Tourism Geographies Podcast

Tourism Geographies
  • 5.0 (1)
  • LEISURE
  • UPDATED WEEKLY

This podcast discusses recent research published in Tourism Geographies: An International Journal of Tourism Space, Place and Environment. We talk with authors about their research contributions to share the why and how of their research. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

  1. Tourism, creative destruction, and the political economy of urban transformation in Beirut

    5D AGO

    Tourism, creative destruction, and the political economy of urban transformation in Beirut

    https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2025.2580393Abstract This paper combines Schumpeter’s creative destruction concept with Harvey’s urban capital circulation theory to investigate the influence of political-economic structures and crisis settings on the development cycles of urban tourism destinations. Using Beirut, Lebanon as a case study, the analysis shows how Beirut’s post-civil war trajectory triggered waves of creative destruction, driven by real estate, tourism, and creative industries, that unfolded in sub-waves across Beirut’s neighbourhoods, reshaping the urban tourism landscape. The relocation of tourism hubs acted as spatial fixes fuelled by cycles of post-crisis capital influx and by tensions between creativity and destruction by overaccumulation. Despite variations in the sources and motivations behind capital injections, their impact on the urban destination’s social and spatial fabric collectively led to creative destruction. The analysis reveals the path-dependent and temporally sensitive nature of urban tourism development patterns, which in the case of Beirut was structurally entangled with broader capital dynamics. Tourism plays a dual role as both a mechanism for advancing capital interests and a source of disruption within capitalist urban transformation processes. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    35 min
  2. ‘Las Vegas’ lights don’t shine here:’ Tourism placemaking in the Historic Westside

    MAR 6

    ‘Las Vegas’ lights don’t shine here:’ Tourism placemaking in the Historic Westside

    https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2025.2584356 Abstract This study focuses on Las Vegas’ Historic Westside and analyzes how prolonged historical geographies of segregation shaped the area’s tourism present and future. Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, railway and highway development adjacent to this neighborhood led to redlining and discriminatory practices. While the area experienced a cultural and economic revival in the mid-twentieth century—with Jackson Street being nicknamed ‘The Black Strip’—it later faced decline and exclusion from the city’s tourism economy due to systemic racism. While research has explored revitalization processes in Black communities, few works have specifically examined their role as destinations. We conducted a qualitative study among Westside residents, small business owners, politicians, and activists to uncover tourism placemaking processes. Moreover, we analyzed archival material, such as newspaper articles, oral histories, and public documents from the City of Las Vegas. While community members expressed their desire to share their rich Civil Rights history and cultural heritage with tourists, they acknowledged the area’s socioeconomic challenges as an obstacle. On the one hand, territorial stigmatization causes tourists to be discouraged from visiting the area due to incorrect perceptions about crime and violence. On the other hand, revitalization strategies that could improve the area’s reputation and attract more visitors might result in harmful forms of gentrification and enhance undesirable kinds of ‘poverty tourism.’ One of this work’s main contributions is the analysis of the relationship between a difficult past and a tourism-oriented future, heard in the voices of those who are often ignored but directly affected by planning strategies and policies. Our findings aim to encourage both academics and professionals working with communities that experience spatial racism to undertake a historical geography approach rooted in decolonial and Critical Race Theory. In line with recent research on Black travel and regenerative tourism, this study advocates for a shift in power dynamics that focuses on inclusion, co-governance, and participatory practices. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    35 min
  3. Justice in tourism geographies

    FEB 27

    Justice in tourism geographies

    https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2025.2594713Abstract Tourism geographers have long addressed the spatiality of injustice, taking concern with the struggles over access to resources and capital that shape inequities in tourism-dominant landscapes. And yet, the substance of justice, that is, what we really mean by ‘justice’ is rarely discussed, with tourism geographers possessing a hesitancy to engage in the constitution of justice, preferring practice-informed ‘bottom up’ identifications. This article argues that there is a requirement to openly discuss the substance of justice, to consider the specificities of claims in relation to one another, avoid extreme relativism whereby all claims to justice are equally valid without grounds for critique, and steer clear of any reductions in its political and analytical utility. To facilitate consideration of a distinctly spatial reading of justice for tourism geographers, we propose a framework to consider injustice as governance-informed situated, patterned and collective in ways that inhibit self-development and self-determination. We end with an articulation of three ways through which the proposed framing brings benefits to tourism geographers: (1) Proposes a distinctly spatial reading of justice, (2) Articulates what might constitute injustice, beyond the universalism/pluriversality binary, (3) Facilitates consideration of the forms of justice worthy of attention. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    26 min
  4. Counter-narrative place-making

    FEB 20

    Counter-narrative place-making

    https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2025.2593978Abstract Dominant narratives in tourism shape perceptions of place, often marginalising certain localities, people, and perspectives. This study examines digital counter-narrative place-making in rural communities and the equalising possibilities it can provide. We combine Doreen Massey’s relational theory of place with Hanna Meretoja’s dialogical narrative theory, following a dialogical narrative approach. Empirically, the study draws on a digital place-making project conducted in Ardgour, Scotland, and the Upper Kemijoki river area, Lapland. Utilising audio tours co-created with the local communities, we explore how the local narratives challenge and reframe prevailing tourist representations and culturally dominant narratives, fostering recognition of different perspectives, extending both residents’ and visitors’ sense of the possible, and enhancing equality and justice in tourism. Although community-created audio tours do not have the reach of dominant narratives and have other limitations in their equalising possibilities, they can establish deeper connections to place. Our relational theorisation of counter-narrative place-making contributes to theory in both tourism geography and the wider field of human geography, and our method of analysis can give new analytical ideas to both. A further contribution is our focus on the counter-narratives of rural communities, which has been lacking in previous tourism studies. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    25 min
  5. From Mauss’ gift theory to regenerative tourism

