Degrowth and Tourism: New Perspectives on Tourism Entrepreneurship, Destinations and Policy

The sustainability of tourism is increasingly under question given the challenges of overtourism, COVID-19 and the contribution of tourism to climate and environmental change. Degrowth and Tourism provides an original response to the central problem of growth in tourism, an imperative that has been intrinsic within tourism practice, and directs the reader to rethink the impacts of tourism and possible alternatives beyond the sustainable growth discourse.

Using a multi-scaled approach to investigate degrowth’s macro effects and micro indications in tourism, this book frames degrowth in tourism in terms of business, destination and policy initiatives. It uses a combination of empirical research, case studies and theory to offer new perspectives and approaches to analyse issues related to overtourism, COVID-19, small-scale tourism operations and entrepreneurship, mobility and climate change in tourism. Interdisciplinary chapters provide studies on animal-based tourism, nature-based tourism, domestic tourism, developing community-centric tourism and many other areas, within the paradigm of degrowth.

This book offers significant insight on both the implications of degrowth paradigm in tourism studies and practices, as well as tourism’s potential contributions to the degrowth paradigm, and will be essential reading for all those interested in sustainable tourism and transformations through tourism.

C. Michael Hall is a Professor at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand; Docent in Geography, University of Oulu, Finland; Visiting Professor in Tourism at Linnaeus University, Kalmar, Sweden; and a Guest Professor in the Department of Service Management and Service Studies, Lund University, Helsingborg, Sweden. He has written widely on tourism, regional development, heritage, food and global environmental change.

Linda Lundmark is an Associate Professor at the Department of Geography at Umeå University, Sweden. Her research interests among others are tourism, mobility, climate change and natural resources as part of contemporary and future development prospects in rural and sparsely populated areas in the far North. She is currently the chair of the Centre of Regional Science scientific advisory board and has received funding for several large research projects from Swedish research councils. She is also part of several research networks on tourism and tourism in polar areas.

Jundan Jasmine Zhang is a Postdoc at the Department of Ecology, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences. She has a PhD in Tourism from University of Otago, New Zealand. Her main research interest lies in understanding the relationships between human and ’nature’ in the context of global tourism. Jasmine has published in journals such as Annals of Tourism Research, Journal of Sustainable Tourism and Tourism Geographies, on subjects ranging from political ecology of tourism to tourism methodologies. She is currently doing research under the project SVALUR - Understanding Resilience and Long-Term Environmental Change in the High Arctic: Narrative-Based Analyses from Svalbard where she is dedicated to bringing forward the multiplicity of knowledge on environmental changes through environmental humanitarian approaches.