The War Over Tourism Challenges To Sustainable Tourism in The Tourism Academy After COVID 19

Journal of Sustainable Tourism
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The “war over tourism”: challenges to sustainable

tourism in the tourism academy after COVID-19
Freya Higgins-Desbiolles
To cite this article: Freya Higgins-Desbiolles (2021) The “war over tourism”: challenges to
sustainable tourism in the tourism academy after COVID-19, Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 29:4,
551-569, DOI: 10.1080/09669582.2020.1803334
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JOURNAL OF SUSTAINABLE TOURISM
2021, VOL. 29, NO. 4, 551–569
https://doi.org/10.1080/09669582.2020.1803334
The “war over tourism”: challenges to sustainable tourism in

the tourism academy after COVID-19
Freya Higgins-Desbiolles
UniSA Business, University of South Australia, Adelaide, SA, Australia
ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

COVID-19 is widely recognised as a challenge or even a game-changer Received 26 May 2020
for travel and tourism. It has also been a catalyst to serious debate in Accepted 26 July 2020
the “tourism academy,” as revealed by a discussion on TRINET Tourism
KEYWORDS
Information Network via email in May 2020. The catalyst to this debate
Tourism education;
was an email by academic Jim Butcher announcing his work entitled sustainable tourism;
“the war on tourism,” published in an online magazine. Presenting a responsible tourism;
binary between industry recovery and reform, Butcher’s article boosterism in tourism;
denounced a body of tourism work he portrayed as hostile to the critical tourism; COVID-19
industry and as using COVID-19 as an opportunity to attack it. He
argued that this resulted in harm to tourism businesses, tourism workers
and ordinary tourists. These TRINET discussions worked to present a bin-
ary in schools of thought, divided by being either for the tourism indus-
try or against it. This analysis explains how advocates of industry rapid
recovery stand opposed to wider efforts to reform tourism to be more
ethical, responsible and sustainable. The struggle concerns both the
proper role of tourism and tourism academics. Outcomes from this
debate have repercussions for the development of the discipline, the
education of tourism students and the future of tourism practices.
Introduction
The coronavirus epidemic confronts us with something previously thought to be the impossible: the world
as we knew it has stopped turning, whole countries are in a lockdown, many of us are confined to our
zek,
homes facing an uncertain future in which, even if most of us survive, economic mega-crisis is likely (Zi
2020, p. 85).
The use of “war” as a metaphor in our popular discourse on various human endeavours is pro-
miscuously prolific, but nonetheless significant. On 4 May 2020, tourism scholar Jim Butcher
announced his article “the war on tourism” on TRINET Tourism Information Network. Some
debate ensued concerning the legitimacy of criticism of tourism and the imperative to foster
tourism recovery in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. While arguably this email dis-
cussion sparked by an online article could be dismissed as not particularly significant to tourism
scholarship, the critical analysis offered in this article will demonstrate that this single incident
revealed an important struggle. In fact, the “war on tourism” article was a popular rendition of
Butcher’s previous arguments presented in his book the New Moralisation of Tourism (2003) but
the article rang with heightened alarm in response to calls to transform tourism in the aftermath
of COVID-19.
CONTACT Freya Higgins-Desbiolles [email protected]

