NS29 Session 29

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: City tourism development – challenges and possibilities of mobile future

Organiser: Göran Andersson

Affiliation: Södertörn University

Description

Most of the population lives, and a significant proportion of their production takes place in urban areas in a modern society. During the last years, city tourism has increased considerably and has still a development potential.

However, there is a risk that tourism may consume too much resources because it is mobile in nature. This also raises questions related to global warming. Instead of using flights to destinations to far-away destinations, the use of public transport to domestic destinations will have to be given new consideration. The conflict between residents' and visitors' use of the destination space can result in over tourism. Therefore there is a need for improved transport systems, attractions in new places and better coordination of visitor streams within the city.

Furthermore, the Corona pandemic has caused severe problems for people's health. But also, for tourism and the hospitality industry, which must be managed in a different way.

The number of residents increases in many cities, and several have started to plan regional city centres with specific functions such as “the smart city” using both today's popular smartphones services (apps) and new IT-solutions. In addition, digital solutions could be added when planning professional meetings.

In the general city context leisure activities have to be better planned for both residents and tourists. Cities can be seen as gateways from where visitors both start and partly experience their journey. Therefore destination developers and tourist companies must plan a tourism product as a whole.

The function of tourism is embedded in a network of social and economic realities and therefore has a potential to improve destination employment and economy. This calls for new forms of policies concerning city development, where Destination Management Organisations (DMO) can play an important role.

We invite both conceptual and empirical papers on challenges for future city destination tourism, in particular concerning development areas and problematic questions.

 Abstracts