Social issues and emerging debates in tourism and hospitality

Introduction

The tourism and hospitality industry has earned global recognition thanks to its unprecedented growth prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. As tourism comes to play an increasingly important role in people’s daily lives and modern society, motivations for travel are no longer limited to pleasure and relaxation. Instead, tourism reflects diverse travel motivations including health and wellbeing (e.g. yoga tourism) (Dillette et al., 2019), human rights (e.g. social tourism) (McCabe & Qiao, 2020), business development (Tichaawa, 2017), education (Fu et al., 2018), and dark tourism (Sun & Lv, 2021). Darbellay and Stock (2012) accordingly described tourism as a complex interdisciplinary topic. The maturing field of tourism research has also birthed affiliated research streams such as tourism geographies, tourism economics, and tourism and medical interventions (e.g. Wen et al., 2022).

Tourism holds growing socioeconomic importance worldwide (Darbellay & Stock, 2012). Relevant literature has closely examined the positive outcomes of tourism and hospitality development for destinations, local communities, and tourists; however, researchers have also begun to consider tourism’s role in and effects on society through some unique lenses. For instance, the nexus between tourism and peace has been discussed (Farmaki, 2017) in relation to justice (Farmaki & Stergiou, 2021). The association between tourism and death (Pratt et al., 2019) expands upon the role of tourism in everyday life from a somewhat unconventional perspective. As an example, the emergent topic of suicide tourism has been discussed through views of mental health (Zhi et al., 2019), human rights (Yu et al., 2020), and theory (Christou, 2021). This special issue presents a collection of high-quality research involving emerging debates in tourism and hospitality to shed new light on the discipline.

It is worth noting that the tourism industry’s contributions are not uniformly positive; tourism and hospitality may generate social harm in addition to – and even alongside – its myriad benefits. Hospitality and tourism businesses can unknowingly contribute to human trafficking, logistically and otherwise (Aston et al., 2022; Paraskevas & Brookes, 2018). As an example, Romo (2017) reported on the case of Karla Jacinto, who was forced into 4 years of sexual slavery at age 12 in Mexico City as a victim of trafficking for sex tourism. Other legal and social issues warrant attention from tourism academics and practitioners as well, such as racial discrimination (Hudson et al., 2020), socially deviant tourism activities (Su et al., 2022), and emerging controversies including the legalization of recreational cannabis (Santaella-Tenorio et al., 2020). More interdisciplinary investigations are needed to profile potential threats to the tourism industry and identify solutions. Doing so will promote the industry’s sustainable development while raising public awareness, hopefully to the benefit of all involved parties. We, both humans and scholars, have a responsibility to consider how we can vanquish the “dark side” of tourism and hospitality. This topic represents another aim of this special issue.

About this special issue

This special issue comprises seven full research papers and two research notes, each with important theoretical and practical implications. All papers pave the way for future efforts targeting broad populations. The first two papers focus on drug tourism. One addresses recreational cannabis consumption in South Africa and its role in local tourism development by reviewing best practices in cannabis decriminalization and its moral grounds in tourism settings. The authors specifically detail the decriminalization – tourism nexus for governments and tourism practitioners in African destinations. The other paper explores drug tourism along India’s Hummus Trail. Qualitative findings reflect Israeli tourists’ socio-psychological backgrounds, desire for escape and transformation, and drug consumption. The authors specifically frame tourists’ decision making using Schmoll’s tourism consumer choice model and propose spiritual tourism experiences as alternatives to drug use along the Hummus Trail.

The third and fourth papers revolve around human trafficking in tourism and hospitality. The author of the third paper is a law expert whose research focuses on human trafficking. This paper revealed that the tourism industry has sought to combat human trafficking through an array of local, regional, and international initiatives. The current regulatory anti-trafficking framework is argued to be adequate to address human trafficking in the tourism industry. The fourth paper investigated how chain hotel employees in Sweden fight sex trafficking. Semi-structured interviews were held to examine employees’ relationships with external stakeholders and environmental aspects (political and legal factors, economic, socio-cultural and health). Results showed that a lack of communication, cooperation, and autonomy hinder hotel employees’ abilities to recognize and prevent sex trafficking. The authors advocated for stronger interdisciplinary collaboration to prevent sex trafficking in tourism and hospitality and stressed the need to empower chain hotel employees to work with external stakeholders to better address this problem.

