Tourism Recreation Research

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Rethinking or reinventing tourism? Exposing

the ontological and epistemological conflicts in
tourism studies literature during the COVID-19
pandemic

Boualem Kadri, Dominic Lapointe & Samira Tacherifet

To cite this article: Boualem Kadri, Dominic Lapointe & Samira Tacherifet (2023) Rethinking or
reinventing tourism? Exposing the ontological and epistemological conflicts in tourism studies
literature during the COVID-19 pandemic, Tourism Recreation Research, 48:4, 535-546, DOI:
10.1080/02508281.2023.2224705

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Published online: 28 Jun 2023.

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TOURISM RECREATION RESEARCH
2023, VOL. 48, NO. 4, 535–546
https://doi.org/10.1080/02508281.2023.2224705

Rethinking or reinventing tourism? Exposing the ontological and

epistemological conflicts in tourism studies literature during the COVID-19
pandemic
Boualem Kadri , Dominic Lapointe and Samira Tacherifet
Urban and Tourism Studies, Université du Québec à Montréal, Montreal, Canada

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

While tourism was halted by the COVID-19 pandemic, scholars published articles reflecting on Received 16 November 2022
tourism and what should or would be tourism during and after the pandemic. Situating this Accepted 9 June 2023
corpus of tourism studies scientific discourses within the larger crisis of social science, the paper
KEYWORDS
exposes through discourse analysis two poles of arguments on (re)thinking tourism or Tourism; crisis; ontology;
(re)inventing tourism. In the continuity of the debate between pro-growth-industry prone and COVID-19; epistemology
pro social-community prone vision of tourism that was already happening before the pandemic,
the debate on tourism during and after the pandemic is challenging the fundamentals of
tourism – (re)think; and finds ways to make tourism recover-(re)invent, while not considering
the possibility of no tourism. The analysis identified that while there is opposition between
those two poles, there is an overlap at the confrontation of (re)think and (re)invent. This overlap
doesn’t solve opposition and the risk of fragmentations of the field of tourism studies, but show
some possibilities of a symbiotic cohabitation.

Introduction
Rethinking or reinventing tourism? This is the question
triggered by the halt of tourism by global health crisis
stemming from the COVID-19. The question, by its
Shakespearean allure (echoes of Hamlet’s dilemma: to
suffer or to take dramatic existential action), places the
subject before a painful choice. For tourism, should we
prioritize rethinking the concept (revisiting the model,
challenging its core) or reinventing it (changing prac-
tices). The choice also reminds us that society’s relation-
ship with the development model is expressed by
categories in tension, for example, globalization versus
local development; social development (leisure-
tourism) versus growth and overtourism; the mobility
of tourists versus the immobility of destinations; and
many more besides. With the halt of tourism due to
the COVID-19 crisis, tourism studies researchers saw
the crisis as an invitation to re-examine the relationships
between tourist activity and the development model
(Lew et al., 2020).
Since the nineteenth century, the locus of tourism has
been understood as being at the intersection of industry
and society, where the practitioner and the philosopher
meet. This duality, which resembles intertwined threads
rather than a dialectic, has been addressed in past works
(see Morrisset, 2012; Phillimore & Goodson, 2004; Ritchie
et al., 2005; Tribe & Liburd, 2016). The drastic cessation of
tourism activities in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic
has exposed this duality as a fracture between different
ontologies. Indeed, if we inhabit a tourist world (Stock,
2021), is it still a tourist world if there are no tourists in
it? At the beginning of the pandemic, some tourism
experts were calling for a rethinking of tourism, either
by socializing it (Higgins-Desbiolles, 2020); adopting
regenerative practices (Ateljevic, 2020); or reconnecting
it to resident communities (Lapointe, 2020; Tomassini
et al., 2021; Tomassini & Cavagnaro, 2020); while
others focused on identifying conflicting tourism narra-
tives (Tzanelli, 2021). Meanwhile, in the field, prac-
titioners and managers were waiting for recovery and
were more inclined to explore the pathways of reinven-
tion, not challenging the roots or telos of tourism.
It would seem that the unpredictability of the crisis
and its global scope has stimulated a stronger tendency
to re-question the relationship of tourism to societies
and economies. It has more forcefully highlighted the
dual components of tourism, to wit, its anthropo-socio-
logical nature (a quest for the other, its narratives and
fictions) and the development model that was assigned
to it (manufacture of a tourist experience). The crisis
caused by COVID-19 may have generated a greater res-
onance in societies and economies, compelling

