locals, demonstrating a high degree
of crossover with the practices of other cosmopolitan consumers. This chapter
examines the trends in locations, services and operational characteristics of
these new tourism hubs.
In Chapter 12 Elsa Soro draws on semiotics to analyze the role of hybrid
gastronomic experiences in the construction of tourist places. In the dynamic
field of Barcelona’s foodsphere, original and ethnic cuisine styles are
progressively negotiated with their customers in specific spaces and
environments. The chapter analyses the processes of spatial value creation
operating when different forms of mobilities intersect through the analysis of
discourses, practices and texts embedded within the foodsphere. Highlighting
the co-creative processes at work in four different restaurants in the centre of
Barcelona, the analysis shows how new local and cosmopolitan identities are
being negotiated through food.
Albert Arias Sans and Alan Quaglieri Domínguez (Chapter 13) take a quite
different spatial-quantitative approach in their discussion of the progressive
13
growth of Airbnb as one of the leading platforms in hospitality. This newcomer
among the tourism industry giants is situated at the edge between mainstream
models of short-term rentals and the new ‘social’ intermediation facilitated by
technology. The analysis of the operation of Airbnb in Barcelona - one of
Airbnb’s most popular destinations – helps to debunk the company’s discourse
about the regenerative power of this platform and its community-friendly
character. It also uncovers the controversies related to the urban planning
regulatory framework in which Airbnb hosts operate. Ultimately Airbnb is placed
at the very heart of the public debate currently going on in Barcelona
concerning tourism development issues.
Dimitri Ioannides, Panos Leventis, and Evangelia Petridou discuss tourism
initiatives in Athens in Chapter 14 against the background of the financial crisis
and emerging urban resistance movements. Specifically, they analyze
Alternative Tours of Athens (ATA), and present its principles, goals, tour
contents, and clientele in the context of Athens’ neoliberal transformation in
recent years. The authors ponder whether ATA and similar companies operating
in other equally stressed urban environments simply use the current context
and conditions for their own benefit, thus becoming part of the neoliberal
narrative, or whether they indeed play an actively regenerative role for the
socio-urban fabrics that nurtured them, fabrics that are in desperate need of real
change.
The concluding chapter by Greg Richards and Antonio Paolo Russo brings
together some of the major themes addressed in the different chapters of the
volume, and attempts to evaluate the role of the emerging actors, structures
and processes in the new localities of tourism.
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... We argued that many 'cultural tourists' were tired of the old models and wanted to try something new. That new experience usually involved personal contact with locals who, as Russo and Richards (2016) argued, had become the new arbiters of 'authenticity'. ...
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Published by the Association for Tourism and Leisure Education and Research, Arnhem, The Netherlands. https://atlas-euro.org/ Abstract This updated and revised third edition of the ATLAS Creative Tourism Bibliography provides an overview of sources in this rapidly developing field of enquiry. In the 25 years since the creative tourism concept was developed, there has been considerable growth in scholarship, with new directions being developed in terms of theoretical treatment, methodologies and analysis. The latest edition of the Bibliography has benefitted from inputs from the Crocus EU Project (Cultural and Creative Tourism in Rural and Remote Areas) in which ATLAS is a partner. The work of the Crocus team has also helped to extend the range of languages covered by the bibliography and has provided a particular emphasis on creative tourism development in non-urban areas.
... They have identified physical, sensory, restorative, introspective, transformative, hedonic, emotional, relational, spiritual and cognitive experiences. Local community involvement has a major impact on the event experience, i.e., the quality of interaction between visitors and locals, which largely determines the success of a given tourism product (Russo & Richards, 2016 ). In addition, involving the local community in tourism development has long been considered one of the criteria for sustainable development (Li & Hunter, 2015), especially when it comes to events in smaller, rural areas (Qu & Cheer, 2020). ...
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Festivals are among the fastest growing types of tourist attractions. However, unlike large and international events, small festivals are scarcely researched despite their importance for local communities. The aim of this study is to explore the perspective of visitors to small arts festivals in rural areas in Croatia. This includes satisfaction with the services and experience of the event, interaction with locals, personal benefits and suggestions for further improvement of the festival offer. The research is based on 40 semi-structured interviews with visitors of 5 arts festivals in Croatia. The research results show that when it comes to experience satisfaction, visitors particularly value the opportunities for socializing and the creation of social intimacy, which is mainly due to the small size of the festival site. In addition, a pleasant atmosphere, a feeling of relaxation and freedom, a sense of belonging to the festival location, entertainment and the educational potential of the festival are decisive factors. In terms of service satisfaction, visitors are particularly satisfied with the program content. Most visitors had no significant interactions with the local community, but they consider it an important factor in the organization of the festival. In terms of possible improvements to the festival offer, increasing media exposure, improving the gastronomic offer and the need for more involvement and personal engagement during the festival are frequently mentioned.
... This was followed by 'cultural', 'rural' and 'local'. The latter, as Russo and Richards (2016) observe, is increasingly seen as a marker for authenticity. The macro-region with the most country references in the full text sources was the Danube, followed by the Adriatic and Ionian (Figure 3.4). ...
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This literature review covers research on cultural and creative tourism in rural and remote areas of Europe between 1989 and 2024. It provides a meta-review, structured review and narrative review of academic research to identify temporal and geographic research trends. It shows a growing focus on rural cultural tourism and intangible cultural heritage as means of valorizing the countryside for cultural and creative tourism. In addition to the analysis of WOS and Scopus databases, it also provides macro-regional and national analyses of cultural and creative tourism research. It identifies a number of research gaps and potential future research themes.
