Tourism and community resilience in the Anthropocene: accentuating temporal overtourism

Abstract

Global tourism growth is unprecedented. Consequently, this has elevated the sector as a key plank for economic development, and its utility is deeply embedded in political, economic and social-ecological discourse. Where the expansion of the sector leverages natural and cultural landscapes, this applies pressure to social and ecological underpinnings that if not reconciled, can become problematic. The way this plays out in Australia’s Shipwreck Coast and the wider Great Ocean Road region, especially the implications for community resilience, is the focus. Emphasis is placed on the vulnerability of peripheral coastal areas to development that withdraws from destination endowments, yet fails to provide commensurate economic yield as a suitable trade-off. This is obvious where tourism intensification has led to concerns about the breach of normative carrying capacities. Temporal overtourism driven by seasonal overcrowding is countenanced as emblematic of tourism in the Anthropocene where focus tends to be largely growth-oriented, with much less attention given to bolstering social-ecological resilience, especially community resilience. At stake is the resilience of regional areas and their communities, who in the absence of garnering commensurate economic returns from tourism expansion find themselves in social and ecological deficit.

Keywords:

• Community resilience
• overtourism
• temporal overtourism
• seasonality
• social-ecological resilience

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Joseph M. Cheer

Joseph M. Cheer is board member, International Geography Union (IGU) Commission on Tourism and Leisure and Global Change and Steering Committee Member Critical Tourism Studies Asia Pacific. He was formally based at Monash University, Australia, and is currently at the Center for Tourism Research (CTR), Wakayama University, Japan. His research draws from transdisciplinary perspectives, especially human/economic geography, cultural anthropology and political economy. As a former practitioner and practicing consultant and analyst, he is focused on research to practice with an emphasis on resilience building, sustainability and social justice in tourism.

Claudio Milano

Claudio Milano achieved a PhD in Social and Cultural Anthropology from Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. He is a Lecturer and Researcher in Tourism at Ostelea School of Tourism & Hospitality, University of Lleida (Barcelona, Spain). He has published in international peer-reviewed scientific journals and he is member of several international anthropological and tourism research networks. He recently contributed to a study on overtourism in European Union funded by the European Parliament as team member of a consortium. His research interests are focused on sociocultural impacts of tourism and the relation between tourism, social resistance and protest movements in rural and urban areas.

Marina Novelli

Marina Novelli is a geographer with a background in economics. She is an internationally renowned tourism policy, planning and development expert and Professor of Tourism and International Development at the School of Sport and Service Management, which is an Affiliate Member of the UN World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO). She is Academic Lead for the University’s Responsible Futures’ Research and Enterprise Agenda, which is aimed at fostering internal and external interdisciplinary research and consultancy collaborations. She has advised on numerous international cooperation and research assignments funded by International Development Organisations (IDOs) such as: The World Bank, the European Union, The UN (UNESCO, UNIDO, UNWTO), the Commonwealth Secretariat, National Ministries and Tourism Boards, Regional Development Agencies and NGOs.