Overtourism to Sustainable Governance: A New Tourism Era

Insightful and international in scope, this significant volume explores the transition from overtourism to sustainability governance and elaborates perspectives for developing resilient destinations.

The book is split into three parts and comprises interdisciplinary contributions from renowned authors and scholars in the field, with each part including case studies to illustrate real-world applications of the topics and issues discussed. Part I provides an overview of current academic discussion on overtourism, presents theoretical concepts and illustrates the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the development from overtourism to no-tourism. Part II discusses approaches towards a new sustainability through the lens of current research and future trends, including a possible new understanding of tourism in a post-pandemic world. Part III presents strategies to deal with overtourism, including management strategies and governance theories. Equipped with a wide range of examples and insights from across the globe, the book is intended to facilitate the ongoing journey towards a more sustainable tourism industry, that is increasingly resilient and less vulnerable to crises.

This will be of pivotal interest to academics, researchers and practitioners in the fields of tourism, over- and mass-tourism, as well as sustainability governance.

Harald Pechlaner is Head of the Center for Advanced Studies at Eurac Research, Chair of Tourism and founding Dean of the School of Transformation and Sustainability at the Catholic University of Eichstaett-Ingolstadt. His research area covers sustainable destination development and selected questions about global governance combined with economics and politics. Since 2014 he has been Adjunct Research Professor at Curtin University (Perth, Australia) and President of AIEST (Association Internationale d’Experts Scientifiques du Tourisme), the oldest tourism experts’ association, based in the St. Gallen University.

Elisa Innerhofer was a Senior Researcher at the Center for Advanced Studies at Eurac Research Bozen-Bolzano, Italy. She studied international economics, business science, and political science at the University of Innsbruck (Austria) and the Marquette University in Milwaukee (WI, USA) and holds a PhD in economics from the Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt in Germany.

Julian Philipp is a consultant for regional development at Schnürer & Company and PhD student at the Chair of Tourism / Center for Entrepreneurship, Catholic University of Eichstaett-Ingolstadt, Germany. His dissertation focuses on the role of local and regional identity in the governance of spatial and regional development. He completed his B.Sc. at University of Wuppertal, Germany, and his M.Sc. at Oxford Brookes University, United Kingdom. His main fields of interest encompass regional development, regional ecosystems, sustainable destination development, overtourism, and entrepreneurship.