The Nature and Future of Tourism

This book focuses on the tourism industry in conjunction with the impact of COVID-19 from the perspective that it is both negatively impacting the industry while also offering an opportunity to rise from the ashes. The volume offers a new conceptualization and theorization of tourism, suggests new research methods, offers parallels with other crises (such as 9/11) to better understand the current one, and suggests futurist and innovative strategies. This book offers a wide range of topics on how a pandemic can impact customer satisfaction and the tourism industry.

Maximiliano E. Korstanje, PhD, is Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Safety and Security in Tourism and Editor-in-Chief Emeritus of the International Journal of Cyber Warfare and Terrorism. In addition to being a Senior Researcher in the Department of Economics at the University of Palermo, Argentina, he was a Visiting Research Fellow at the School of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Leeds, UK, and the University of La Habana, Cuba. Dr. Korstanje is a book series editor of Advances in Hospitality, Tourism, and Service Sectors and Tourism Security-Safety and Post Conflict Destinations. Babu George, PhD, is Professor and Associate Dean in the School of Business, Christian Brothers University, Memphis, Tennessee. Previously, he served in a diverse range of academic-administrative roles at various universities, including Fort Hays State University, University of Nevada Las Vegas, Alaska Pacific University, University of Southern Mississippi, among others. In addition, he holds visiting professor designations at more than fifteen universities around the world. He has published more than 200 research papers in international scholarly journals.

1. A New Conceptualization of Leisure 2. Towards a Theory of Tourism 3. Tourism as a Rite of Passage 4. The Relevance of Ethnography to Study Tourism Fields 5. Tourism, Conflict, and Conflictivity: Is Tourism Part of the Problem or the Solution? 6. Tourism After 9/11: The Day Everything Suddenly Changed 7. Is Hospitality Dying? In Robots We Must Not Trust 8. The Impact of COVID-19 in the Tourism Industry: End or Rebirth? 9. Robots and Tourism: Hospitality and the Analysis of Westworld, HBO Saga 10. Gazing the Far Skies Beyond the Earth: Space Tourism Prospects 11. A Community-Centered Vision for Inclusive Tourism 12. Could Information and Communication Technologies Be the Hope for Third World Tourism? 13. The Lingering Quest for Authenticity in Tourism: Is Authenticity Really Dead? 14. Complexity, Uncertainness, and Tourism: Tourist Consciousness