ß 2020 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
552 F. HIGGINS-DESBIOLLES
This TRINET discussion occurred in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic crisis which has
had an unprecedented impact on travel and tourism. In 2019–2020, the global crisis caused by
COVID-19 saw international borders around the world close, airplanes and other forms of trans-
port grounded, tourists forced to return home and people in many parts of the world locked
down and confined to their homes (Becker, 2020; Higgins-Desbiolles, 2020a). The crisis also had
wider implications for tourism as it led to socio-cultural and geo-strategic tensions as anti-
Chinese rhetoric and racism grew based on China as the place of origin and spread of the virus
(see Jamal & Budke, 2020). Some within the tourism academy saw such extraordinary circumstan-
ces as a moment to reflect on the lessons from this pause in tourism and travel and use it to
spark reform and transformations that place tourism on a more responsible and sustainable tra-
jectory (more below). Others within the academy called for tourism academics to support the
tourism industry in developing recovery strategies that could reignite stalled economies and
restart tourism enterprises leading to a return to “business as usual” as soon as possible.
The benefits and impacts of tourism have been deeply disputed at least since the advent of
modern, mass tourism (e.g. Butcher, 2003; Wheeller, 1991). Some advocates of tourism have sup-
ported a boosterist approach that has resulted in a pro-growth, expansionary orientation (see
Hall, 2008). Proponents of responsible and sustainable tourism have challenged the advocates of
boosterism for decades, arguing that tourism must be managed for sustainability including limit-
ing its growth (see Bramwell et al., 2008). In more recent times, explorations of tourism degrowth
have emerged to counter the boosterists’ promotion of continual growth in tourism (e.g.
Blazquez-Salom et al., 2019; Higgins-Desbiolles et al., 2019). In the tense and troubled context of
the COVID-19 global pandemic with its serious damage to travel, tourism and affiliated sectors,
the dispute concerning boosterism versus limits to tourism has erupted with renewed vigour.
Major crises such as COVID-19 may reveal dynamics that have gone largely unremarked and
thereby spark both moments of reflection and movements for change. Roitman studied crisis
narratives in her Anti-crisis work, arguing: “[ … ] Crisis is mobilized in narrative constructions to
mark out or to designate ‘moments of truth’; it is taken to be a means to access historical truth,
and even a means to think “history” itself” (2014, p. 3). Arguably, the group of TRINET emails of
May 2020 we might call the “war on tourism” debate revealed a moment of truth in the tourism
academy suggesting two distinct and opposing schools of thought.
These schools of thought are designated the pro-industry boosterists and the pro-limits critics
in this article. This article analyses Butcher’s pro-industry boosterism in his “war on tourism” art-
icle which sought to counter those calling for reforming tourism, as well as the debates that fol-
lowed on TRINET after the article’s posting. It interrogates the use of militarised language and
the logics of declaring critical challenges to contemporary tourism as an undesirable, anti-
tourism ideology. The discussions based on a binary logic effectively worked to delegitimise a
whole segment of the tourism academy. This use of rhetoric of “war on tourism” reveals hidden
dynamics uncovered by COVID-19 and responses to it within the tourism academy. This debate
raises critical questions of who defines tourism, who benefits from tourism, who sets agendas
and how they are perceived. The stakes are important as the incident under analysis effectively
worked to delegitimate efforts to reform tourism to achieve greater sustainability in tourism,
including limiting it to not exceed the finite context of larger ecological systems, controlling it to
be compatible with societies and cultures and harnessing it for not only economic purposes but
also for well-being goals of all stakeholders.
Methods
This article follows in the long line of ethical and critical analysis built in the tourism academy,
including Ryan (2002), Tribe (2006, 2008), Higgins-Desbiolles (2006), Bramwell and Lane (2011)
and Chambers and Buzinde (2015). Tribe argued “critical research is essential for setting an
JOURNAL OF SUSTAINABLE TOURISM 553
agenda for ethical management, governance and coexistence with the wider world” (Tribe, 2008,
p. 245). Critical theory is a body of work that seeks to diagnose the problems of current society
and identify the nature of the social change required to secure greater justice, equity and
empowerment. It holds a belief in the efficacy of social action for social change to achieve eman-
cipation and well-being. The debate sparked by the “war on tourism” piece is a debate about
the very legitimacy of efforts to pursue such an agenda in tourism thought and practice.
The knowledge underpinning this work is derived from engaged and reflexive approaches
(Bechara & Van de Ven, 2007) developed over two decades of tourism research. Extended work
with Indigenous tourism operators, tourism and hospitality small business entrepreneurs, tourism
non-governmental organisations, social enterprises and communities has resulted in the pursuit of
a research agenda interrogating who benefits from tourism development and who bears the costs.
As Bechara and Van de Ven described engaged research: “One clear implication is the need for
researchers to be reflexive in clarifying whose interests and values are served in their research
engagements” (2007, p. 68). This body of work has aspired to achieve “triangulation” on the under-
standing of tourism and its impacts by working to engage relevant stakeholders in the formulation
of research, theory building, and problem solving through many diverse studies (as per Bechara &
Van de Ven, 2007). However, this is not the engaged scholarship strategy that some management
scholars promote in order to be of service to the industry (see Mckelvey, 2006). Instead, it is
engaged research to both contain and harness tourism to the benefit and well-being of the local
community in which it occurs. Such work is not unbiased or neutral; as it is affiliated with critical
tourism scholarship praxis, the justice, equity and emancipatory goals are transparently declared.
This article is based on a qualitative, critical analysis of the article “the war on tourism” and
the email debate that it generated on TRINET in May 2020. There were some 18 emails that
were generated from the debates and discussions. Authors of these emails were mainly academ-
ics or retired academics; a small number were positioned in multiple roles as academics/tourism
consultants/tourism industry; and one represented a non-governmental organisation. These com-
munications generated approximately 8000 words of communications that were subject to crit-
ical discourse analysis; the identities of contributors have been anonymised (with the exception
of Butcher) in the interest of ethical best practise.
Critical discourse analysis undertakes an analysis of text and talk to uncover “[ … ] relations
between discourse, power, dominance, social inequality and the position of the discourse analyst
in such social relationships” (van Dijk, 1993, p. 249). This is not the first work to analyse the dis-
course of a TRINET debate; Isaac et al. (2012) analysed a debate that occurred over a tourism con-
ference planned to be held in contested Jerusalem. There are many different ways to undertake
critical discourse analysis; the approach selected should be based on the specific context (van Dijk,
1993, p. 279). This work will briefly describe the context in which the debate occurred to under-
stand the assertion of power and influence at a moment of flux caused by the pandemic. It then
analyses the text of the online article to identify the over-arching themes which then set the terms
of the subsequent debate that occurred on TRINET. This identifies the use of binaries as a way to
fix and determine the dynamics of the discussion. Next, the TRINET email debate is analysed to
understand the way discourse was deployed to contest ideas. Finally, the analysis takes a critical
look at considerations of responsible and sustainable tourism to better understand the socio-
cultural dynamics pressing for change in the tourism system. This is an adapted approach to
Fairclough’s (1993) three-dimensional model for critical discourse analysis, which included: (1) ana-
lysis of the text; (2) analysis of discursive practices; and (3) analysis of sociocultural practice.
COVID-19: Back to business as usual or transformative opportunity?

From early 2020, the COVID-19 crisis was widely seen as a potential moment of transition (e.g.
Friedman, 2020; Roy, 2020). One articulation from the media explained: “Now, one form of
unregulated, free-market globalization with its propensity for crises and pandemics is certainly
dying. But another form that recognizes interdependence and the primacy of evidence-based
collective action is being born” (Hutton, 2020). Indian novelist and public intellectual Arundhati
Roy stated: “Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine
their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the
next” (2020). Those that agreed that the way the world worked before the crisis was undesirable,
could see that the crisis was a possible transformative moment. Because travel and tourism were
arguably the hardest hit sectors globally in the crisis, transformational thinking was particularly
evident in sections of tourism academia.
The COVID-19 pandemic crisis was devastating in its impacts on travel and tourism, as well as
the hospitality, arts and events affiliated sectors. The United Nations World Tourism Organization
has estimated: up to an 80% decline in international tourism in 2020; a possible US$1.2 trillion
loss in tourism export revenues; and a risk to up to 120 million direct tourism jobs (UNWTO,
2020). As Becker (2020) noted:
In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, few industries have fallen as far and as fast as tourism. The
technological revolution that brought us closer together by making travel and tourism easy and
affordable—a revolution that fueled one billion trips a year—is helpless in halting a virus that demands we
shelter in place.
While recognising the devastation of the pandemic, many in tourism studies looked to the
COVID-19 crisis as a potential catalyst to essential transformation (e.g. Ateljevic, 2020; Higgins-
Desbiolles, 2020b; Nepal, 2020). For instance, Professor Alan Lew, Editor of the journal Tourism
Geographies, was quick to respond to the challenge that COVID-19 represented to the tourism
discipline. He convened an extraordinary special issue of Tourism Geographies focused on “visions
of how the events of 2020 will transform our planet in potentially positive ways, with travel and
tourism being among the most significant areas to be impacts [sic] (Lew, 2020). Higgins-
Desbiolles (2020a) argued: “Considering human activities need to change if we are to avoid the
worst effects of human-induced climate change, the coronavirus crisis might offer us an unex-
pected opportunity.” Other tourism scholars argued that the crisis called into question a pro-
growth, boosterist approach to tourism that benefits certain individuals, businesses and
organisations:
The COVID-19 crisis should thus be seen as an opportunity to critically reconsider tourism’s growth
trajectory, and to question the logic of more arrivals implying greater benefits. This may begin with a
review of the positive outcomes of the COVID-19 pandemic (Go€ssling et al., 2020, pp. 13–14).
Gretzel et al. (in press) seized the opportunity to challenge the trajectory of eTourism and call
for a transformative research agenda:
The COVID-19 crisis has put e-Tourism research at a crossroads. One path leads us to focus on research that
subscribes to existing scientific paradigms, conventional notions of technology and growth-driven thinking
and, thus, supports bringing back tourism as we knew it. The other path takes a critical stance at what was
before and how things were done and helps envision a better future. The latter path requires
“transformative” research (p. 10-11).
Such visioning projects were not the focus of most tourism industry leaders. Leaders of air-
lines, cruise industry and tourism corporations were looking for their share of large government
bailout packages (Keating, 2020) or access to government funds allocated for small businesses
and workers’ safety nets (Martin & Remeikis, 2020). In many statements and press releases, there
was a clear emphasis on getting back to normal as soon as possible. For instance, Roger Dow of
the US Travel Association was quoted as saying: “Over the long term we will return and come
back to business as usual. People have short memories and there will be a pent up desire to
travel” (Becker, 2020). Some leaders in the tourism industry urged authorities to not overplay the
pandemic threat because of lockdown’s more significant threat to the economy. For instance,
Ariel Cohen of business travel agency TripActions warned: “If people will not travel, the economy
will grind to a halt” (Orbach, 2020). Historian Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz analysed the industry push
to re-open the economy quickly as a way to prevent demands for social change:
The capitalist class, those who benefit most from the unequal system, they know it’s not sustainable.
They’re desperate not to stay locked down too long, so people get used to fresh air, breathing air without
carbon in it. People might get ideas of a different kind of world (Beckett, 2020).
This was the context in which the article “the war on tourism” was written. A global pandemic
of extraordinary impact on travel and tourism resulted in a pivotal moment. With travel and tour-
ism halted, sharp dividing lines between calls to return to business as usual versus those that
would pause for reflection and reset became evident.
“The war on tourism”

