Mobilities and sustainable tourism: path-creating or path-dependent relationships?

Abstract

This paper advances understanding of tourism mobility trajectories and outcomes by discussing if the trajectory of tourism mobility is path dependent or path creating and, therefore, whether tourism is locked into existing sub optimal pathways, or is there scope for creating significantly more sustainable future pathways. Tourism mobilities are understood in the context of overall shifts in corporeal mobilities, especially the impact of migration on networks and VFR tourism. Four main tourism mobilities drivers are considered -technology, markets, cultures of mobility and state intervention -but their impact on mobilities is contested. The concepts of enfolded and substitutable mobilities, and of scapes and flows, are explained and used as intermediary concepts for engaging with the key relationships influencing tourism mobilities. Path dependency is shown to be backed by existing technologies, cultures and markets, together with deeply embedded scapes and substantial investments in existing infrastructure. Trends towards path creation are shown to depend on technological breakthroughs, including virtual tourism, alternative life styles bringing cultural change, market conditions brought about by possible sustained high oil prices, and state intervention leading to behavioural change. The concept of 'path-dependent path-creation" is discussed along with the powerful influence of uncertainties and unknown future tipping-points.

Twenty-five years of sustainable tourism and the Journal of Sustainable Tourism: looking back and moving forward

“…This suggests that people's attempts to shape more sustainable practices (path creation) occur in the context of previously established pathways (path dependence), such as previously established institutional rules and social norms. In this journal, Williams (2013) considers how established social and consumption routines mean that tourists are often wedded to the consumption preferences of car travel and low-cost airlines. He also highlights how tourism industry decisions about sustainability are constrained by the need for financial returns from previous investments, such as from tourist accommodation and airports.…”

“…Hall (2013) contends that this dominant paradigm favours certain behavioural approaches to sustainable tourism, and also encourages ignorance of other ways of "framing" consumer behaviour. More researchers now contend that consumer behaviour should be considered in relation to wider social relations and socio-technical structures, including meanings, technologies, institutions, governance regimes and systems of provision (Hall, 2016;Williams, 2013).…”

Beyond Eurocentrism in tourism: a paradigm shift to mobilities

“…Tourism is thus denied the status of a privileged form of movement and seen as enmeshed spatially, temporally and socially (Williams, 2013) with other kinds of mobilities, including everyday mundane ones (Edensor, 2007), virtual and imaginative ones (Urry, 2002), and with the movements of objects, capital and information (Hannam et al, 2006). Viewed as an everyday activity (Edensor, 2007;Larsen, 2008), tourism is uncoupled from the quest for the exotic Other, the quintessential motive of modernist Western tourists (MacCannell, 1976).…”

“…The mobilities paradigm helps to merge the study of "tourism", conventionally perceived as a distinct, extraordinary phenomenon, involving a round-trip in quest of novelty and change (Cohen, 2004, p. 21-23), with local, national and transnational corporeal mobilities (Hall, 2005a;Williams, 2013), such as pilgrimages, visiting friends and relatives (VFR), second-home commuting, and travel for education or medical treatment, into a bundle of "discretionary mobilities," namely travel undertaken voluntarily with the disposable income left after basic necessities of life have been covered. This merger is of particular importance in the study of tourism from the emerging regions, where voluminous forms of discretionary domestic and regional corporeal mobility have received a relative lack of attention in the literature in comparison to the study of long-haul international 'Western' tourism (Ghimire, 2001;Towner, 1995).…”

Immigration and the competitiveness of an island tourism destination: a knowledge-based reputation analysis of Lanzarote, Canary Islands

“…The tourism sector is also deeply affected by migration, and the consequences and effects of this phenomenon are topics of interest for many stakeholders in the industry. Moreover, human mobility is linked to a complex and changing field of movements, which have significant implications for understanding sustainable tourism (Williams, 2013).…”