CONTACT Dominic Lapointe Lapointe.dominic@uqam.ca

© 2023 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
536 B. KADRI ET AL.
stakeholders to rethink the tourism system as well as the
phenomenon as it has been perceived for several
decades. Hartmut Rosa’s (2018) term resonance as a
primitive form of the relationship of being in the
world. The resonance allows us to re-interrogate our
relationship to the world; it also reminds us that late
modernity (postmodernity) has brought about an accel-
eration. This acceleration introduced a desynchroniza-
tion between the economy and nature, including both
the relationship to nature and to others (Rosa, 2018, p.
47).
The purpose of our research is to understand how the
scientific discourse in tourism studies grasped the onto-
logical and epistemological nature of the tourism
phenomenon while tourism was hit by the COVID-19
pandemic. The first section will elucidate the notion of
crisis, including its relation to the project of modernity,
to the social and human sciences, and to tourism
studies. The second section will specify the method-
ology adopted, through a definition of the concepts of
(re)thinking and (re)inventing and a construction of con-
ceptual categories to analyse the discourse from English-
language writings for the period 2020-2021 (Table 1).
The third section will present an analysis of the results.
The crisis, a revelation of the internal tension
in the complex systems of modernity:
Rethinking or reinventing?
The crisis of a complex system, such as society, has two
important roles to play. It informs us about how the
system is functioning and about its possible collapse.
According to Pauchant and Mitroff (1992, p. 15), a
crisis threatens the foundations of the system itself for
it represents a ‘[d]isruption that physically affects a
system as a whole and threatens its basic assumptions,
its subjective sense of self, its existential core’. For
Morin (2020, p. 11), a crisis certainly reveals an unex-
pected situation in the functioning of the system, but
also presents possibilities for recovery: ‘A crisis therefore
Table 1. Conceptual categories.
Categories
Concepts Conceptual categories
(Re)Think Developing Creating new
critical reflexive representations
thinking (with (of tourism)
respect to
tourism)
(Re)Invent Measuring praxis Creating new offers
(with respect to and organizations
tourism) (of tourism)
incorporates negative potentialities of regression and
destruction and positive potentialities which, due to
the creative imagination, make it possible to find new
solutions. Or, what often happens, is that a crisis
simply serves to restore the status quo ante.1’ A crisis
can also present either ‘contradictory injunctions’
(Morin, 2020), or ‘conflicts of interpretation’ (D’Allones,
2018) like those that appeared during the crisis of the
project of modernity in the sixteenth century when the
Copernican revolution – with a scientific model repla-
cing the traditionalist vision of the universe – caused
the decentration of the status of the individual in the
world. A crisis then is not only experienced as a ‘humilia-
tion’ but also a ‘conflict of interpretation in the form of
contradiction’ and ‘a value rupture’ (D’Allones, 2018, p.
184).
This intersection of questions about a given crisis
resembles the nexus of interrogations imposed by the
recent health crisis and is in line with the reflections of
Morin (2020). For D’Allonnes, a crisis is a ‘total social
fact’ which ‘designates at once a crisis of knowledge,
of the understanding we have of reality, a crisis of our
subjective experience, and a crisis of objective reality,
notably of social reality’ (D’Allones, 2018, p. 9). The
‘conflict of interpretations’ between scientific rationality
and the individual’s place in society, presents itself for
the individual then as ‘[…] a revealing index of his way
of being in the world and in time’ (D’Allones, 2018, p.
185).
Thus, science and rationality have seen their relation-
ship to society questioned since the twentieth century,
notably during the great global crises, specifically the
two world wars. Max Weber ([1905] 1958) spoke of the
‘disenchantment of the world’, observing that the dis-
course of science had replaced the certainties and expla-
nations provided by myths and other stories (Weber,
1964, p. 117). The philosopher Husserl (1936) observed
in turn that science had become disconnected from
social reality by its positivist paradigm, breaking with
the idea that science should be at the service of society.
Despite this resistance to a vision dictated by positiv-
ism at the ontological, epistemological, and methodo-
logical levels, the social and human sciences are part
of a history of permanent crisis. Not only do they
encounter a problem of recognition vis-à-vis other
Building new
forms of knowledge (Foucault, 1970), but they also
discourses (on present a predictive incapacity concerning crises, par-
tourism) ticularly social ones, which would lead to their decline
(Braidotti, 2019; Pomian, 2010). In tourism studies, Bot-
Suggesting terill (2003) also situate debates on what is tourisme,
newly
designed what tourism mean and how power act in tourism
practices (of within the larger crisis of social sciences. He calls for a
tourism)
return of ontology as a break from constructivist in a

