Tourism Geographies Podcast

https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2025.2584356
Abstract

This study focuses on Las Vegas’ Historic Westside and analyzes how prolonged historical geographies of segregation shaped the area’s tourism present and future. Throughout the first half of the twentieth century, railway and highway development adjacent to this neighborhood led to redlining and discriminatory practices. While the area experienced a cultural and economic revival in the mid-twentieth century—with Jackson Street being nicknamed ‘The Black Strip’—it later faced decline and exclusion from the city’s tourism economy due to systemic racism. While research has explored revitalization processes in Black communities, few works have specifically examined their role as destinations. We conducted a qualitative study among Westside residents, small business owners, politicians, and activists to uncover tourism placemaking processes. Moreover, we analyzed archival material, such as newspaper articles, oral histories, and public documents from the City of Las Vegas. While community members expressed their desire to share their rich Civil Rights history and cultural heritage with tourists, they acknowledged the area’s socioeconomic challenges as an obstacle. On the one hand, territorial stigmatization causes tourists to be discouraged from visiting the area due to incorrect perceptions about crime and violence. On the other hand, revitalization strategies that could improve the area’s reputation and attract more visitors might result in harmful forms of gentrification and enhance undesirable kinds of ‘poverty tourism.’ One of this work’s main contributions is the analysis of the relationship between a difficult past and a tourism-oriented future, heard in the voices of those who are often ignored but directly affected by planning strategies and policies. Our findings aim to encourage both academics and professionals working with communities that experience spatial racism to undertake a historical geography approach rooted in decolonial and Critical Race Theory. In line with recent research on Black travel and regenerative tourism, this study advocates for a shift in power dynamics that focuses on inclusion, co-governance, and participatory practices.
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https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2025.2594713
Abstract

Tourism geographers have long addressed the spatiality of injustice, taking concern with the struggles over access to resources and capital that shape inequities in tourism-dominant landscapes. And yet, the substance of justice, that is, what we really mean by ‘justice’ is rarely discussed, with tourism geographers possessing a hesitancy to engage in the constitution of justice, preferring practice-informed ‘bottom up’ identifications. This article argues that there is a requirement to openly discuss the substance of justice, to consider the specificities of claims in relation to one another, avoid extreme relativism whereby all claims to justice are equally valid without grounds for critique, and steer clear of any reductions in its political and analytical utility. To facilitate consideration of a distinctly spatial reading of justice for tourism geographers, we propose a framework to consider injustice as governance-informed situated, patterned and collective in ways that inhibit self-development and self-determination. We end with an articulation of three ways through which the proposed framing brings benefits to tourism geographers: (1) Proposes a distinctly spatial reading of justice, (2) Articulates what might constitute injustice, beyond the universalism/pluriversality binary, (3) Facilitates consideration of the forms of justice worthy of attention.
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https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2025.2593978

Abstract

Dominant narratives in tourism shape perceptions of place, often marginalising certain localities, people, and perspectives. This study examines digital counter-narrative place-making in rural communities and the equalising possibilities it can provide. We combine Doreen Massey’s relational theory of place with Hanna Meretoja’s dialogical narrative theory, following a dialogical narrative approach. Empirically, the study draws on a digital place-making project conducted in Ardgour, Scotland, and the Upper Kemijoki river area, Lapland. Utilising audio tours co-created with the local communities, we explore how the local narratives challenge and reframe prevailing tourist representations and culturally dominant narratives, fostering recognition of different perspectives, extending both residents’ and visitors’ sense of the possible, and enhancing equality and justice in tourism. Although community-created audio tours do not have the reach of dominant narratives and have other limitations in their equalising possibilities, they can establish deeper connections to place. Our relational theorisation of counter-narrative place-making contributes to theory in both tourism geography and the wider field of human geography, and our method of analysis can give new analytical ideas to both. A further contribution is our focus on the counter-narratives of rural communities, which has been lacking in previous tourism studies.
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https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2025.2604082
Abstract

What if the future of sustainable tourism lies not in transactions, but in the ancient wisdom of reciprocity and relational ethics? This conceptual paper applies Jaakkola’s theory adaptation approach by revising tourism concepts through the lens of Indigenous worldviews and anthropological Mauss’s (1925) theory of Gift and Counter-Gift. Rather than proposing a new theory, the paper reframes existing ideas to highlight relational ethics over transactional logics. By doing so, the article explores how tourism can benefit from understanding the deep social bonds created through reciprocity and contributes to developing the concept of regenerative tourism, while echoing ongoing Indigenous research.
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https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14616688.2025.2593982

Abstract

This collection advances geographic approaches to accessible tourism through six contributions that collectively double the published resources on this topic within Tourism Geographies. Accessible tourism enables people with access requirements to participate in tourism with independence, equity, and dignity. Despite the growth of accessible tourism research, geographic, spatial, and/or mobilities approaches have been conspicuously absent. Thus, the contributions of this collection include new toolkits to support more inclusive and co-designed accessible tourism (Dickson et al., Citation2024; Lu et al., Citation2025; Wan et al., Citation2024) and greater conceptual depth related to embodied tourism (im)mobilities (Chan et al., Citation2025; Cockburn-Wootten et al., Citation2025; Farkic et al., Citation2025). Progressing towards accessible tourism’s aim of seamless and equitable tourism experiences, geographic perspectives will have an important role to play in addressing the crucial research gaps that remain: destination-scale analyses, whole-of-journey approaches, and inclusive stakeholder-led methodologies.
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