NS29 Session 9

29th Nordic Symposium on Tourism and Hospitality Research
Shaping mobile futures: Challenges and possibilities in precarious times

21-23 September 2021

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Title: Celebrating "proximity" in tourism

Organisers: Tarja Salmela, Outi Rantala, Anu Valtonen, and Emily Höckert

Affiliation: ILA-research group, University of Lapland

Description

To celebrate proximity is to celebrate the mundane exceptionality of the ordinary. During the COVID-19 pandemic and the times of lockdown(s), we have been less equipped with the mindset of celebration than that of defeat. We have, literally, been forced to stay within our proximate surroundings – some more than others. Tourism mobilities and flows have encountered a dam which is consequently causing a flooding of emotions related to the absence of travel, movement, motion. These are emotions of a wide spectrum dependent of the heterogenous relations to travel. Many tourism scholars have stated how the pandemic offers a possibility to think tourism anew. This also invites a re-consideration of proximity and distance. Could we think tourism anew with proximity, beyond the notions of being “stuck”, bound, limited, restricted? Could there be space for a celebration of proximity in tourism?

As proximity tourism has generally been theorized as an alternative to global mass tourism, emphasizing local destinations, short distances and low-carbon transport modes (e.g. Jeuring & Diaz-Zoria, 2017), its alternative conceptualizations and nuanced theorizations have also begun to emerge in tourism research and practice. These include explorations of the phenomenon of “staycation” as an ultimate form of proximity tourism (e.g. de Bloom, Nawijn, Geurts, Kinnunen, Korpela, 2017), and a suggestion of proximity as a more-than-human process of becoming-with the Earth, emphasizing caring relations (Rantala, Salmela, Valtonen & Höckert, 2020).

In this session, we want to provide an inspirational place for the continuation of the discovery of nuances of proximity. Based on the identification of the current evolving state of tourism research focusing on proximity tourism, we welcome playful, daring and fresh understandings and conceptualizations of proximity within tourism discourse/research/practice. They can be presented both through traditional research papers as well as other forms of presentation, such as visual art, music and storytelling.

The session is hosted by members of ILA-project (2019–2023) – www.ilarctic.com.

Abstracts