The Future of Tourism: Innovation and Sustainability

Citation

Conlin, M. (2019), "The Future of Tourism: Innovation and Sustainability", Journal of Tourism Futures, Vol. 5 No. 3, pp. 293-294. https://doi.org/10.1108/JTF-09-2019-087

This is an important book. It focuses on innovation in the tourism industry from the perspective of sustainability, surely a critical area of examination and discussion for the industry and its future. Its collection of 16 insightful and relevant chapters touch upon a wide range of issues which have been assembled into three sections: tourism futures and the technological facets of innovation, cultural paradigms and innovation, and tourism governance innovation. Within the sections, readers will find chapters addressing the full gamut of sustainability topics including but not limited to: natural resources; the impact of digital technology including connectivity and the internet economy; ethical considerations related to sustainable tourism; innovation impacting pricing, distribution and product development; cultural impacts on tourism sustainability such as “Disneyfication”; and last but certainly not least, the challenges faced by planners, public policy makers and academics with assessment and measurement in the sustainable tourism future. Much of this discussion is linked to appropriate examples in the real world and draws from the successes and failures of approaches taken by destinations, agencies and private sector operators to resolve problems and develop a sustainable future.

The relative strength of an edited book flows in part from the skills of its editors, both intellectually and administratively. This book benefits enormously from the leadership of its editors, Eduardo Fayos-Solà and Chris Cooper. Representing both the public policy sector and academia, Eduardo and Chris are acknowledged leaders in the tourism field and as such, have been able to attract the impressive author pool discussed below. In addition, they have crafted a well formatted book that easily leads the reader through the key areas of discussion logically. Perhaps most importantly, they have been able to set the stage for the discussion in Chapter 1 including a discussion of the need for innovation and collaboration between the public and private sector in order to advance sustainability of the industry. The chapter also provides a useful road map of the book itself which assists the reader in utilizing what is a fairly substantial tome. In Chapter 18, the editors pull together much of the discussion to reach a number of relevant conclusions, most of which are optimistic. They conclude with useful summaries of the key elements of chapters making up the three sections of the book. These final pages, seven pages, are extremely useful and underscore the quality of the book and its leadership.

The other relative strength of any edited book lies to a large degree with the quality of its author pool. The author pool for this book is an impressive multisectoral group consisting of 32 policy experts, industry leaders and appropriately, a significant number of internationally respected academics. The group is also highly international and multicultural, both characteristics that contribute strongly to the quality of the discussion and the value of recommendations found within the book. As a result, the discussion found in the book is relevant, far-ranging, and engaging and taken as a whole, is a “must read” for anyone interested in the future of tourism. It should be noted that the quality of the author pool also comes from the heterogeneity of the group. With apologies to those not mentioned, it includes a number of highly respected and long-standing leaders in the tourism research field including Jafar Jafari, Don Hawkins, Alan Fyall, Noel Scott and Larry Yu, to name a few. It also includes highly respected public and private sector leaders including Francois Bedard, Cláudia Lisboa, Cipriano Marin and Zoritsa Urosevic. Again, apologies to those not mentioned. Overall, this is an extremely impressive group of authors.

The future perspective of the book according to the editors is a 10–20 year time horizon. The editors quite correctly point out that focusing on the future of tourism is to quote them, “[…] territory where few authors have dared to tread” (p. 325). They make the point that the future is subject to the influence of so many known and indeed, not yet known, variables that a more appropriate way to refer to this discussion is “tourism futures” which recognizes this level of uncertainty. Nonetheless, this book does a good job of examining tourism sustainability and innovation within this environment of uncertainty to the extent that this book is, as mentioned above, a “must read” for those interested in tourism futures.