The fifth and sixth papers address tourism and suicide. The fifth adopted opportunity theory to examine hotel employees’ and managers’ opinions about hotel suicide. The authors applied an exploratory qualitative design to investigate undesirable events in hotels and uncover hoteliers’ perspectives on preventing suicide and addressing the after-effects. Sixteen face-to-face, in-depth interviews were held with 16 hoteliers in Denizli, Turkey. Data were obtained via scenarios drawn from newspaper articles on hotel suicide cases. Although hoteliers were uncomfortable with the possibility of suicide in their hotels, they agreed that this situation might be unavoidable because they cannot intervene in private rooms. Hotels were found to largely meet their obligations, such as registering guests, verifying identities, and sending instant identity reports to police; however, staff rarely took steps to prevent guest suicide. The sixth paper, a research note, critically discussed whether physician-assisted suicide tourism aligns with tourism as a field. Physician-assisted suicide tourism was found not to have a current place in the discipline given tourism’s definition and destinations’ legal and ethical regulations. Empirical studies on physician-assisted suicide tourism were therefore recommended.

The last three papers deal with other emerging topics in tourism and hospitality. The seventh paper explored the impact of sustainable human resource management (HRM) on tourism workers’ social harms based on several theoretical perspectives. Results indicated that social harms follow from social learning. These harms also stem from staff mimicking deviant tourist behaviours, affecting stakeholders within and outside tourism workplaces. Sustainable HRM practices that influence social learning forces can reduce social harms. This study developed a multidisciplinary theoretical framework around research and practice involving critical social issues related to tourism employment.

The eighth paper referred to the integrated threat theory and applied an exploratory sequential mixed method approach to assess how tourism affects residents of the African archipelago of Seychelles. Twenty-eight in-depth interviews revealed residents’ perceptions of negative tourism-related consequences. The authors also collected data from 281 respondents through a quantitative survey. Residents cited restricted access to beaches near hotels, stressed public infrastructure, economic leakages, and poor employment prospects as adverse effects of tourism. Even so, residents still supported tourism and had favourable perceptions of visitors, thus limiting intergroup anxiety and negative stereotypes.

The last paper (another research note) reflected on direct and indirect management strategies to reduce visitor non-compliance towards off-trail walking behaviour in national parks. The authors suggested that national park managers first use indirect management tactics before shifting to authoritative tactics to address visitor non-compliance. The authors further recommended that the effectiveness of direct and indirect management be tested among different groups of non-compliant visitors to determine optimal managerial tactics.

Concluding remarks

The editorial team would like to thank all 18 authors for their commitment to exploring these unconventional topics. The team especially appreciates contributors’ hard work and patience during the review process. We are grateful to the reviewers for their valuable feedback throughout multiple rounds of review. We would like to express our gratitude to Professor Metin Kozak for his support in assembling this special issue and for his thoughtful advice about its compilation. Professor Kozak’s guidance also enabled the editorial team to focus on quality, even though the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted work and life during this special edition. Finally, we would like to recognize our colleagues whose manuscripts were not included in this special issue; we hope your papers find a home in another journal, and we are open to future collaborations.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jun Wen

Jun Wen is a lecturer of tourism and service marketing in the School of Business and Law, Edith Cowan University, Australia. Dr. Wen’s key research areas include global health, tourists with psychological disorders, vulnerable tourist behaviours, and travel medicine. Dr. Wen was recognized as one of Australia’s National Top 40 young researchers in 2020 and 2021.

Fang Meng

Fang Meng is a Professor in the School of Hotel, Restaurant, and Tourism Management, University of South Carolina, USA. Her research focuses on tourism destination marketing and management, tourism economic development, tourist behavior/experiences, and international tourism.

Tianyu Ying is an Associate Professor in the Department of Tourism and Hotel Management, Zhejiang University, China. His research interests lie in the Chinese outbound tourist market, information elements in the demand and supply sides of the tourism system, and sustainability issues in tourism from a social perspective. He also has a methodological interest in applying social network analysis to travel- and tourism-related topics.

Tianyu Ying

Tianyu Ying is an Associate Professor in the Department of Tourism and Hotel Management, Zhejiang University, China. His research interests lie in the Chinese outbound tourist market, information elements in the demand and supply sides of the tourism system, and sustainability issues in tourism from a social perspective. He also has a methodological interest in applying social network analysis to travel- and tourism-related topics.