critical realism stance that acknowledge that there is a
reality out there. In that reality out there, some people
are acting in a system that is called tourism (Jafari,
1987), but are interpreted through social, cultural, and
historical contexts.
Tourism is in a difficult bind. It is both a social object
and a revealer of a society, and at the same time an
economic and managerial object. The vulnerability of
tourism to crisis is less related to the scientific sense
than to the managerial, performative sense. Tourism is
more severely affected by crises, which can impact its
activity according to their duration and specificity. But
scientific research is of interest for certain types of
crises. An analysis of research on the relationship
between crises and tourism developed by Hall (2010)
shows that economic and financial crises are analysed
more than those related to the environment and
ecology. Cheer et al. (2021) highlight the entanglement
of tourism in major global threats, with tourism being
both a victim of and contributor to climate, health, pol-
itical, and social threats. Moreover, going back to Botter-
ill (2003), the idea of crisis in tourism calls for thinking
about the absence of tourism, which was experience
during the COVID-19 first major lockdowns.
The summary above illustrates the importance of
tourism at the economic and managerial levels. Ritchie
and Jiang (2019), in a review of crisis and risk in
tourism, underline the importance of this problem and
its anchoring in research in order to shed light on the
issue of crisis in tourism. This importance is explained
by the fact that consumer or risk manager perceptions
influence travel and destination decisions. These
authors then refer to the vulnerability of tourism and
the complex nature of the impact of crises and disasters
on the tourism industry, particularly with respect to
international demand. Ritchie and Jiang (2019) also
point out that research on risk and tourism has weak-
nesses at the conceptual and methodological levels
and use the metaphor of the tree and its branches to
highlight this weakness: ‘We use the metaphor of a
tree and argue that the foundation and roots of the
tree must be strong (theory/concepts) in order to
support the strong growth of the tree (the branches or
research sub-themes). We argue that the sub-fields are
currently unbalanced and may lead to an unhealthy
field (tree) in the future if not corrected’ (Ritchie &
Jiang, 2019, p. 5).
But the managerial question of crisis and risk, which is
also inherent to societies, should not obfuscate the phe-
nomenological and societal dimension of tourism. For
tourism and tourists themselves respond to the crisis
in the real world and in real time. Since the end of the
twentieth century, tourism as a comprehensive social
TOURISM RECREATION RESEARCH 537
fact has been expressed according to twin ontologies
forming a couple in tension. On the one hand, we
have the anthropo-sociological vision, organized
around the curiosity-imaginary pairing, which has its
roots in the long history of humanity. On the other
hand, the economic-managerial vision favoured by the
industrial model since the nineteenth century. The
latter dynamism is illustrated by the attractiveness-per-
formance coupling of the destination as a product in
the market.
This tension between socio-anthropological imagin-
ation and rational (industrial) organization also echoes
the tension between rethinking tourism, its foundations
and its telos, and reinventing it, i.e. modifying practices
and organization to allow it to redeploy but with
similar foundations and telos. As the health crisis was
taking its toll on societies, economies and, on tourism,
a series of discourses were produced to address the
impact of the pandemic on tourism, and on the future
of tourism. Special issues on tourism and COVID-19
were published like the ones by Tourism Geographies
(2020), Marcotte et al. (2021), The Asia Pacific Journal
of Tourism Research (2021), and a compilation of
COVID-19 and tourism papers by Tourism Management
(https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/tourism-
management/special-issue/10LQNSMGXDN), to only
name those. In this regard, Gössling et al. (2021),
observe that the COVID-19 health crisis, more than pre-
vious crises, provides a greater incentive to rethink the
tourism growth model imposed by large international
and national organizations: ‘With the magnitude of the
COVID-19 pandemic there is an urgent need not to
return to business-as-usual when the crisis is over,
rather than an opportunity to reconsider a transform-
ation of the global tourism system more aligned to the
SDGs’ (Gössling et al., 2021, p. 15).
This two-fold conflicting ontology of tourism is dra-
matically expressed in Higgins-Desbiolles’ (2021) essay
entitled ‘The ‘war over tourism’: challenges to sustain-
able tourism in the tourism academy after COVID-19’.
The publication constitutes Higgins-Desbiolles’ answer,
following a debate on TRINET, to the argument that a
critical social science perspective has declared war on
tourism, at least on its business dimension. Indeed, her
analysis exposes a strong binary of pro-industry booster-
ism versus pro-limits advocacy where one side excludes
the other, while exposing the nuance and details of the
