Overtourism and Cruise Tourism in Emerging Destinations on the Arabian Peninsula

Cruise tourism is one of the fastest growing sectors worldwide. This book is the first of its kind to provide in-depth insights into the emergence of mega-cruise tourism in destinations on the Arabian Peninsula and its impacts on local communities, their spaces, cultures, identities and tourist experiences.

It offers a micro-sociological analysis, calling for holistic, participatory, mindful approaches and to rethink current exploitative tourism planning and development. It assumes a high political, social and economic importance within globalization. It draws on a long-term field study in an under-researched region in Asia that developed large-scale tourism recently to diversify the economy. The book provides insights on the destination development from a state of continuous growth to a sudden fall in tourism activities due to a sudden shock, caused by the global health pandemic and its resilience. It explores the sociocultural, economic and spatial challenges faced in international tourism development and its power relations analysed from different perspectives and within time. It analyses time-space compression, overtourism, urban tourism, nature-based tourism, enclavization, social capital, imaginaries, Cultural Ecosystem Services, slow tourism as well as just tourism.

The book provides an innovative contribution to the planning and development of tourism destinations, communities and their spaces in which tourism operates in a fast pace. It will be of interest to academics, undergraduate and postgraduate students in the field of tourism and hospitality management, geography, sociology, anthropology, urban planning and environmental sciences. Moreover, the book will be useful for practitioners and policymakers around the globe, as well as all those interested in the fast emergence and the impacts of mega-cruise tourism.

Manuela Gutberlet is a critical tourism geographer. She is passionate about social and action research within communities. She is currently a Research Associate, University of Johannesburg, Department of Tourism and Hospitality, South Africa and teaching sustainable tourism and tourism planning in Germany. She has earnt a first degree in Business and Arabic and did her PhD in Cultural Geography at RWTH Aachen University, Germany. Her research was presented at numerous scientific conferences and was published in ranked journals. Her research interests include the impacts of globalisation on communities and their sociocultural environments. She has gained over twenty years of work and life experiences in public relations, journalism, higher education and tourism research in the Middle East.