Tourism Geographies Podcast

https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2025.2582648
Abstract

Mass-tourism destinations are under criticism for intensifying climate risk, biodiversity loss, and social inequities, yet practical alternatives remain scarce. Hawai’i typifies this problem: since the 1970s, the archipelago has relied on a high-volume model that drew 10.4 million visitors in 2019 and continues to generate more than one-fifth of the state’s GDP, while concurrently eroding beaches, exhausting freshwater supplies, and commodifying Native Hawaiian culture. Recognizing these pressures, Hawai’i adopted regenerative tourism as a strategic objective in 2019 to pursue net-positive outcomes, including ecological restoration, cultural revival, and community wealth. However, the application and feasibility of regenerative tourism in mature, mass-market settings remain unclear. To address this gap, this research is a qualitative case study of the Waikīkī beachfront hotel corridor. In-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted in 2023 with hotel sector stakeholders, state planners, not-for-profit leaders, cultural practitioners, and consultants. Interviews were analyzed with reflexive thematic coding and interpreted through an adapted regenerative tourism analytical framework. Findings reveal uneven but significant movement toward regenerative approaches. Public-sector actors and Kānaka Maoli practitioners articulate multi-capital definitions of wealth and pilot participatory supply-driven innovations. Conversely, for-profit operators retain a demand-driven approach, rebranding experiential add-ons as ‘regenerative’ while maintaining extractive infrastructures. The study thus demonstrates both the promise and the limits of implementing regenerative principles in high-volume contexts, recommending Indigenous co-governance and transdisciplinary learning loops to move beyond branding.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2025.2578620
Abstract

Okinawa prefecture is an archipelago in southwestern Japan. This article examines the urban musical soundscape of Kokusai Street in Naha City, Okinawa’s capital, where tourism, identity and sonic performance intersect to create a dynamic acoustic space of local cultural representation. Drawing on the fields of sound studies, tourism, cultural geography, and ethnomusicology, this article investigates acoustic design through three representative musical sound worlds within Kokusai Street’s sonic touristic milieu. The first explores sound in motion, examining how the city’s various monorail’s chimes serve as auditory markers of Okinawa’s identity; the second considers the mediated and performed sounds of the commercial streetscape, where traditional music, contemporary consumer culture and urban sound converge for tourism consumption; and the third focuses on the vibrant live house entertainment scene, where performances of traditional and neo-traditional Okinawan music engage audiences in an interactive sonic experience that firmly positions Okinawa within the touristic gaze. The article highlights how this particular micro sound world in Okinawa’s urban soundscape functions as a performative space that constructs and communicates local musical identity within the broader framework of island tourism.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2025.2582669

Abstract

In tourism literature and practice, pro-growth tourism management discourses argue that tourism growth can decouple from its negative impacts through improved management, whereas heterodox approaches reject tourism’s growth ethic and argue decoupling is infeasible and unlikely. Heterodox tourism scholarship increasingly seeks to imagine what a ‘beyond growth’ transition may entail, through concepts such as regenerative tourism, degrowth, and buen vivir. Among the first UNESCO World Heritage Sites and most iconic Biosphere Reserves, the Galápagos Islands in Ecuador present a critical case study, having experienced a 260% increase in tourism arrivals over the past two decades while attempting to enact a heterodox transition. The purpose of this paper is to examine how diverse stakeholders in these islands construct and contest discourses of tourism growth, with implications for transitions towards ‘post-growth’ or heterodox tourism paradigms. Building upon decades of combined research in Galápagos among our author team, this paper draws most specifically on data gathered from a three-day participatory workshop in August 2023 involving sixty key Galápagos tourism stakeholders. Findings identified two primary discourse coalitions—those critiquing and those defending land-based tourism growth—and compares how pro-growth and heterodox management discourses manifest among them. Findings reveal that although these coalitions adopt different discursive strategies where growth is most contentious, there is shared consensus around strategies for managing growth that align with heterodox paradigms. A key contribution of this paper is to highlight how managing tourism growth in Biosphere Reserves—of increasing concern as overtourism challenges proliferate globally—cannot rely solely on technical interventions. Our findings show how divergent discourse coalitions construct prosperity in competing ways, revealing why inclusive engagement with plural values, contested meanings, and local power dynamics is indispensable for navigating overtourism challenges in fragile island settings.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14616688.2024.2325932
Abstract

The tourist area life cycle has been in existence for over four decades since its publication in The Canadian Geographer and was described as ‘one of the most cited and contentious areas of tourism knowledge….(and) has gone on to become one of the best known theories of destination growth and change within the field of tourism studies’ It was noted as one ‘Of the most influential conceptual models for explaining tourist, development’. The model was developed primarily from the Product Life Cycle model used in business and management studies and modified to explain the process of development and change that took place in tourist destinations throughout the world. The model has received considerable attention over its life span, but has often been cited from second hand sources or misquoted on many occasions. Its appearance in a non-tourist journal has resulted in it often not appearing in various early literature surveys based on tourism-focused sources and for its first decade access to the original article was limited and difficult, as demonstrated by many requests to the author for copies of the article. Electronic access to journals and libraries have resolved this problem, but its considerable visibility (in excess of 56,000 reads on Research Gate) and use (close to 5000 citations) means that it has possibly entered the realm of tourism myths and become part of accepted dogma in the field of tourism development. This could present problems to those challenging the original concept and introducing alternative or contradictory ideas and propositions, and it is perhaps, appropriate to briefly review the history of the concept.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2025.2462777
Abstract

The 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.