Editorial: How COVID-19 changed the world of tourism research

Citation

Yeoman, I.S. (2023), "Editorial: How COVID-19 changed the world of tourism research", Journal of Tourism Futures, Vol. 9 No. 1, pp. 2-3. https://doi.org/10.1108/JTF-03-2023-286

Disruption causes significant change, whether for good or bad (Yeoman et al., 2021). COVID-19 has been a catalyst for change and has driven the desire for a better future. It has accelerated our understanding of climate change and been responsible for the word “regenerative tourism”. In this issue of the Journal of Tourism Futures, we explore how COVID-19 has changed, accelerated and brought the future to the forefront of research.

As Oskam and Davis (2023) point out the diminishing impact of pandemics in the twentieth century, specifically the SARS pandemic in 2003 led many to believe and underestimate the COVID-19. From 2022 to this day, many scenario planning and foresight studies have focused on return to pre-crisis growth or the opportunity for regenerative tourism (Sheldon, 2021). Using a foresight framework, the research identifies and challenges assumptions about how a current situation may evolve in the future. The authors highlight how scenarios are an important instrument in resilience building at macro and meso levels, concluding the concept of plurality in using scenarios (Yeoman et al., 2021, 2022). Applying this concept of plurality, Becken and Loehr (2023) provide a range of narratives of what the future of the Asia Pacific tourism may look like beyond COVID-19 and identifying how current tourism policy interventions will shape the future, along with future responds.

Viana-Lora et al. (2023) review the conceptual and empirical studies associated with COVID-19 and argue the effect on mobility and tourism behaviour at destinations in order to identify proposals, forecasts and recommendations to guide the future research agenda on the subject. Applying the theme of mobility, Mirzaei et al. (2023) investigate the changes in travel patterns and tourist behaviour due to the COVID-19 outbreak in Iran. The study identified six main factors: social distancing and hygiene, COVID-19 and choices, disinfection of tourism facilities, COVID-19 and health concerns, COVID-19 and familiarity, and COVID-19 and travel preferences. As Gajić et al. (2023) writes, during the pandemic, two types of fear were identified that occur significantly in all groups or profiles of people. The fear of infection and the fear of lack of money in crisis situations. Gupta et al. (2023) research analysed the factors that caused Indian tourists to avoid travelling abroad because of the recent outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020. It also identified the relationship between the perceived risk of travelling and the probability of travel evading in India owing to COVID-19. The study confirmed that the travellers who perceived higher risk levels have a greater tendency towards travel evading in India. Also, the findings on the negative relationship of personal efficacy with travel evading intentions were found to be consistent with the earlier findings of Lu et al. (2020). Arshad et al. (2023) explore the impact and consequences of COVID-19 on Indian tourism using a modelling approach to forecast the expected loss of foreign tourist arrivals (FTAs) in India for 10 months. The value of the research to policy makers includes the correlation of foreign exchange, GDP and employment for scenario building.

As Wright (2023) writes, the natural environment is facing unprecedented times owing to rising temperatures from carbon emissions, which travel-related industries contribute significantly towards. COVID-19 has seen a desire for utopian futures (Bloch, 2020; Matteucci et al., 2022). The central contribution of the paper highlights the use of storytelling in scenarios as a powerful tool for change.