Tourism and transitions in island destinations
Tourisme et transitions dans les destinations insulaires
Published on Thursday, January 09, 2025
Abstract
The tourism research journal Téoros is launching a call for papers for a themed issue on tourism and transitions in island destinations.
Announcement
Proposal
Insularity can be associated with constraints of varying degrees of severity: territorial discontinuity, isolation, spatial exiguity, limited resources, small markets, and many others. But tourism stakeholders have been able to use these constraints to their advantage, given that “the island” is often associated with positive values in the collective imagination (Eliade, 1999; Taglioni, 2001; Lebart et al., 2003; Gay, 2016; Bernard et al., 2017; Blondy et al, 2017), as semiometric studies in marketing have shown. In fact, “the island” is associated with "reverie," "nudity," "voluptuousness," "wildness," "carnality," "emotion," "mystery," and "seduction" (Lebart et al., 2003). Thanks to their natural and cultural riches and to these positive images, island spaces have managed to carve out a place for themselves in the tourism ecumene; the desire for the Caribbean evoked by Olivier Dehoorne in the introduction to the topic issue of Téoros (2007, vol. 26, no. 1) provides one such example. Tourism is generally regarded as an important, even essential, factor in development (Solomon, 2006; Logossah and Maupertuis, 2007; Dehoorne and Saffache, 2008; Atout France, 2009; Gay, 2009 and 2021). However, against a backdrop of global change and recent crises in health (SARS epidemic in Asia in 2003; COVID-19 pandemic in 2020); geopolitics (terrorism, proliferation of armed conflicts, social tensions); the economy (2008 crisis, inflation, and other disruptions); the environment (tsunamis in 2004, Hurricane Irma in 2017, coastal erosion, volcanic eruptions in Iceland grounding airplanes, among others); and debates on overtourism, these island territories seem even more exposed and fragile. They need to demonstrate particular resilience and prepare for numerous transitions in order to meet the environmental, social, cultural, economic, technological, and other challenges that are becoming ever more acute. While some authors call tourism into question and vehemently claim that mass tourism is on the decline (Zaoual, 2007; Burns and Bibbings, 2009; François et al, 2013), or speak of post-tourism (Bourdeau, 2018), harking back to an ancestral tourismophobia (Gay, 2024), others prefer to speak of tourism transformations or tourism revolutions, this social practice being anchored in a temporal and spatial dimension that evolves just like the societies and territories in which it unfolds (MIT, 2011; Violier, 2016).
The questions and challenges associated with transitions, transformations, mutations, evolutions, and changes in the field of tourism (SCET, 2023) are particularly relevant in island tourism territories, which are often considered privileged laboratories for analysis (Furt and Maupertuis, 2011; Pelletier 2011; Blondy and Pébarthe, 2017). Topic-based articles on tourism in the Caribbean (Téoros, 2007) provide an interesting starting point for examining the specific challenges and changes in island tourism. In this vein, the expected articles for the new Téoros issue on the topic should address the following aspects of these transitions:
Firstly, island tourism is facing an environmental transition; it is both impacted by environmental change and natural disasters and a factor in the transformation of environments, like any other human activity, in a sometimes complex and paradoxical interplay of heritage, protection, pressure, and deterioration. The environmental transition in insular spaces is posed in terms of flow management; water resource management (Blondy, 2016); reducing the carbon footprint of tourist mobility in a territorial context where access by air is often singled out (Ceron et al., 2010; Ceron and Dubois, 2012; Vlès et al., 2022); and other topics besides. Tourism is said to be responsible for 8% of greenhouse gases (Lenzen et al., 2018). While the carbon footprint of destinations varies widely, tropical islands in particular tend to have the highest international emissions. The choice to be a tourist, especially to travel to these relatively remote destinations, has become problematic with the strong guilt associated with flying, mediatized in various languages by way of the terms flygskam, flight shame, or avihonte. The question of the social acceptability of island tourism, in the context of climate change, is likely to become increasingly acute.
Like all tourist areas, island tourism must also adapt to a technological transition. The introduction of new communication technologies in island tourism has proven to be a major challenge for tourism players in terms of promotion, marketing, provisioning, and the like, so as to deal with the constraints of isolation, remoteness, and accessibility. As elsewhere, the development of accommodation rental platforms such as Airbnb is a factor in changing the interplay of players in a given tourism territory, leading to a logic of opportunism, competition, or conflict. Technological innovations to enable the energy transition of tourism infrastructures must also be considered in territories where access to energy resources is sometimes complex and costly. Water and waste management are also major challenges that technological innovation can help to meet.