Academic Jim Butcher responded to these efforts to rethink and transform tourism in the after-
math of the COVID-19 pandemic crisis with an article published in Spiked, an online current-affairs
publication. Spiked describes its vision: “We are committed to fighting for humanism, democracy
and freedom” (Spiked, n.d.). Investigation by the Guardian newspaper has exposed funding by the
Koch brothers’ Koch Foundation (described as a toxic empire (Dickenson, 2014) supporting right
wing politics in the United States and elsewhere). Journalist George Monbiot asserted:
Spiked magazine, edited by O’Neill, appears to hate leftwing politics. It inveighs against the welfare state,
against regulation, the Occupy movement, anti-capitalists, Jeremy Corbyn, George Soros, #MeToo, “black
privilege” and Black Lives Matter. It does so in the name of the “ordinary people”, whom, it claims, are
oppressed by the “anti-Trump and anti-Brexit cultural elites”, “feministic elites”, “green elites” and
“cosmopolitan politicians” (Monbiot, 2018).
Spiked’s content has been described as anti-environmentalist and climate change denialist in
orientation by an investigative media outlet (Small, 2018). Current circumstances witness climate
change being one significant site of conflict in the ongoing cultural wars (Hoffmann, 2012). As
Hoffmann explained: “The public debate around climate change is no longer about carbon diox-
ide and climate models. It is about values, culture, worldviews, and ideology” (2012, p. 30). This
background assists in establishing the context in which the discourse occurred.
Butcher’s article “the war on tourism” offered a brief exposition arguing that an emphasis on
reform over recovery in response to COVID-19 amounted to a war against tourism that threatens
tourism businesses, tourism jobs and millions of happy holidaymakers. This setup the discussion
in terms of binaries, including the use of the war metaphor and the contrast between recovery
and reform.
Butcher started his article with the assertion:
Covid-19 spells disaster for the tourism and hospitality industries. In the short term, millions of jobs have
been lost and businesses have been devastated. In the medium and longer term, a deep recession is likely
and that will have a sustained impact on luxuries such as tourism and hospitality (2020).
Despite this devastation, Butcher noted that not everyone supports recovery:
… rather than redoubling efforts to help prospective recovery, some industry commentators see the
pandemic as a chance to hit pause, rewind a little, and change the track. Reform is emphasised over
recovery. And that reform often looks forward to a diminished industry and lower levels of leisure
mobility (2020).
Butcher charged that these reformers form a “significant lobby,” made up of individuals in
academia, NGOs and environmental groups. He delineated the battlelines: on one side are the
tourism industry and its supporters that “[ … ] have brought greater freedom and liberty to
many”; and on the other side are the tourism reformers who champion “degrowth, challenging
‘consumerism’ and the promotion of localism.”
Butcher’s argument seems to be focused on the work of a few particular analysts whose work
supports degrowth, anti-consumerism and localisation strategies in tourism (including Higgins-
Desbiolles and the Political Ecology Network). Butcher characterises such work as irresponsible at
a time when tourism businesses are devastated and tourism workers unemployed and facing
hardship and uncertainty. But in fact, his aim is much wider than those narrow strands of tour-
ism work:
The claim that tourism reform is an ethical position, or even a realistic one, is false. Our efforts should focus
on the recovery of tourism as soon as possible. And we should champion growth, ambition and freedom to
that end (Butcher, 2020).
This latter statement indicates that Butcher’s work in this article (as well as in his larger expos-
ition in his book of 2003), is really targeted at the ethical, responsible and sustainable tourism
agendas which seek to mitigate the numerous negative impacts of tourism by regulating it, limit-
ing it and demanding that it be reformed. Critical discourse analysis asks us to be attentive to
what is not addressed in text as well as what is addressed. Missing in this championing of the
freedom of millions of holidaymakers and the interests of the tourism industry are: all of those
who are not free to travel, including asylum-seekers and those without excess wealth; all of
those workers that are subject to poor pay, precarity and bad working conditions; and those
local communities who find themselves pressed to serve as destinations against their
own interests.
This article takes part in a larger discursive practice. It matters that this article was published
in an online journal that has an association with a particular voice in politics (whether libertarian
or “right-wing” as attested to by Koch funding). It is advancing a political argument that is part
of the larger cultural wars that have occurred over multiculturalism, immigration, gender rights,
identity politics and environmentalism (Monbiot, 2018); what might be called “Other-oriented”
ethics (see e.g. Hammond, 2007). Butcher’s article brings in this political dynamic to tourism
debates when such work is published in a media outlet that is playing an active role in current
cultural wars (noting it was labelled as a “culture” piece on the Spiked website).
In the interests of transparency, I note that my work was part of the body of work challenged
by Butcher in his “war on tourism” analysis (i.e. Higgins-Desbiolles, 2020a; Higgins-Desbiolles,
2010). In using the discourse of war to set out the rival views on tourism after COVID-19,
Butcher’s article worked to delineate two schools of thought that have become particularly
important in discussions of the future of tourism after COVID-19.
Schools of thought: Pro-industry boosters and pro-limits critics

