Special Interest Groups on:
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ATLAS Special Interest Group
Urban Tourism Research
The contact persons for this research group are:
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Before the COVID 19 pandemic struck cities were seeing strong increases in visitor numbers. This can be attributed to cities being easily accessible via low-cost-carriers, but also due to the growth of business tourism and the increasing attention of people for cities as places of leisure. Cities, on their part, have also developed, and now offer a wider variety of hospitality and leisure experiences than ever for visitors and residents (e.g. due to Airbnb and the rise of facilities catering for the ‘experience economy’).
The growth did come at a cost though. The resurgence of the critical discussion regarding negative tourism impacts and externalities in the form of overtourism, can be at least partially attributed to the experiences in often-visited (European) city destinations. Most initial academic contributions on overtourism built on earlier work on tourism impacts as they described the issues that came with tourism and including the ways to deal with this, often using single-case studies. However, more recently, more conceptual contributions have been suggested, related to concepts such as degrowth, tourism transformations, mobilities, city hospitality or placemaking.
As tourism seeks to rebuild after the pandemic, cities can be useful places to experiment and investigate. With its wide range of stakeholders, diverse offerings and activities, cities are well suited to act as incubators for innovations in tourism, thus advancing knowledge on both tourism development in cities and beyond, but also on life in cities and urban planning.
Within the Urban Tourism Special Interest Group we seek to contribute to the academic debate on urban tourism, and build relationships with an eye on joint projects that may can help with knowledge development. More information with regards to our activities in 2021 will follow soon!
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The activities of this SIG in 2021/2022 focused on maintaining and strengthening the SIG. The primary activity of the year was the first in-person meeting of the SIG, which took place in Helsingborg, Sweden on 8-9 June 2022. The theme of the meeting was” Rethinking Urban Tourism Development in post pandemic times” With around 20 participants and 13 presentations, interesting insights were shared. The presentations dealt with the following themes: • Tourism and quality of life in cities • Over- and under-tourism and tourist flows • Sustainable, green and creative cities • Resilience and city management • Spatial and social theory • Impacts of COVID • Post-COVID tourism The presentations provided useful insights and stimulated interesting debate, which helped focus the research agenda. The meeting, which was very well organised, also contained a very nice social programme, which included an international ‘Tura’ Dinner Cruise between Sweden and Denmark and an insightful stroll through the city. In addition, the SIG organises a special track during the 2022 Annual conference in Cork. Rather than inviting a set of presentations, the track will entail an interactive workshop titled ”Dereliction, duty and delightful destination - taking a regenerative placemaking approach to vacancy in Cork”. This workshop, hosted by Donagh Horgan, brings together participants of the conference with local stakeholders to look at what a regenerative approach can achieve in practice. Research in this group will continue to focus on new paradigms for urban tourism post-COVID, managing mobilities, de-growth and resilience, urban ‘co-production’, sustainability and liveability, urban tourism in the metropolitan region, deconcentration and visitor flow management as well as experience creation. There are plans to edit a special issue of a journal based on input from the different conferences and streams of the past 1.5 years. The SIG also seeks to bring together researchers to converge on a topic hopefully resulting in a funded European project and to stimulate further interaction and research.
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The main activities of this SIG in 2020/2021 have been centred around its revival and transformation from the earlier Cities and National Capitals SIG run by Professor Robert Maitland. The new Co-ordinators Ko Koens and Melanie Smith have broadened the scope of the SIG to include all research that pertains to Urban Tourism and not only national capitals. This includes (post)overtourism strategies; changing mobility practices as a result of COVID-19; sustainable planning and social wellbeing; deconcentration of tourism and visitor flow management; the urban periphery and off-the-beaten track experiences.
The first meeting of the new SIG group took place on 3rd and 4th June 2021 with 22 presentations by 31 participants. The presentations were grouped into the following main themes:
• Tourism and quality of life in cities
• Over- and under-tourism and tourist flows
• Sustainable, green and creative cities
• Resilience and city management
• Spatial and social theory
• Impacts of COVID
• Post-COVID tourism
The presentations stimulated some interesting, lively and critical debates which helped to move the research agenda forward.
The second main activity was to organise a one-day specialist stream at the ATLAS Annual Conference in Prague with around 8 presentations, which included the themes of experience creation, new technology, sustainability, gastronomy and post-COVID strategies.
Future research in this group will focus on new paradigms for urban tourism post-COVID, managing mobilities, de-growth and resilience, urban ‘co-production’, sustainability and livability, deconcentration and visitor flow management as well as experience creation.
