Tourism growth, particularly in cities, is coming under increased scrutiny. However, even often visited cities appear to find it difficult to agree upon a strategy to limit tourism growth. The current paper investigates this issue by looking at the extent to which different stakeholders’ perspectives on tourism development align. Q-sort methodology is employed to find the main worldviews and the extent to which they are shared by stakeholders in similar roles (e.g. policymakers, industry, resident). Results point to the existence of five different worldviews, which differ in the extent to which tourism growth is desirable or problematic and whether resident participation is advantageous or counterproductive. Stakeholders have highly different worldviews, even those with similar roles, which may help explain the difficulty to change the tourism growth paradigm as they limit opportunities for generating new consensus-based collective solutions. If we accept that tourism development strategies are driven and informed at least in part by individual worldviews, it may be impossible to make ‘objective’ policy choices. Instead, it might be more useful to explore possibilities to allow stakeholders to express their worldviews to better understand what sustainable tourism development entails for different people at different places and moments in time.
Client: ERA-NET Cofund Smart Cities and Communities, JPI Urban EuropeUrban tourism generates income for cities and create opportunities for its businesses and employment for its residents. However, it can also lead to overcrowding, pollution, noise and numerous other problems, thus reducing quality of life for residents and other local stakeholders and potentially leading to public discontent. This project introduces SCITHOS as a concept that consists of guidelines and tools to help cities find solutions to make the transition towards environmentally and socially responsible urban tourism that simultaneously contributes to long-term prosperity.Within SCTHOS this is done by combining hospitality principles, simulation tools, apps and serious gaming techniques to support policymakers and other stakeholders in generating collaborative deep reflections about barriers to sustainable urban tourism and the need for transition or adaptation strategies. The project supports the assessment of intervention strategies based on an interactive simulation-supported multi-stakeholder approach that triggers social learning and behavior change, while stimulating shared governance and smart citizenship.Guidelines/ tools and the full concept are developed through a series of living labs and field experiments in participating cities. What is more, a Smart City Hospitality network is set up to ensure accessibility to this concept, including all tools and experiences with using them. The final results of the projects are presented 10 and 11 September 2019 in Vienna, as a pre-session to the popular annual Tourism conference (TOURMIS).
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