There are many schools of thought, paradigms and worldviews visible in the complex field of
tourism studies (see for instance, Camargo et al., 2016; Munar & Jamal, 2016). However, the bin-
ary rhetoric of “the war on tourism” encourages us to think about two competing schools of
thought termed here as “pro-industry boosters” and “pro-limits critics.” These two schools can be
identified in the binary discourse of the “war on tourism” as those supporting industry recovery
versus those advocating industry reform.
Butcher’s analysis in “the war on tourism” can be described as subscribing to pro-industry
boosterists thinking. In this work, he outlines lines of thought including: tourism as a “liberating
phenomenon for millions” (2020); tourism and hospitality as offering invaluable jobs and income
in the developed and developing world too important to not support; viewing calls for reform as
threatening to vital return to business as usual; viewing the tourism industry as worthy of sup-
port through all means necessary because of this value; and an emphasis on growth as a goal in
these efforts.
Boosterists of tourism adhere to what Jafari (2001) called the “advocacy platform” of tourism.
This approach was originally championed by economists following the boom in mass tourism
after World War II and “[ … ] focused on the contributions of the ‘industry’ to growth and devel-
opment” (Jafari, 2005). Boosterism is one approach to tourism policy and planning:
[ … ] that represents a simplistic view that tourism is inherently good with automatic benefits. Within a
“boosterism” approach to tourism planning, analysis and goal setting are approached within a purely
marketing context that closely parallels the desires of hoteliers, restaurateurs, and travel business interests
(Marcouiller, 2007, p. 28).
The World Tourism Organization is perhaps the most influential agent of boosterism in the glo-
bal community, with many of its resources touting tourism’s contributions to gross domestic prod-
uct, share of total exports and metrics of visitor arrivals (e.g. UNWTO, n.d.). In his book, Butcher
(2003) argued that modern mass tourism brings benefits in terms of economic development, leis-
ure pleasure for tourists and a pathway to modernisation and prosperity for developing countries
that should not be diminished by the “moralisers” and “doom merchants” (p. 142). A great deal of
tourism economics and development analysis considers tourism to be a “successful tool to pro-
mote rapid economic growth” (Marsiglio, 2018, p. 945). As a result of the conviction that the tour-
ism industry is a pathway to development (Jenkins, 1991), many countries and multilateral
agencies have advanced tourism dependency particularly in developing countries. There has also
been a concern that tourism academics have been to reticent to work with the tourism industry
creating an alleged divide between academics and practitioners (Harrison, 2004).
The pro-limits critics of tourism criticise tourism from a variety of perspectives, particularly for
failing to deliver the promised benefits as well as for the negative impacts it may bring in eco-
nomic, socio-cultural and environmental terms. Jafari’s concept of tourism platforms (2001, 2005)
labelled this body of work the “cautionary platform,” which he described as emerging in the
1970s. He explained: “articulated mainly by anthropologists and sociologists, it spelled out socio-
cultural consequences, questioning whether this ‘phenomenon’ as practiced actually helps the
development process” (Jafari, 2005, p. 1).
The pro-limits critics have expanded the basis of their concerns with tourism to include, for
example: environmental limits and ecological concerns (Higgins-Desbiolles, 2018); human rights
and inequality (Cole & Morgan, 2010); worker rights (Cole & Eriksson, 2010); Indigenous rights
(Johnston, 2006); and the rights of local communities (Higgins-Desbiolles et al., 2019). There is
also a body of work critically analysing the ways tourism supports and sustains capitalist growth
agendas that results in significant negative outcomes, including greater inequality and ecological
damage (e.g. Bianchi & de Man, 2020). This body of work has grown more evident as neoliberal
forms of governance have impacted the capacity to manage tourism for sustainability. For
instance, Bu €scher and Fletcher (2017) discussed tourism as a form of structural violence and
looked forward to forms of tourism that would contribute to an anti- or post-capitalist politics.
This briefly outlines the two competing schools of thought that have been highlighted by the
work the “war on tourism.” Of course, Jafari’s (2001, 2005) model of tourism platforms offered
other approaches to tourism management in addition to the advocacy and cautionary platforms,
including the adaptancy platform, knowledge-based and public platforms and Macbeth added
an ethics platform (2005). These approaches to tourism are acknowledged as not mutually exclu-
sive and co-existing. However, the binary lens of “the war on tourism” served to spotlight the
pro-industry boosters and the pro-limits critics as the most relevant to planning in the aftermath
of the COVID-19 crisis. With this lens of two proposed schools of thought which have emerged
from the “war on tourism” argument, we can examine the TRINET debate which followed.
The TRINET debate: You are either with the industry or against it
Jim Butcher posted his email on TRINET on 4 May 2020 announcing his Spiked article and inviting
comments. TRINET was founded by Professors Jafar Jafari and Pauline Sheldon in 1988; it serves:
[ … ] as an electronic bulletin board that … connect[s] the international tourism research and education
community … [and] is probably the largest listserv for international tourism researchers. This network
enables them to exchange information and participate in discussions or debates on issues related to
tourism education and research (Xiao, 2013, p. 292).
In terms of employing discourse to shape tourism studies, TRINET is arguably the most
important platform on which to exchange ideas.
Butcher’s “war on tourism” article set the terms of the discussion by establishing industry
recovery versus industry reform as the main focus. The statement of problematisation was
focused not on the impacts of the crisis but rather the advocacy of reform in the context of
COVID-19 as a threat. After receiving one response to his initial email, Butcher clarified his aim
and reinforced his argument that recovery and reform are binary choices in our response to the
pandemic crisis:
My article is a simple defence of the importance of an expansive, growth-oriented approach to tourism, and
an emphasis on recovery rather than the reforms suggested by some academic commentators. This is worth
debating given where we are … (email 4 May 2020).
In the emails that responded to Butcher’s posting on the 4th of May, a number of themes
were identified that followed from Butcher’s over-arching framework of recovery versus reform
as an appropriate response after COVID-19. Indicative texts are provided to illustrate the theme.
Themes
The irresponsibility of advocacy for reform in the face of COVID-19
Butcher suggested choices made now to promote reform threaten the future of how we emerge
from this global crisis:
From Lowell Juilliard Carr in 1932 up to Frank Furedi today, there is a recognition in disaster studies that
how a society responds to a disaster is key in determining it’s [sic] the impact of that disaster upon society.
If “degrowth, anti-consumerism and localism” inform our response, we will only compound the grave
consequences of the pandemic in my view. Yet we should ensure people who prioritise recovery or
advocate reform respectively continue to discuss these issues (email 4 May 2020).
The email invites debate and discussion and presents as an invitation to a positive dialogue
between the two schools. Yet, the reference to alleged lessons from disaster studies tries to shut
this off by declaring the reformist position as gravely detrimental to the future. This accom-
plishes an ironic twist where the reformers are positioned as retrogressive on building posi-
tive futures.
One contributor wrote an email arguing that proponents of reform show a lack of concern for
the significant suffering that businesses and tourism employees will be experiencing:
Such comments also reveal an immense lack of respect for, and sensitivity toward, a global community of
small-to-medium sized businesses that purposefully cater to visitors – many now thrust into sudden
bankruptcy, unable to survive. And what about the millions of people who are no longer meaningfully
employed (yes, meaningfully), people with mortgages and bills to pay, so many verging on poverty? (email
5 May 2020).
The implication is that the crisis presents only binary options and that efforts to advance reform
of tourism along ethical, responsible and sustainable lines undermines efforts on industry recovery.
It is a call to loyalty to the industry and commitment to seeing it return to business as usual.
Relevance to the tourism industry