Tourism must also adjust to major social and cultural transitions, most notably the democratization of the phenomenon itself. In the literature, this often leads to the notion of over-visitation of tourist sites, prompting some authors to speak of "overtourism" while highlighting the idea of saturation of sites and conflicts between tourists and locals. This transition raises questions about the need for flow management, with increasingly frequent quotas and restrictions; participatory management of island tourist territories; and the role of local societies in tourism development (Sacareau, 1997; Blondy, 2005; Jouault 2018). Tourism permeates the very fabric of island territories and is helping to change spatial practices and representations, while fostering a local appropriation of tourist sites (Desse, 2006; Coëffé, 2010; Blondy, 2013; Taunay and Vacher, 2018).
Island tourism is particularly vulnerable to economic transitions but can also bolster its resilience through sector development and a degree of strategic flexibility that would enable it to evolve from one model to another (MIRAB, TOURAB, SITE, PROFIT, among others) in order to prosper (Baldacchino and Bertram, 2009; Dehoorne, 2014; Bertram and Poirine, 2018). But this creates a dilemma, as tourism on often remote and isolated islands is the only sector that brings exogenous long-term economic growth; the challenge therefore seems to be to strike a balance between sustainability and tourism profitability.
This issue of Téoros focuses on a number of topics:
- The effects of recent health, political, and economic crises on island tourism.
- Climate as a challenge for island tourism.
- The challenges of ecological transition in island tourism.
- The regulation of tourist flows at different scales (island, tourist resorts, tourist sites, and the like).
- New accessibility policies (liberalization of the transport sector, low-cost tourism, and other approaches).
- New communication technologies in island tourism, especially with booking platforms.
- The evolution of promotional, academic, and literary discourse within island spaces.
- The debate on over-visiting and overtourism in an island context.
- The place of tourism in the development models of small island economies.
- The position of local companies with regard to tourism.
Terms of contribution
Authors must submit a manuscript written in French or English and presented according to the journal's rules, available at https://journals.openedition.org/teoros/168.
Submissions should be between 7,000 and 8,000 words in Word format (no PDFs). Each article must include
a) first and last names of all authors (maximum three).
b) each author’s main title and affiliation (only one per author).
c) their email and postal addresses.
d) an abstract́ of 150 to 200 words (maximum) in French and English.
e) identification of the discipline(s) of study.
f) a list of keywords (maximum of five).
Téoros has an international readership. Authors are invited to take this into account in the presentation of their case studies, to make them accessible to readers unfamiliar with the destination studied.
Illustrations
Authors are asked to supply three or four high-resolution (300 dpi), royalty-free illustrations, clearly indicating the caption and source and, in the case of photos, the photographer's name and the photo date.
Originality of the study
Manuscripts submitted for publication in Téoros must make an original scientific contribution. Authors remain responsible for the content and opinions expressed, as well as for the accuracy of data and bibliographical references.
For further information, please consult the following documents:
Editorial policy: https://journals.openedition.org/teoros/168
Manuscript submission rules: https://journals.openedition.org/teoros/4424
The deadline for abstract submission is January 25, 2025.
The deadline for text submission is June 15, 2025.
Proposals for abstracts and texts should be submitted on the OJS platform of the Téoros journal: https://edition.uqam.ca/teoros
Once you have created your submission account, guides are available to help you submit your proposal thereon.
Please enter "Island Tourism" in the subject line.
Issue coordination
- Caroline Blondy, Lecturer in Geography; Mixed Research Unit (MRU) Coastline, Environment, and Society, University of La Rochelle
- Vincent Dropsy, Professor of Economics, University of French Polynesia; Co-director of CETOP - Center for Tourism Studies in Oceania-Pacific; and member of GDI - Governance and Island Development Research Center Laboratory
- Jean-Christophe Gay, Professor of Geography, Côte d'Azur University, Scientific Director of the Côte d'Azur University Tourism Institute and member of URMIS – The Migrations and Society Research Unit Laboratory
Téoros acknowledges the support of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (Aid to Scholarly Journals Program); the Fonds de recherche du Québec - Société et Culture (Aid to Scientific Publications Program); and the Université du Québec à Montréal's School of Management, its Department of Urban Studies and Tourism, and its Centre for Urban Research.
Director: Dominic Lapointe, Professor, Université du Québec à Montréal
Co-editor: Alexandra Arellano, Professor, University of Ottawa
Co-editor: Amira Benali, Professor, Aalborg University
Subjects
- Urban studies (Main category)
- Society > Ethnology, anthropology > Social anthropology
- Society > Sociology
- Society > Ethnology, anthropology
- Society > Sociology > Sport and recreation
- Society > Geography
Date(s)
- Saturday, January 25, 2025
Attached files
Keywords
- tourisme, transition, insulaire, ile
Contact(s)
- Revue Téoros
courriel : teoros [at] uqam [dot] ca
Reference Urls
Information source
- Julien Menu
courriel : teoros [at] uqam [dot] ca
License
This announcement is licensed under the terms of Creative Commons CC0 1.0 Universal.
To cite this announcement
« Tourism and transitions in island destinations », Call for papers, Calenda, Published on Thursday, January 09, 2025, https://doi.org/10.58079/131wb