... The growing interest of tourists in seeking authentic local experiences and 'living like a local' [66] has made the study area an appealing region for both local and foreign tourists. With the decline of traditional industries, tourism now plays a vital role in revitalizing the local economy by leveraging the area's natural and cultural assets for sustainable development [67]. This is also the case for the Buzău Carpathians and Sub-Carpathians, which have seen significant economic shifts, with traditional industries declining and tourism emerging as a sustainable alternative to capitalizing on the existing natural and cultural assets. ...
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Cultural tourism plays a growing role both in tourists’ preferences and in tourism development options in many regions of the world. This paper examines how businesses in the Buzău Carpathians and Sub-Carpathians, a predominantly rural region where tourism relies heavily on the natural landscapes and cultural heritage, perceive cultural tourism. The analysis was performed using a questionnaire survey applied to the local business representatives, focusing on three key areas: (a) their interaction with visitors and contribution to the local economy; (b) their role as drivers of cultural tourism and improving communities’ livelihoods; and (c) the current and future challenges they face. This study highlights the way in which local businesses support cultural tourism, empower local communities, and contribute to local and regional development through their connections with cultural and heritage attractions. Despite these businesses facing challenges such as inadequate infrastructure, limited promotion, a narrow cultural tourism offering, and weak institutional collaboration, the research findings emphasize their pivotal role in fostering both local and regional development.
... As Alotaibi points out, many visitors perceive food as authentic when it is made by locals according to traditional practices. The fact that the 'local' has become the touchstone of authenticity (Russo & Richards, 2016) provides an additional layer of complexity in the discussion about the nature of authentic gastronomy. Given that the Middle East has long been a melting pot of different peoples, cultures and cuisines means that the idea of what is 'local' depends on many different factors. ...
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This introduction to the book Gastronomy Tourism - Experiences and Innovation provides an overview of Gastronomy as a useful tool for tourism development and marketing. Gastronomic experiences provide a vibrant link between local culture and inquisitive tourists, showcasing the lifestyle and identity of destinations through the mutual enjoyment of food. The development of gastronomy tourism therefore presents opportunities for the expansion of cultural and experience based tourism authenticity and genuineness of local and regional cuisine, but at the same time it creates challenges in the maintenance of the authenticity of gastronomy. It also covers key themes including memorable gastronomic experiences, hybrid gastronomy, authenticity and the future of gastronomy.
... Apparently, they also brought some development hope to lagging peripheral micro-regions, which could offer alternative destinations with a smaller concentration of people and activities [25]. Earlier research on hard tourism (resorts, hotels, and infrastructure) is beginning to change into an emphasis on soft forms of tourism, such as participatory tourism, intangible tourism, and the like [26]. ...
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Tourism is one of the world’s most affected sectors by the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. This article deals with the assessment of the impact of COVID-19 on the visitation of the South Moravian Region, including important cultural and natural sites, based on the analysis of empirical statistical data in the last decade and the calculation of the year-on-year change in attendance between 2019 and 2022. According to the results, the number of visitors to the South Moravian Region in 2020 fell by almost half, including a decrease of a quarter of visitors to cultural monuments compared to 2019. On the other hand, visits to natural areas with no restricted access increased by a fifth after 2020, but natural areas with restricted access fell by more than 40%. From 2021, attendance of the South Moravian Region began to increase slightly, and in 2022, it reached ninety percent of the level before 2019, including attendance at cultural and natural sites. The results of the research confirmed the growing trend in visitors to the South Moravian Region, including cultural and natural monuments, which were significantly influenced by the impact of COVID-19 on tourism after 2020, with a recovery of tourism in 2022.
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A curated collection of sources from the ATLAS Cultural Tourism Project.
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In the era of urbanization, small towns confront challenges in sustaining and preserving their essence and population. Historical towns have discovered their potential in tourism development, yet this opportunity often escalates into overtourism, particularly in renowned cruising destinations. This paper focuses on examples of coastal historical towns dependent on tourism revenue and faced with an excessive influx of tourists in the Mediterranean Region. The objective is to examine various cases across diverse geographical, cultural, and policy contexts to evaluate their success in achieving a balance between economic development and genius loci. This analysis seeks to identify the factors that contributed to the attainment of this equilibrium. Therefore, we selected case studies throughout the Mediterranean coast—from Saint Paul de Vence and Èze at the Azure Coast, Dubrovnik and Kotor in the Adriatic Sea, to Nafplio and Monemvasia in the Aegean Sea. The selected examples range from towns that are almost entirely depopulated to those that are suffocating from the influx of tourists. Observations on the spot and review of policies led us to the conclusion that the geography of the area and cultural values represent comparative (dis)advantages that can be influenced and shaped by policies from the time of the pre-tourist phase to the phase of overtourism. Even though the success of an early policy and the effects of investments aligned with it might be uncertain, pre-tourist policies turn out to be the most successful when it comes to balanced tourist-resident development. Determination of authorities to not only see economic benefit but also genius loci and quality of life of residents is crucial, too.
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This document provides a summary of publications produced by the ATLAS Cultural Tourism Research Group from 1991 to date. For more details about the group and the research programmes it has developed, please go to: https://www.richardstourism.com/atlas-cultural-tourism-project
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