In a context where travel and tourism had been brought to their knees, a key focus of commen-
tary supporting Butcher’s ideas addressed the lack of relevance reformist tourism academics
allegedly have for the tourism industry. One commentator noted that an anti-tourism growth
stance was untenable in the aftermath of the destruction of COVID-19:
[The] TRINET network can no longer afford to stand apart from (even act as if it is superior to) the millions
of advocates for travel and tourism. Like it or not, recovery has to entail a rebound or re-growth of revenue
streams. It is going to be an extremely tough slog, and, I’ll tell you, very few in the industry are going to
call on the university community for help because their relevancy at this point in time is not deemed
important (email 8 May 2020).
Another email expressly stated that tourism academics should not oppose boosterism in the
tourism industry:
If TRINET members are to truly assist in both recovery and reform, they must demonstrate a willingness to
listen and really understand the “booster” community. Don’t set yourselves apart or be viewed as the
proverbial exclusionists you despise. Tone down the antagonism. Earn your seat at the table … How you
respond to this post-COVID disaster will ultimately determine whether you will earn recognition as being
“essential” partners in the struggle to reform and revitalize tourism … In closing, I hope that more TRINET
members would stand in support of travel and tourism as the true means of encouraging connectivity,
engagement, gatherings, festivities, learning, and conviviality. It need not be the bogeyman so many
portray or make it out to be” (email 5 May 2020).
These comments suggest the pro-industry commentators here are very close to interpreting
the position of the pro-limits critics to be more properly described as anti-tourism critics.
Legitimacy to teach tourism students

In light of an alleged anti-industry and anti-growth bias on the part of the designated pro-limits
critics, some of the debate questioned their legitimacy to teach cohorts of students studying
tourism in our universities. One respondent questioned:
What message is being sent to all those students striving for careers in hospitality, travel and tourism?
Given the surfeit of disparaging comments about travel and tourism that I read in many of these postings, I
certainly worry about what is being taught in universities, and how well-prepared students are to tackle the
challenges and respond to the opportunities, especially brought about through crisis situations … (email 5
May 2020).
These discussions illuminate a critical question: are tourism academics in the service of the
tourism industry? The allegation from some of the protagonists in this debate was that if one
was not a full supporter of the tourism industry and its growth, one’s legitimacy to be a univer-
sity academic located in tourism studies was in doubt. Such a stance seeks to eject a whole com-
munity of scholars from the disciplinary fold for being too critical. As Tribe noted: “Discursive
formations perform an including and excluding function, legitimizing what counts as knowledge
and what does not, so that the ideas and interests of some groups are given authority whilst
those of others are not supported” (2006, p. 366).
This debate is also significant in implications for the status of tourism studies. Since tourism
began to be more frequently situated in business schools rather than social science departments,
this pressure to be relevant to industry has increased (see Tribe, 2006, 2010). But pressing tour-
ism studies in such a direction may work to undermine claims that it is legitimately an academic
discipline rather than a vocational field of study. The recent drive by universities to prepare grad-
uates to be job-ready for the industry risks transforming universities into vocational-training col-
leges. This risks pitting critical thinking skills against industry ready skills in a crowded and
contested curriculum (see Belhassen & Caton, 2011).
Additionally, this discussion raises the issue of the public good and public service roles of uni-
versities. Are tourism academics responsible for fulfilling a public good role in their work, espe-
cially those working for institutions that are incorporated under state legislation and/or receive
public funding? As Hall has argued (2008), our ultimate focus as tourism scholars should be the
public good rather than advocating narrow industry interests. The idea that a public good form
of tourism should emerge after COVID-19 is a new claim made in the work of Higgins-
Desbiolles (2020b).
Unfair and incomplete