critical tourism perspective associated with pro-limits
proponents. This debate between pro-growth and
social pro-communities is not new. In the 1970s, advo-
cates of tourism development like De Kadt (1979),
Ghali (1976) were exposing the virtue of tourism for
development and contribution to employment and
538 B. KADRI ET AL.
economic growth, while at the same time Turner and
Ash (1975) were exposing the process of unequal devel-
opment (Amin, 1973) of tourism. This debate was still
active before the COVID-19 pandemic like Brouder
(2018) stress that tourism growth is ubiquitous in devel-
opment strategy and the UNWTO discourse, while
author like Marcouiller (2007) wonders if tourism devel-
opment is a blessing or a curse. This ongoing debate for-
mulates two pathways to react to the COVID-19 crisis:
reform of pro-limits advocacy and the recovery of pro-
industry boosterism. This echoes the rethinking and
reinventing binary, the socio-anthropological and the
business managerial dimensions of tourism, viewed as
opposing couples.
This divide in the scholarly articles of the pandemic
moment will be explored in the following section of
our paper, including how analysts and stakeholders
express their ontologies and the epistemological pro-
blems they face in order to expose the vulnerabilities
of tourism studies at this critical point in time.
Methodology
(Re)think, (Re)invent. Differences, similarities,
and complementarity
While the terms ‘rethink’ and ‘reinvent’ are often used
interchangeably in common discourse, there are many
differences between them. Indeed, the concept of
Table 2. Research themes by year and by category.
Themes/concepts addressed by Number of articles
Category the authors 2020 2021
Rethink • New research approach • 21 17
Consumerism • Inclusive tourism
• Inclusive growth • Hopeful
tourism • Responsible tourism •
Justice tourism • Social and
ecological justice •
Transformation of tourism •
Transformation of the tourism
industry • New normal •
Paradigm shift • Rethinking the
intensive growth model •
Inclusive resilience (Critical
perspective) • Tourism reset •
New business models
Reinvent • Resilient tourism practices • 3 20
Sustainable practices • Adaptive
strategy • Domestic tourism
development • Resumption of
tourism • Industry recovery •
Resilience to revive the industry
• Recovery scenario • Change •
Reset tourism • Tourism
resilience • Economic resilience •
Transformation of tourism
model • Need to change tourism
business models to become
more sustainable
24 37
thinking refers to reflexivity and critical thinking, while
inventing refers mainly to creating something anew,
but with known components. Thinking also points to
intellectual praxis.
In this regard, the philosopher Comte-Sponville
(2013, p. 750) is more explicit: ‘To think is to unify rep-
resentations within a consciousness, under the norm of
the given or possible true idea’. For this same author,
invention represents ’more than a discovery, less than
a creation. To invent is to give being to what did not
exist before."2 Meanwhile the Merriam Webster diction-
ary (2023) qualifies (re)thinking as the idea of reconsider-
ing something, implying doubt and transformation.
Reconsidering then involves the possibility of putting a
complete stop to what is being scrutinized in the
(re)thinking process. On the other hand, (re)inventing
involves making anew, with new or existing elements.
The concepts of (re)thinking and (re)inventing do not
have the same meaning, even if they share the dimen-
sion of ‘imagining according to determined ends’. We
can add at this point that (re)thinking allows us to act
on the phenomenon or concept (of tourism) according
to a mode of construction of knowledge and know-
how, whereas (re)inventing would partly concern the
phenomenon but would have as its objective to act in
the last instance on (tourism) practices.
We propose for the analysis of the corpus of articles
two conceptual categories for each concept, enabling
us to recognize the intellectual effort made in the ana-
lyses: (re)thinking or (re)inventing? Can we find these
categories in the literature? Do authors fit into any of
these categories? Although this last question was not
2022 Total the main objective of the analysis as the unit of analysis
2 41 was not the articles, but at the level of the postulates.
This choice allows to avoid crystallizing authors in one
frame while some postulates might consist on different
categories than their main argument.
Analysis of researchers’ discourse
The objective of this study is to analyse the tourism lit-
erature in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic and sec-
ondly to identify the various reflections that illustrate
2 24
how tourism discourse grasps the ontological and epis-
temological nature of the tourism phenomenon. To
achieve this goal, the research includes journal articles
on tourism and the COVID-19 pandemic. An extensive
search of the Scopus database revealed 215 scientific
articles related to COVID-19 and tourism published in
41 English-language peer-reviewed journals between
2020 and 2022. This choice is motivated by the abun-
dance of English-language publications on the topic in
4 65
this short period. This choice is therefore overlooking

