The “war over tourism”: challenges to sustainable tourism in the tourism academy after COVID-19

Abstract

COVID-19 is widely recognised as a challenge or even a game-changer for travel and tourism. It has also been a catalyst to serious debate in the “tourism academy,” as revealed by a discussion on TRINET Tourism Information Network via email in May 2020. The catalyst to this debate was an email by academic Jim Butcher announcing his work entitled “the war on tourism,” published in an online magazine. Presenting a binary between industry recovery and reform, Butcher’s article denounced a body of tourism work he portrayed as hostile to the industry and as using COVID-19 as an opportunity to attack it. He argued that this resulted in harm to tourism businesses, tourism workers and ordinary tourists. These TRINET discussions worked to present a binary in schools of thought, divided by being either for the tourism industry or against it. This analysis explains how advocates of industry rapid recovery stand opposed to wider efforts to reform tourism to be more ethical, responsible and sustainable. The struggle concerns both the proper role of tourism and tourism academics. Outcomes from this debate have repercussions for the development of the discipline, the education of tourism students and the future of tourism practices.

Keywords:

• Tourism education
• sustainable tourism
• responsible tourism
• boosterism in tourism
• critical tourism
• COVID-19

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Freya Higgins-Desbiolles

Freya Higgins-Desbiolles is a Senior Lecturer in Tourism Management, UniSA Business, University of South Australia. Her work focuses on social justice, human rights and sustainability issues in tourism, hospitality and events. She has worked with communities, non-governmental organisations and businesses that seek to harness tourism for sustainable and equitable futures. She is one of the Founding members of the Tourism Alert and Action Forum. She has won awards for engaged research, media engagement and research and teaching excellence. She was honoured as one of 50 “most awesome” tourism scholars in 2018 by the Women Academics in Tourism network.