The responses against Butcher’s thesis in the TRINET debate argued that Butcher’s characterisa-
tion of the issue and the reformers was unfair and incomplete. One commentator wrote: “I was
offended by what I read in the Spiked piece, caricaturing the critical tourism community as some
kind of idiot, unsympathetic, radical elite who’d rather let tourism workers and entrepreneurs
starve” (email 7 May 2020). Another responded:
Critics of tourism growth (not of tourism!) could hardly be described as a “lobby”– the real lobby we know
about is Airbnb-type speculators or cruise operators that have hijacked the policy agendas, from local to
the EU … Until relatively recently at least, when it was made clear that the mainstream management recipes
tend not to work in tourism-regimed places whose structure of governance is heavily biased to represent
corporate agendas, and then you also have to face some deeper “systemic” approach to economic regimes
(email 4 May 2020).
Another academic presented a response to Butcher’s work that argued that the industry is
diverse and Butcher’s assessment simplified:
Notwithstanding there exists a significant spectrum of business models and enterprise types with different
modus operandi/ownership structures, as well as diverse destination management/governance regimes in
tourism … .to hold up tourism as simply an “industry” that has "brought greater freedom and liberty to
many", is to dismiss the real and significant problems that tourism has brought in its wake, and to favour
letting untrammelled markets and disruptive capitalism (whether of a neoliberal or statist variant) to rip
through destinations (email 5 May 2020).
This respondent also referred to his own experience to note that recent critics of tourism are
diverse and their views of significance:
[ … ] listening and learning from scholars, residents and activists in that part of the world, I have witnessed
at close quarters not just protests from the “usual suspects” but also from amongst farmers, fishers, workers,
residents and yes, tour guides, taxi & bus drivers, tourism entrepreneurs themselves who were being
pushed aside or whose interests were ignored, while developers strong armed local communities and
complicit town councils to push through construction projects whose primary benefit was to accrue
enormous profits[ … ] (email 5 May 2020).
A holistic approach
One key difference in these discussions concerned the ways in which tourism is considered; that
is, whether the tourism industry is the focus or whether tourism is analysed in its wider context.
One critic of Butcher’s article tackled the accusation that critics of tourism do not have legitimacy
to teach tourism studies at university:
… What do we teach to our students? we teach them to be good destination managers and planners
that put the best interests of communities at the centre. We teach them to be emphatic[empathetic]
with tourists as much as with those who lose jobs and houses in the context of a crisis like this or until
three months ago, and plan for more resilient tourist places. We also teach them that to be
competitive entrepreneurs and to be committed to sustainability as an element of value creation for
their business. What I hope I don’t do is to teach them to become pro-growth lobbyists (email 7
May 2020).
While another critic of Butcher’s analysis tackled the valuing of tourism solely for its economic
benefits and also the lack of care for those who pay the costs of such developments; he
responded by addressing Butcher’s direct words in the article:
“Though it is an industry that has brought greater freedom and liberty to many” ( … and pain and suffering
to so many others -probably in even higher quantity).
“The expansion of consumption of air travel over the past 60 years has been a truly liberating phenomenon
for millions” ( … . as well as emitting x tons of C02 in the atmosphere … ).
It reads like tourism is only relevant because is an economic activity. It reads like those defending “herd
immunity” such as the President of my country [ … ] for who … so people may [sic] die with the virus? So
what? Economy can’t stop … . (email, 6 May 2020).
This marks an important point of disagreement in these discussions as the pro-industry boos-
ters adhere to a view that the concerns of tourism academics should be to advance the success
of the tourism industry while the critics look to understand the impacts of tourism at a larger
level and to undertake a more full assessment of it beyond the economic measurements.
Visioning
The debate was also taken as an opportunity for visioning beyond the narrow parameters origin-
ally established for the debate. Occurring in the midst of the COVID-19 crisis, many scholars had
already seized it as an opportunity to consider ways tourism might be transformed (see above),
and this also featured in this discussion. One academic noted:
If we are to meet the challenge of the moment, we must re-discover and embrace the positive, be patient
and far more respectful. We can do this by revealing how everyone can benefit from tourism that
represents and follows a more moral form of stakeholder capitalism. To do so, it would help if more of us
assumed the role of leaders (not just critics) and dedicate ourselves to working with and within our
communities-as-destinations to help develop a manifesto for a moral imagination that would jettison so
many [of] the ills associated with tourism, and bring about a recovery based on a “Great Realization” (email,
7 May 2020).
Another offered a view from the social tourism position:

I feel the best we can hope for from this crisis is a recognition from governments of all political flavours of
the importance of their tourism industries to their economies, as a sector worth investing in for long-term
recovery, and vital to mental and physical health and wellbeing of citizens and to the prosperity of their
rural and coastal regions. That way, they might see that the road to recovery must involve ensuring access
to basic tourism opportunities for all in their societies.
My worry with the implications of degrowth and recovery is that the inevitable consequence will be return
to an industry that is prohibitively expensive and exclusive … The short term for the industry recovery must
be local, equitable, safe (for residents’ health too) and socially-motivated - it may lead to a fairer and more
sustainable tourism industry as a by-product of necessity, leaving those hot-spots of overtourism in a worse-
off position due to a drop-off in rich, globe-trotting, over-consuming types of consumer (email, 5
May 2020).
This brief TRINET debate marked a significant contest of ideas on the role of tourism scholars
and tourism scholarship, the legitimacy of critical scholarship approaches and the value of ethical,
sustainable and responsible approaches to tourism development, management and governance.
Characterising this contest of ideas as a “war on tourism” had the effect, however, of con-
straining and manipulating the debate. Presenting the reformists’ work as a “war on tourism”
and presenting the agenda as a binary between recovery and reform, worked to delegitimise
critical voices and undermine the claims of those who support a serious rethinking and reform
of the tourism industry in the wake of COVID-19. The fact that this debate was performed on