    FEB 13

    From Mauss’ gift theory to regenerative tourism

    https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2025.2604082Abstract What if the future of sustainable tourism lies not in transactions, but in the ancient wisdom of reciprocity and relational ethics? This conceptual paper applies Jaakkola’s theory adaptation approach by revising tourism concepts through the lens of Indigenous worldviews and anthropological Mauss’s (1925) theory of Gift and Counter-Gift. Rather than proposing a new theory, the paper reframes existing ideas to highlight relational ethics over transactional logics. By doing so, the article explores how tourism can benefit from understanding the deep social bonds created through reciprocity and contributes to developing the concept of regenerative tourism, while echoing ongoing Indigenous research. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    34 min
  6. Advancing accessible tourism geographies

    FEB 6

    Advancing accessible tourism geographies

    https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14616688.2025.2593982 Abstract This collection advances geographic approaches to accessible tourism through six contributions that collectively double the published resources on this topic within Tourism Geographies. Accessible tourism enables people with access requirements to participate in tourism with independence, equity, and dignity. Despite the growth of accessible tourism research, geographic, spatial, and/or mobilities approaches have been conspicuously absent. Thus, the contributions of this collection include new toolkits to support more inclusive and co-designed accessible tourism (Dickson et al., Citation2024; Lu et al., Citation2025; Wan et al., Citation2024) and greater conceptual depth related to embodied tourism (im)mobilities (Chan et al., Citation2025; Cockburn-Wootten et al., Citation2025; Farkic et al., Citation2025). Progressing towards accessible tourism’s aim of seamless and equitable tourism experiences, geographic perspectives will have an important role to play in addressing the crucial research gaps that remain: destination-scale analyses, whole-of-journey approaches, and inclusive stakeholder-led methodologies. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    41 min
  7. Reshaping landscapes and human–environment relationships through geotourism

    JAN 29

    Reshaping landscapes and human–environment relationships through geotourism

    https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2025.2575314Abstract This study examines how the designation of Batur as Indonesia’s first UNESCO Global Geopark in 2012 has reshaped volcanic landscapes, socio-economic structures, and cultural life in Bali. Drawing on the framework of Landscape Political Geology, it traces how geological forces, spiritual cosmologies, and global heritage regimes converge to transform both land and livelihoods. Using a mixed-methods approach—combining qualitative interviews, secondary statistical data, and documentary analysis—the study reveals how the geopark has generated new opportunities—particularly in tourism and service employment—while simultaneously marginalizing small-scale farmers and miners, restricting ritual access to land, and intensifying governance tensions between state authorities, external investors, and village communities. These processes have reconfigured Batur’s material and symbolic landscapes, shifting its status from a sacred mountain–lake complex to a commodified tourism asset, yet one that remains deeply embedded in local cosmologies. The study contributes to debates on the politics of nature and tourism geographies by showing how geoparks operate as contested arenas where geology, power, and culture are continuously renegotiated. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    31 min
  8. Indigenous-settler relations at work in Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park’s tourism industry

    JAN 22

    Indigenous-settler relations at work in Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park’s tourism industry

    https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2025.2562976Abstract The Australian settler government has repeatedly promised Indigenous peoples (Anangu) of Uluru-Kata Tjuta National Park that they will benefit from settler government’s use of their lands as a significant tourism destination, yet the Anangu community of Uluru remains one of the poorest communities in Australia. This article utilises historical analysis and qualitative interviews with Anangu, Parks staff, and tourism staff to chart key dynamics in the relationship between the tourism industry and Anangu over 39 years of Joint Management in the Park. We show how the prioritisation of settler logics of tourism and work over Anangu benefit is not just an arbitrary cultural decision meted out in day-to-day interpersonal relations but is built into the geographies and temporalities of work in the Park. Highlighting how Anangu benefit is deferred through settler logics of work draws attention to the possibility for alternatives that are founded on Indigenous lifeworlds. This article’s analytic focus on quotidian, relational dynamics in intercultural contexts brings insights from Indigenous and settler colonial studies into tourism research and demonstrates a new way of identifying opportunities for transformation in Indigenous tourism industries in settler colonies. From a practical perspective, these insights underscore the importance of developing shared understandings of what meaningful and good “work” is in intercultural industries and highlights possible interventions into entrenched dynamics between Indigenous and settler peoples in these contexts. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

    33 min
See All (143)

About

This podcast discusses recent research published in Tourism Geographies: An International Journal of Tourism Space, Place and Environment. We talk with authors about their research contributions to share the why and how of their research. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Information

  • Creator
    Tourism Geographies
  • Years Active
    2022 - 2026
  • Episodes
    143
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © Tourism Geographies
  • Show Website
    Tourism Geographies Podcast

You Might Also Like