publication on the topic in other languages, which could
have a different perspective on the phenomenon.
We have chosen to examine the scientific literature
rather than tourism plans, policies, and practices. This
is due firstly to the fact that it seems too early to see
new tourism policies appearing for analysis. Secondly,
the analysis covers a very short period during the pan-
demic. The keywords used in the research are ‘COVID-
19’ and ‘tourism’. These are identified in the titles and
abstracts of the articles. An initial screening resulted in
65 articles selected after reading the abstracts, including
24 published in 2020, 37 published in 2021, and 4 pub-
lished in 2022 (see Table 2). Only those with relevant
thoughts on tourism in relation to the pandemic were
selected. This strategy to select articles leave out
papers that are not directly on the pandemic but
could address the situation in the context without men-
tioning it in the abstract or title.
A preliminary ranking was carried out using the
N’Vivo textual keyword search. Concerning the classifi-
cation of the articles according to the two categories,
the words used are presented in Table 2. The final
classification was based on our own judgement after a
complete Reading of the articles using the discourse
analysis method (Fairclough, 1995; Foucault, 1970).
Through this approach, we have been able to establish
an interpretation of the articles studied and to stipulate
consideration of the study of the social construction of
discourses as a prerequisite to the moment of analysis
in social research (Sabourin, 2009), who also postulates
that a document is not only a tracing of content; it is also
an organization of that content, thus translating the fact
that the verbalizations and the writings articulate a way
of understanding the world, a socio-cognitive organiz-
ation, rather than simply containing information about
the lived world. (p. 426) 3
In such discourse analysis, the discursive formations
become an empirical linguistic trace of the discourse.
The understanding of such discursive formations being
situated in place and time, but also from the position
of the reader, making it a dynamic nexus. According to
the same author, the frequency of appearance of a
theme has a different meaning depending on the type
of social discourse in question, hence the importance
of not focusing only on textual analysis. This is the
case, for example, as regards the term ‘industry’ cited
563 times in the 24 articles of the ‘reinvent’ category
and 706 times in 38 articles of the ‘rethink’ category.
But as opposed to the ‘reinvent’ category, use of this
word in the ‘rethink’ category refers to critical views of
the tourism industry presented by the authors. This
classification approach resulted in 41 articles, 14 of
TOURISM RECREATION RESEARCH 539
which came from issue 22(3) of the journal Tourism geo-
graphies, where the authors address in-depth critical
thinking on how to rethink tourism after the pandemic.
The 24 articles categorized as ‘reinventing tourism’
include discussions of innovation in practices for
tourism recovery, a return to the model, and the resili-
ence needed to revive the tourism industry (see Table.
2).
A total of 150 articles were excluded from the analysis
on the grounds that they did not meet the objectives of
this qualitative research. Based on in-depth analyses of
the COVID-19 pandemic and supported largely by quan-
titative approaches (online surveys, statistical data),
these articles specifically address the effects of the pan-
demic on tourist and host behaviours, the change in risk
perception effected by the pandemic, tourist animosity
and travel intentions, perceived travel risk, and predic-
tions of post-pandemic tourism demand. The articles
also address the economic and socio-cultural impacts
of COVID-19 on the tourism industry through case
studies in different regions of the world in a short
period of time. First, they were describing effects of
the pandemic on tourism, not addressing ways of
acting for tourism during the pandemic. Moreover, a
word frequency query by N’Vivo revealed that ‘impact’,
for example, was among the top 50 most frequently
used words in those articles.
We use the term ‘pandemic time’ with caution
because according to the World Health Organization’s
weekly epidemiological report on COVID-19, the epide-
miological and social footprint of the pandemic
remains imprinted the world over. Although all the
papers analysed were published within the pandemic
status of the WHO. This raise an issue in the analysed
as the three authors working on the discourses analysis
also had the experience of the pandemic, the lockdowns
and the changing sanitary rules that were enforced at
that time. This situated experience bring some under-
standing to the situation, understanding that could be
different in 10 or 20 years with added hindsight and
different situated experience of the pandemic.
Rethink or reinvent: the discourses at play
Rethink:
The pandemic has had both negative impacts on
tourism (repercussions for the economy) and positive
impacts with respect to scientific knowledge in
tourism, as the crisis situation has offered a unique
opportunity to rethink the model and to develop reflec-
tions that call for a full and thorough redefinition of
tourism. Rethinking tourism requires, according to
540 B. KADRI ET AL.
several authors, questioning the industrial paradigm and
the capitalist perspective on which pre-pandemic