the TRINET platform before more than 3000 subscribers situated the contest of ideas as a strug-
gle for the hearts and minds of this readership.
“Manning” the defence lines: Use of the metaphor of “war” in the debates
on tourism
Classic work by Susan Sontag (1978) analysed the use of the metaphor of war in treating illness.
Since then, Sontag’s work has been a touchstone in critical thinking on use of the war metaphor
and the negative impacts that can result. Lule argued: “Neither good nor bad, metaphor may be
the only way for humans to comprehend profound and complex issues, such as life, death, sick-
ness, health, war, and peace” (2007, p. 180). However, Lule cautioned: “metaphoric language
shapes thought and that calling something by another name can have profound implications”
(2007, p. 179).
What does it mean to characterise the proponents of ethical, sustainable and alternative tour-
ism as metaphorically waging a war on tourism? The implications of the use of this war meta-
phor include: combatants are fighting implacably for their cause; that death and destruction are
inevitable outcomes; and that the discussants line up neatly along set battlelines. There is also a
play with words to connect this “war on tourism” to the earlier and very significant “war on
terrorism” with all of its geopolitical implications. Just like the geo-politics of global domination
was the stuff of the war on terror (Jackson, 2004), the war on tourism concerns the politics of
tourism. This could be viewed as a “volley” against the influence of voices in the tourism acad-
emy that would champion limiting tourism and curtailing the exercise of privilege, through: alter-
native models (e.g. Fletcher et al., 2020), decolonisation of the tourism academy (e.g. Chambers
& Buzinde, 2015), Indigenous rights (e.g. Johnston, 2006) and ecocentrism (e.g. Burns et al., 2011)
and the rights of other-than-human beings (e.g. Carr & Broom, 2018), for instance.
The choice of the word “war” for what is in fact a contest of ideas is intentional. Not only is
the use of the war metaphor violent, patriarchal and divisive, it falls into false binaries; you are
either with us or you are with them. This effort works to delegitimate the voices of alterity, alter-
natives and other-oriented approaches. As Derrida (1981) contended, binaries do not enjoy a
“peaceful coexistence,” but instead exist as a “violent hierarchy” in which “one term governs the
other … or has the upper hand” (p. 41).
Brooker and Joppe (2015) conducted a study of the use of binaries in tourism research by
analysing their use in the three leading tourism journals over a five-year period. The binary
developed by Butcher (2020) between recovery and reform must be added to the many binaries
Brooker and Joppe (2015) explored in their study. Brooker and Joppe argued that social sciences
is more prone to a binary view of tourism and they question if business-oriented approaches to
tourism studies would be more nuanced:
It would appear that particularly in the social sciences, the study of tourism gives rise to binary analysis.
Further research would be required to determine whether these binary patterns suggest that additional
entrepreneurial, creativity, and business perspectives may be in order to balance the noted shifts, or
perhaps business and geographic perspectives are more nuanced and lend themselves less to the “black
and white” view of the world. The research also highlights the need for more ternary, or three-fold,
examinations of relationships to introduce additional considerations beyond a binary (2015, p. 7).
Brooker and Joppe’s work demonstrates a similar attitude to the critical social science per-
spectives opposed by Butcher and others of the pro-industry booster school. Rather than under-
standing the critique of tourism as ultimately a positive force for driving greater responsibility
and ethics, it is viewed as a binary worldview that is possibly anti-tourism. They judge it must be
countered with business perspectives in the interest of greater nuance and ability to develop
middle way approaches. They did not explore the possibility that tourism studies based in busi-
ness schools might be blinkered and binary by being pro-business and boosterist in outlook.
The binary presented in the Butcher article is a false binary and in a simplistic argument. The
claim that members of TRINET and the tourism academy are either with the industry or against
it is inaccurate and unhelpful. There are many facets to the tourism industry to date, including
the criticised large multinationals, small to medium enterprises, community-based tourism, social
enterprises, cooperatives, NGO tourism operations and many more.
There are also many facets to the tourism phenomenon which is much greater than the tour-
ism industry perspective that Butcher champions. As the comment, from one commentator
above noted, there is a whole social tourism system that ensures that access to holidays and leis-
ure is not limited by ability to pay and has its own organisations, infrastructures and processes
(see Diekmann & McCabe, 2011). Higgins-Desbiolles (2006) drew attention to this and other ini-
tiatives she designated as “tourism as a social force” in an effort to ensure that a narrow view of
“tourism as an industry” did not overshadow and undermine these important efforts for ethics,
equity and sustainability.
Additionally, the current standard approach is to define tourism by the businesses that make
up the tourism sector who provide goods and services to the tourists. Higgins-Desbiolles et al.
(2019) argued that such an approach renders the local community largely invisible in the equa-
tion and allows for their marginalisation. This approach makes possible a pact where the big cor-
porates of the tourism industry can secure profits and the privileged tourists can access
inexpensive holidays at the expense of underpaid, exploited and precarious workers and the
“host” community who too frequently fail to receive the promised benefits of tourism while hav-
ing to tolerate the disbenefits and damages. As a result, Higgins-Desbiolles et al. (2019) called
for a redefinition of tourism centring it around the local community and their rights
(more below).
The key to addressing the concerns raised in the debates sparked by the “war on tourism”
incident is to raise critical questions: who defines tourism, who benefits from tourism, who sets
agendas and how they are perceived. Power and privilege are the foundations of such critical
questions. Thus, this comment from the TRINET debate provided above in which one respondent
noted that: “[ … ] the “we” in question is largely a wealthy or middle-class elite (historically and
still predominantly white, Western, but also increasingly now Asian markets), whose consumption
patterns contribute the majority of the problems associated with the growth model” (email 5
May 2020).
Finally, while Butcher claims his target is the advocacy championing degrowth, anti-
consumerism and localism, it is in fact efforts to press the industry towards greater sustainability
that is the underlining issue. As he said in his email, his is an expansive, growth-oriented
approach. If sustainable tourism is understood as limiting tourism growth in the interests of
social and ecological integrity, the Butcher agenda of pro-industry boosterism is anathema.
Rocking the status quo: Responsible and sustainable tourism