There are plans to edit a special issue of a journal after the annual conference as well as organising another SIG meeting in 2022, which is likely to take place in Sweden. It has also been discussed that this SIG will try to pilot a new ATLAS initiative which involves creating educational packages for students and practitioners via an international publisher.
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Context
In the years prior to the COVID 19 pandemic, tourism urban areas had been on the rise, as tourist numbers to cities increased strongly, especially compared to other types of tourism destinations. This growth may be attributed to cities being easily accessible via low-cost-carriers, but also due to the growth of business tourism and the increasing interest of people in cities as places of leisure. Cities themselves have also developed and now offer a wider variety of hospitality and leisure experiences than ever for visitors and residents (e.g. due to Airbnb and the rise of facilities catering to the ‘experience economy’). Experienced and repeat visitors to cities may be searching for more than just cultural sightseeing in the form of authentic, interactive or creative activities, preferably in local neigbourhoods.
The growth of urban tourism has not been without problems though. The resurgence of the critical discussion regarding negative tourism impacts and externalities in the form of overtourism, can be at least partially attributed to the experiences mentioned above in often-visited (European) city destinations. Some of this is related to encroachment on local neighbourhoods and lifestyles, the growth of the night-time economy and the development of mass cultural tourism in certain areas of cities. At the same time, the (over)dependence on tourism as a source of income in certain cities became acutely visible during the COVID 19 outbreak. Even as tourists are slowly starting to return, it is not clear whether they will be attracted to cities in the same numbers. Cities by their very nature will make maintaining distance much harder than more rural areas and in the Summer of 2020, important tourist cities like Barcelona, Lisbon and Porto already faced local outbreaks.
Such developments impact on the nature and possibilities for future urban tourism, and research is required to better understand such changes. In addition, research on urban tourism can also be useful to tourism academia as a whole. With its wide range of stakeholders, diverse offerings and activities, cities are well suited to act as incubators for innovations in tourism, thus advancing knowledge on both tourism development in cities and beyond, but also on life in cities and urban planning. Indeed, concepts such as degrowth, tourism transformations, mobilities, city hospitality, and placemaking all were developed at least partially in an urban context. Cities are also the focus of key debates about sustainability, quality or life and wellbeing, as well as the development of smart solutions. It is therefore not unreasonable to suggest that future ideas on tourism post-COVID 19 also will arise from work on urban tourism.
Potential topics for exploration include:
• Sustainable urban tourism design
• Business tourism, conferences and exhibitions
• The contribution of tourism to liveable cities
• SMART urban tourism
• Urban tourism and degrowth
• Urban tourism and everyday life
• Placemaking in the context of urban tourism
• Tourism and creative cities
• Cultural tourism and heritage in an urban setting
• Urban tourism transitions and transformation
• Participatory urban governance
• Urban tourism and resilience
• The impacts of Covid-19 and ways forward
• The role of politics and governance
• Overtourism in an urban context
• International comparisons of urban tourism
• Tourism as a development tool
• Festivals and events
• Urban tourism living labs
• The role of media, representations and reporting on urban tourism
Aims and objectives
The newly formed Special Interest Group New Urban Tourism aims to establish itself as a thriving place for researchers with an interest in urban tourism to share and discuss their work and generate new knowledge on the topic. It seeks to do so by providing a safe space, for advanced, but also early-career researchers and PhDs.
The objectives for the SIG are:
• Stimulate international discussion and collaboration by acting as a network for interested researchers
• Engaging with industry stakeholders and non-governmental movements to ensure research is grounded in the lived reality of cities and provides meaningful empirical research
• Lead to academic output through the organisation of seminars, webinars and conferences, as well as coordinating special issues in academic journals or books.
• Support (groups of) researchers to create consortia that can bid for international funding
Annual work plan
Given the COVID 19 pandemic and the uncertainties it brings, it is difficult to provide a comprehensive annual work, but below is a provisional schedule:
September 2020 – Contact members of old SIG City and National Capital Tourism
September 2020 – ATLAS Webinar on Urban Tourism, also to soft launch Special Interest Group
Late 2020 – Call for papers for conference on the future of urban tourism, to be held Autumn 2021, also with an eye on coming to a special issue in a journal and/or book
Early 2021 – Host online webinar or, provide additional track with an event organised, preferably organised by another ATLAS SIG to stimulate cooperation
Autumn 2021 – Conference on future of urban tourism
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