Tourism Places: Visitor Economies and Mobilities in an Age of Crisis

This symposium is co-hosted by the Future Economies Research Centre (Manchester Centre for Economic Policy), the Institute of Place Management and the Transforming Places knowledge platform in the Business Transformations Research Centre at Manchester Metropolitan University.

Its aim is to bring together leading scholars, practitioners, policy makers and activists to think through and debate the complex challenges facing visitor economies and tourism, as destinations worldwide emerge from the disruption and uncertainty caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and confront new and more pressing uncertainties.

The two-day symposium invites panellists and participants alike to rethink and reimagine the places where tourism ‘happens’ and their political economy, in the light of multiple, intersecting crises and the threats and opportunities these pose to human and ecological wellbeing.

Day 1: Tourism and the Visitor Economy: New Thinking and Strategies for an age of Crisis

Chairs: Dr Raoul Bianchi & Dr Julia Jeyacheya

This day will address both the future of visitor economies and the nature of tourism/hospitality work within them. Following a keynote by anthropologist and renown scholar of urban (tourism), social movements and crisis, Dr Claudio Milano (Universitat de Barcelona) the first panel will address issues concerning policy and governance for equitable and sustainable visitor economies, inclusive tourism business models and citizen engagement in tourism planning. Following a second keynote by renowned scholar of tourism employment, Professor Tom Baum, University of Strathclyde, the second panel will address transformations and injustices in tourism labour practices and the implications of chronic, overlapping crises and digital transformations for the future of hospitality work.

Day 2: Making Tourism Places: Multiplicity, Mobilities and Emotions

Chairs: Professor Tim Edensor and Dr Maarja Kaaristo

Day 2 focuses is dedicated to developing the theory and practice of placemaking, place management and place marketing. First, we will be addressing mobilities, the notion of which is important for better understanding tourism. Professor Scott Cohen (University of Surrey) will be discussing lifestyle mobilities and digital nomadism in tourism destinations. The first panel will then focus on the ways how tourists move and discuss intersections of tourism transport and transport tourism, asking how to attract tourists to more sustainable modes of transport. Following the keynote delivered by Professor Uma Kothari (University of Manchester), addressing travelling, memory, and place in a postcolonial context, the second panel seeks to examine tourism places as affective occurrences focusing on a variety of negative emotions that are sometimes evoked by tourism or in tourism places.