TEFI 11 What’s Tourism got to do with it? Virtual Conference

With seven decades of growth in international tourist arrivals, there are inimical and urgent concerns regarding the economic, social, cultural and environmental impacts of tourism. Overtourism, the climate crisis, the availability and quality of tourism work, and concerns regarding the capacity of communities to absorb tourism, attract both media and public attention, highlighting the unsustainable nature of the current industrial models of tourism. At the same time, mobile workers, migrants, tourists, daytrippers, lifestyle nomads and travellers are challenging traditional notions of tourism, generating new kinds of values and new models of exchange in tourism.

With this in mind, and in support of TEFI’s ambition to move beyond business as usual, this conference seeks to radically challenge and debate the purpose of tourism. Purpose is what motivates us. It’s the reason why we do things, why tourism operators continue to open their doors, why workers turn up for their shifts, and why tourism organisations and governments do what they do. Excavating our purpose and those of others provides an opportunity to find common ground.

Purposeful tourism is about creating sustainable places to live, work and visit, based on creating value that is more than the pursuit of profit. Purpose is intentional and requires a commitment to iterative learning and reflexivity about one’s decisions, behaviours and choices. A purposeful tourist must be honest and demonstrate restraint regarding the amount and types of travel one chooses to embark on. A for purpose business strives to deliver more than just profit, often delivering social, cultural, economic and environmental benefits because it's the right thing to do. The goal is to reflect on the transformative role of tourism to people, places and the planet. The peripatetic lifestyle of academicians is troublesome and comes at a cost, and if our work is to have posterity, we must honestly and critically reflect on the values informing our practices and respond radically. As such, we challenge the academic community to consider ways to promote purposeful travel and purposeful work.

Tourism education is at the forefront of this challenge as we, educators and practitioners, critically seek ways to enhance tourism practice, and through our radical actions, challenge the collapse of biodiversity and the silencing of host communities affected by the various impacts of tourism. It is within this context we invite contributors to critically and radically examine purpose, and the potential it holds to facilitate the transformation to a less harmful kind of tourism.

Abstracts (max. 250 words) due 1^st May 2020

Notification of Acceptance 10^th May 2020

Extended abstracts (max. 1000 words) due 20^th May 2020