tourism was based (for example: Ateljevic, 2020; Benja-
min et al., 2020; Gössling et al., 2021; Sigala, 2020). The
works adopting this stance present a radical perspective
on the transformation of tourism formerly based on
volume growth (Gössling et al., 2021) as a synonym of
success (Butler, 2022), and on profit and consumption,
where the emphasis is on ‘the individual and innovations
rather than collectives and community-owned trans-
actions’ (Brouder et al., 2020, p. 736). Those papers
create new representations of tourism, representations
based on connections (Lapointe, 2020), regeneration
(Ateljevic, 2020; Cave & Dredge, 2020) and more-than-
human relationship (Crossley, 2020; Everingham & Chas-
sagne, 2020). Some transformative visions existed before
the time of the pandemic such as the notion of ‘hopeful
tourism’ which offers a distinctive approach to the study
of tourism, based on a ‘value-led humanistic perspective’
and co-transformative learning (Pritchard et al., 2011).
A number of articles propose a rethinking of tourism
after COVID-19, based on forecasts and scenario-build-
ing exercises (Fotiadis et al., 2021; Ioannides & Gyimóthy,
2020; Villacé-Molinero et al., 2021) essentially grounded
in past experiences and crises (Lew et al., 2020). Several
authors emphasize the need to go beyond the vision of
recovery stemming from the model of ‘business as usual
‘ (Higgins-Desbiolles et al., 2022) and the culture of ‘con-
sumerism’ (Higgins-Desbiolles, 2020). It consist on build-
ing new discourses on tourism to re-examine the
unsustainable, congested model (Duro et al., 2021)
while moving towards a more responsible (Pardo &
Ladeiras, 2020), more environmentally conscious (Cross-
ley, 2020), and more inclusive (Pardo & Ladeiras, 2020)
prototype, which makes it possible to consider econ-
omic growth as a vital pillar inseparable from social
and ecological well-being. Moreover, by conceiving of
tourism as a social force instead of a simple market
opportunity (Benjamin et al., 2020), certain scholars
develop critical thoughts that call for an adaptation to
the ‘new normal’ (Brouder et al., 2020; Cardoso, 2020)
and a greater emphasis on sustainability, equity, and
justice in tourism in the post-pandemic era, with an
anchoring in the space of citizenship (Tomassini et al.,
2021) and a reconnection to hosting (Lapointe, 2020;
Tomassini et al., 2021; Tomassini & Cavagnaro, 2020).
This ‘new normal’ requires a complete ‘reset’ (Higgins-
Desbiolles, 2020) and a ‘transformation’, even a com-
plete overhaul of the global tourism system (Rastegar
et al., 2021) and the economic model on which it is
based (Cave & Dredge, 2020), according to a degrowth
approach (Butcher, 2021). Proponents of this approach
do not advocate adopting strategies based on a return
to the normalcy of the past, but rather to build back
better with less disruption to the evolving global
society (Lew et al., 2020).
Reinvent:
The context of the pandemic marks a transition from
studies in tourism devoted to its expansion (quantitative
and qualitative) propelled by globalization (Duro et al.,
2021) towards concerns focused on protection and resi-
lience (Prayag, 2020), particularly with regard to inter-
national demand (Duro et al., 2021). In ontological
terms, tourism is represented (or perceived) as a quan-
tifiable, remodelable object and a neoliberal practice
(Tomassini et al., 2021). From an epistemological point
of view, it is analysed as a system that undergoes dis-
turbances, which relies on tourists as a source of
profits (Bausch et al., 2021) and therefore requires resili-
ence for recovery. This is shown by Altshuler and
Schmidt (2021), who apply concepts from resilience
theory proposing to designed new practices aimed at
strengthening the resilience of the tourism and hospital-
ity industry, the objective being to maintain economic
activity by making it immune to possible shocks (Cheer
et al., 2021).
Other works devoted to the recovery of the industry
reflect a continuity with the old model, i.e. an attempt
at reinvention without a change in patterns of
thought. A study conducted by Assaf et al. (2022) pre-
sents six lines of research proposed by industry and aca-
demic experts in tourism: post-covid consumer
behaviour; demand and performance modelling; fore-
casting scenarios for demand and reservations; mana-
ging destinations to become more resilient; using
information technology for customer satisfaction and
e-tourism for shaping the holiday experience; and
quality lifestyle and sustainability that supports the
balance of interests between vacationers, tourists, and
local communities. This study is based on a measuring
of the praxis of tourism to achieve some desired sustain-
ability that don’t questions the role of tourism. Secondly,
the pandemic is seen as an opportunity to strengthen
the global tourism system (Cardoso, 2020). From this
perspective, tourism is mainly understood as a market
exchange system based on leisure mobility. The pan-
demic is conceived as an ‘opportunity’ to create new
products and new management systems.
Authors calling for a recovery of the industry try to
reinvent the pre-pandemic model based on a future des-
tination and hospitality offer adapted to new tourist
profiles (Borges-Tiago et al., 2021) or on institutional
innovation for the transformation of tourism (Brouder,
2020) and its ‘operating system’ to create more resilient
economies (Cave & Dredge, 2020). This approach also