It has not often been explicitly stated that efforts to promote ethical, responsible and/or sustain-
able tourism are “at war” with the current status quo in tourism, as indeed “the war on tourism”
article does. Quite often, such efforts have been presented as mildly reformist seeking to make
the consumer and the industry more responsible in their choices and practices. However, some
efforts are indeed radical because these efforts challenge not only the way we do tourism but
they also might call for significant re-orientation.
Responsible tourism gained prominence when Jost Krippendorf presented his analysis in the
Holidaymakers (1987) arguing the need to address the negative impacts of tourism. It was with
this work and the efforts of a number of NGOs that vocal criticism of tourism as an industry
began to be expressed. Responsible tourism advocates criticised exploitative forms of tourism
and bridged NGOs, communities and academia at this time (e.g. Botterill, 1991; McLaren, 2003;
Pleumarom, 1994). Such efforts have been largely sidelined, in some cases as the NGOs that sup-
ported such work have been shut down (including recently, Tourism Concern of the UK).
Following on from this, were the concepts of sustainable development and sustainable tour-
ism. Since the release of the document Our Common Future (WCED, 1987), or the Brundtland
Report as it became known, sustainability has become a buzzword affecting every field of human
endeavour, including tourism. While there have been numerous definitions and terms over the
decades, sustainability discourse has been a main driver of a movement advocating “doing tour-
ism differently” by highlighting tourism’s s negative environmental, social and even economic
impacts and proposing concomitant tactical approaches to mitigating these impacts.
Higgins-Desbiolles (2018) asked the question, however, whether our efforts are directed at
merely sustaining tourism or rather sustaining the larger society, making reference to the classic
work of Butler. Butler (1999) distinguished sustainable tourism from tourism in the context of
sustainable development. Butler defined sustainable tourism as “tourism which is in a form which
can maintain its viability in an area for an indefinite period of time” (1999, p. 36). He explained
that “tourism in the context of sustainable development” is:
Tourism which is developed and maintained in the area (community, environment) in such a manner and at
such a scale that it remains viable over an indefinite period and does not degrade or alter the environment
(human and physical) in which it exists to such a degree that it prohibits the successful development and
wellbeing of other activities and processes (Butler, 1999, p. 35).
Mihalic opted for the term “responsustable” tourism in an effort to activate and operationalise
sustainable tourism:
Merging the words responsible (behaviour-based) and sustainable (concept and values-based) produces the
new term responsustable tourism. It is argued that this new term fully reflects the academic and practical
debate and action that is increasingly labelled “responsible” tourism, yet de facto based on sustainability. In
this context, paper proposes a Triple-A Model as a tool that helps to understand the process of how a
responsible tourism destination or firm actually implements sustainability agenda (2016, p. 469).
Some recent work in sustainable tourism analysis has begun to address the questions of who
else might benefit from our efforts to secure greater sustainability in tourism. For instance,
Cisneros-Martınez et al. (2018) have argued social tourism initiatives may assist in the achieve-
ment of sustainable tourism goals by addressing seasonality problems while supporting
social tourists.
Higgins-Desbiolles et al. (2019, p. 1936) have presented a new definition of tourism to place
local communities at the centre of the phenomenon:
Tourism for sustainability and degrowth must focus on the needs and interests of the local community;
what tourism industry interests have usurped for themselves under the label of the “host community.” A
redefined tourism could be described as: the process of local communities inviting, receiving and hosting
visitors in their local community, for limited time durations, with the intention of receiving benefits from
such actions. Such forms of tourism may be facilitated by businesses operating to commercial imperatives
or may be facilitated by non-profit organisations. But in this restructure of tourism, tourism operators would
be allowed access to the local community’s assets only under their authorisation and stewardship.
However, like Wheeller (1991) before her, Higgins-Desbiolles (2020b) has argued that in the
post-COVID-19 era, responsible tourism is not the answer to concerns with sustainability in tour-
ism. Her argument was premised on the fact that sustainable and responsible tourism will
remain elusive until we address the structural injustices underpinning our current economies
(see also B€
uscher & Fletcher, 2017). Bianchi and de Man explained this well in their work assess-
ing the agenda of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs):
The UNWTO’s SDG-led agenda is contradicted by the logics of growth, competitiveness and profit-making
that drive the continued expansion and development of tourism. Rather than addressing the structural
injustices that entrench inequalities and reproduce exploitative labour practices, the notion of sustained and
inclusive growth reinforces the primacy of capital and market notions of justice and continues to
perpetuate a growth driven tourism development model (2020, p. 1).
When taking this analysis together with Butler’s conceptualisation of tourism within the con-
text of sustainable development, what we better understand is that the long-term, equitable and
sustainable development of tourism requires we situate tourism in the larger context within
which it operates in order to arrive at real sustainability. In other words, we put tourism in its
place, at the service of local communities and societies. Tourism is not an end in itself; thus sus-
taining tourism is not the ultimate goal. If we fail to address the larger context in which tourism
operates, what we in fact do is assume a myopic view which works to sustain tourism, the tour-
ism industry and tourism consumption with insufficient concern on how this may enact social
and ecological injustices.
Similarly, this intervention by Jim Butcher in Spiked needs to be viewed in the larger political
struggle in which it is occurring. With the threat of global climate change, the reaching of vari-
ous environmental limits to growth and societal protests on inequities and injustices (see Beck,
2010), there is a possible threat that the current marketised and capitalistic approaches to organ-
ising our societies is under challenge and up for replacement (Hutton, 2020). In terms of tourism,
COVID-19 exposed the empowering insight that we can reset our approaches, reduce our con-
sumption and rethink our future; this “war on tourism” rhetoric is a concerted effort to counter
the potentiality of this moment.
While Hall et al. (2020) are very sceptical that such a reset or transformation is likely as we
emerge from the pandemic, others that have written in the Tourism Geographies special issue
curated by Alan Lew are generally much more hopeful (see Lew, 2020). What is of great import-
ance is that the thought, analysis and imagining of the possibilities do occur. Sustainability,
equity and justice are not readily given; they must be fought for and won (Hall, 2008).
In addressing the debate catalysed by the “war on tourism” article, it is important to think
about how debate occurs within tourism studies. The intellectual challenge to bodies of thought
are a sign of a vigorous academic climate in a discipline but the use of language such as “war”
is not conducive to engaged, reflective and critical analysis. As Bramwell et al. explained:
It is useful to remind ourselves that different research perspectives can alter our viewpoints on the issues.
Each provides different insights and critical understandings, and each emphasises different directions for
normative prescription and policy work. Significant benefits might result from combining these perspectives
in our research (2009, p. 253).
As we emerge from the global crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, different schools of
thought and different paradigms offer concerns with different aspects of a complex phenom-
enon such as tourism. But the skill of critical questioning concerning who defines tourism, who
benefits from tourism and who sets agendas is universally valuable.
Conclusion
The reasonable man [person] adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt
the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man [person]- George Bernard
Shaw (Shaw, 1903, p. 124).
The questions explored in this article are about the desirability of reform, exploring critical ques-
tions about who benefits from the status quo and how things might be different. Butcher
asserted in the opening of his article that: “Travel and tourism have liberated mankind – we can-
not afford to lose them to the pandemic” (2020). Such hyperbole in a biased, online media outlet
may not seem worthy of the full attention of an academic article. However, utilising the evoca-
tive metaphor of war and pressing the work into the academic domain of TRINET, worked to
establish an important divide in academic studies that has significance to efforts to build analyt-
ical and critical work on sustainable forms of tourism. Butcher and his supporters on TRINET pre-
sented dividing lines between those they characterised as industry and jobs supporting agents
of recovery in tourism and those disconnected critics that called for reform and transformation
for greater, long-term sustainability and fairness. Such efforts might be seen to work to discredit,
delegitimise and thereby silence those with a commitment to bring about an entire rethinking
of tourism so that it could be reoriented to ecological and social sustainability.
If one views the COVID-19 crisis as a potential moment of systems change of global signifi-
cance, as does Roy (2020) and Zi zek (2020), the stakes are high and the cultural wars are in play.
In this analysis, the “war on tourism” article is viewed as a “volley” against the influence of voices
in the tourism academy that would champion limiting tourism and curtailing the exercise of priv-
ilege. With the momentous challenges the global community confronts in terms of reaching eco-
logical limits, global climate change and the socio-cultural tensions that arise from economic
systems that create greater inequalities and injustices, the future of tourism will be highly con-
tested. The COVID-19 crisis inspired transformational thinking among some tourism academics as
a moment of great potentiality. The debate sparked under the title “the war on tourism” is better
seen as a contest of ideas over tourism, between those that support the status quo through a
return to business as usual versus those that envision possibilities for greater sustainability,
equity and justice. The future of tourism post-pandemic is not a given and it is our task as mem-
bers of the tourism academy to play our part, not as combatants but as scholars.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes on contributor
Freya Higgins-Desbiolles is a Senior Lecturer in Tourism Management, UniSA Business, University of South Australia.
Her work focuses on social justice, human rights and sustainability issues in tourism, hospitality and events. She
has worked with communities, non-governmental organisations and businesses that seek to harness tourism for
sustainable and equitable futures. She is one of the Founding members of the Tourism Alert and Action Forum.
She has won awards for engaged research, media engagement and research and teaching excellence. She was
honoured as one of 50 “most awesome” tourism scholars in 2018 by the Women Academics in Tourism network.
ORCID
Freya Higgins-Desbiolles http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6424-0749
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The “war over tourism”: challenges to sustainable

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The “war over tourism”: challenges to sustainable tourism in

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

CONTACT Freya Higgins-Desbiolles [email protected]

COVID-19: Back to business as usual or transformative opportunity?

“The war on tourism”

Schools of thought: Pro-industry boosters and pro-limits critics

Relevance to the tourism industry

Legitimacy to teach tourism students

Unfair and incomplete

Another offered a view from the social tourism position:

Rocking the status quo: Responsible and sustainable tourism

Shaw, G. B. (1903). Maxims for revolutionists (reprint 2017). CreateSpace.

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