involves transformative innovation for a model that is
more resilient and equitable (Benjamin et al., 2020);
more sustainable and inclusive (Cheer, 2020); incorpor-
ated into the daily lives of individuals and cultures
(Galvani et al., 2020); environmentally friendly and
resource-neutral (Prideaux et al., 2020); and supported
by changes in policies, business practices, and consumer
and resident behaviours (Cardoso, 2020). But the trans-
formation understood as a process is also based on con-
sidering the contradictory discourse of the actors
involved, in particular relating to development in
general, the ethical dimensions of tourist development,
and the use of tourist space as compared to local
spatial imperatives (Prideaux et al., 2020).
As regards reinvention, other research has drawn
attention to the need for alternative forms of tourism
such as responsible tourism and justice tourism, which
‘will not be enough to create the fundamental changes
needed to redirect tourism away from injustice and
oppression’ (Higgins-Desbiolles, 2020) in the first place
and also present a conceptual and theoretical insuffi-
ciency (Guia, 2021), which makes it difficult to carry
out empirical research and therefore the reinvention of
tourism, except perhaps through the creation of niche
products with moral significance.
Other forms of tourism have appeared in the litera-
ture, such as internal tourism (national or domestic)
which according to Adams et al. (2021) enables cultural
exchanges between national ethnic groups, contribut-
ing to the support and revitalization of minority cultures
and solidarity movements. But in line with the epistemo-
logical stance that stems from the industrial vision of
tourism, domestic tourism also helps to reduce and miti-
gate the vulnerability of the industry (Canh & Thanh,
2020). The case of virtual tourism, widely practiced in
the context of the pandemic, is also an alternative to
support the tourism industry. In the case of Quebec, it
presents an attempt at ‘survival’ that could lead to resi-
lience (Lapointe, 2020). This form of tourism may also
help to mitigate future crises via the image repair strat-
egies used by destination marketers (Ketter & Avraham,
2021). Regarding business tourism, Ioannides and Gyi-
móthy (2020) also mention the fundamental paradigm
shift underway, with the use of virtual platforms repla-
cing travel and reducing mobility.
Rethinking/reinventing: observation of the
confrontation
The confrontation between the pathways of rethinking
and reinventing tourism illustrates a disparity in the
very understanding of tourism, of its ontological rep-
resentation and of the epistemological roots of its
TOURISM RECREATION RESEARCH 541
analysis. All the literature consulted reveals a nuanced
link and both a confrontation and a complementarity
as regards rethinking and reinventing tourism. The rein-
vention of tourism cannot happen without a new way of
rethinking the entire process, just as the needed reflec-
tions cannot take place without the reinvention of
tourism itself. Indeed, if tourism were to end, tourism
scholars would not be able to reflect on it anymore at
all. As Botterill (2003) mentioned, the idea of absence
of tourism is not part of the tourism studies, even in
the context of a pandemic that made tourism almost
inexistent during the first lockdowns.
The articles dealing with the reinvention of tourism
reflect the dominance of the epistemological stance
imbuing the industrial vision of tourism and its manage-
ment, where tourism constitutes a source of growth and
economic development, social gain being conflated
within economic gain. This stance would seem to
conflict with the position articulated in the works of
tourism’s critics and critical thinkers who ontologically
represent the pursuit as a manifestation of contempor-
ary capitalism and a neoliberal practice associated with
social inequalities and injustice (for example: Guia,
2021; Higgins-Desbiolles, 2020; Rastegar et al., 2021;
Tomassini et al., 2021). These thinkers depict tourists as
invaders of local residents’ space (Tomassini et al.,
2021) and a vector of environmental impacts, social
inequalities, and injustice. This link between tourism
and justice has attracted the interest of the scientific
community during the last two decades of research on
tourism (Guia, 2021) and continues in the post-pan-
demic context of today.
Several studies (Butcher, 2021; Cheer, 2020; Galvani
et al., 2020; Guia, 2021; Lew et al., 2020; Prideaux et al.,
2020) highlight the complexity of the transformation
of tourism, where certain concepts require greater
reflection and remodelling, including degrowth, the
right to rest and leisure, inequalities and class differ-
ences, social exclusion, relations between capital and
labour, and working conditions (Milano & Koens, 2022).
This conceptualization is also expressed in the identifi-
cation of new forms of tourism, such as justice tourism,
regenerative tourism, and responsible tourism. From
the analytical/epistemological point of view, the two
positions converge as regards the need for a more theor-
etical and conceptual foundation to carry out empirical
research, making it possible to operationalize the pro-
posed models, scenarios, and forms of tourism and to
break free from the established sequence, as regards
the theoretical construction of reinvented tourism,
with new foundational principles, including the indus-
try’s reinvestment in niche development as a high
growth product in a competitive environment (Lapointe
542 B. KADRI ET AL.
et al., 2018). For Zopiatis et al. (2021), this entails going
beyond what is envisaged by traditional theories in the
case of crisis management, communication, and recov-
ery, with the perspective of reinventing or transforming
the operational paradigms of the industry itself.
On the other hand, paradoxically, the many ways of
thinking about tourism are sometimes in conflict with
the different epistemological positions related to the
industrial vision of tourism. In this regard, Butcher
(2021) points out that questioning the growth-based
model can lead to an impasse, where degrowth can be
‘unrealistic and erroneous’, leading to poverty, a with-
drawal of mobility, and the stifling of scientific inno-
vation. The industrial vision underlying a tourist
ontology anchored in commercial exchange beyond
mobility tourism emerges when the tourist remains a
consumer and growth is seen as the virtuous end of
economic activity. This position epitomizes the (re)in-
vent dimension of scientific discourses around the
tourism and the pandemic, based on measuring praxis
that don’t reflexively think on the basis of the tourism
phenomenon, neither challenge its telos.
However, the paradigm shift that many scholars call
for raises significant epistemological challenges. These
include, in particular, obstacles to interdisciplinary
research as discussed by Wen et al. (2021), with recourse
to different disciplines using an array of approaches
(Faye, 2007) and distinct theoretical languages,
anchored in various epistemic goals and strategies (Ped-
ersen, 2016). But by constituting a ‘hotbed for inno-
vation’ for the resolution of complex problems (Wen
et al., 2021), interdisciplinarity constitutes the very foun-
dation of research in tourism studies, thus supporting
Pernecky’s (2019) position that tourism is a subject of
post disciplinary research, making it possible according
to Kock et al. (2020, p. 11) to ‘conceptually and empiri-
cally connect seemingly standalone phenomena to gen-
erate new knowledge’. Creating some sort of symbiotics
relations between those standalone phenomena.
The second challenge is the one mentioned by Guia
(2021) who highlights the lack of conceptual frameworks
and theoretical foundations for alternative forms of
tourism proposed as justice tourism. The third challenge
is that of an epistemic crisis in which it is difficult to
determine the truth, anticipating an emerging ‘postma-
ture modernity’ (Galvani et al., 2020). This is the case for
sustainable tourism which, according to Galvani et al.
(2020) is subject to expert debate to determine when
or whether something is ‘sustainable’ when sustainabil-
ity often boils down to an ecological modernization of
the productive apparatus allowing tourist mobility.
These situations could lead to a dead end, or even
make it difficult to rethink tourism by limiting
reinvention to technological issues, ignoring the social
and political elements at the heart of the crises inherent
in societies, contemporary capitalism, and tourism itself.
From another perspective, rethinking tourism
prompts the use of new paradigms that call for change
both in the way of thinking and doing tourism, such as
a transformation of the relationship between humans
and of the ways of consuming the world (Benjamin
et al., 2020), where tourists define themselves as ‘cultural
creatives [reinventing] themselves and the world they
live in’ (Ateljevic, 2020, p. 467). In philosophical terms,
this change can also occur through a deep reflection
on the dominant vision of the world (Ateljevic, 2020)
and a profound change in values (Cheer, 2020),
through a redefinition of consumption, of mobility,
and of how ‘relationships between people and places
[are] conceived, operationalized and commodified’ as
well as of the host–guest bond (Cheer, 2020, p. 516).
This requires, for example, the forecasting of scenarios
based on a replacement of the ‘endless neophilia and
unquenching thirst for (often irresponsible) adventure
in far-flung [locations]’ by more proximate visits,
leading to the ‘reemergence of patriotic consumption
(similar to the kickstart of post-WW2 markets)’ (Ioannides
& Gyimóthy, 2020, p. 628).
Conclusion
The COVID-19 crisis had major impacts for tourism, as
it almost completely halted international leisure mobi-
lity for more than three months, and as of 2023, the
industry has yet to recover completely. As both a
socio-anthropological and a managerial phenomenon,
the temporary disappearance of tourism also triggered
a crisis of knowledge and understanding with respect
to both the field and the industry. Moreover, this
crisis moment, while circumscribed in time, has been
an expression of the thorny predicament of the
social sciences, including issues pertaining to their
legitimacy and to the rise of managerial and technical
science. Setting the COVID-19 upheaval within the
ongoing social science crisis and the inherent crisis-
prone tendency of our societies has led us to look at
the academic corpus of that time from the perspective
of continuity rather than rupture. Even though COVID
sparked a major crisis, it was a calamity within a
crisis-prone social, economic, epistemic, and scientific
network of systems.
Our analysis of the academic work on (Re)thinking
and (Re)inventing tourism has yielded two dominant
ontologies, a socio-anthropological ontology and an
economic and managerial one. Harking back to Rosa
(2018), pre-pandemic tourism could be depicted as

part of an accelerating world made available for con-
sumption in predictable and normalized ways. All of a
sudden, COVID-19 made the world unavailable, with
lockdown and mobility restrictions abounding. Faced
with this unattainable realm, the ontological perspective
of a tourism rooted in encounter called for a rediscovery
of a sensitive relationship to the world in all its reson-
ance instead of a consumption of the globe through
an accumulation of experience. On the other hand, the
managerial ontologies rooted in the economic trans-
actions of tourism were calling for recovery as a societal
responsibility (Tremblay-Huet & Lapointe, 2021).
The two opposing ontologies have spawned vulner-
abilities through their conflict, as Higgins-Desbiolles
(2021) has made clear. The tree metaphor of Richie
and Yang helps us to understand the (re)think propo-
nents calling for a deepening of roots, using the pan-
demic period to question the basis of tourism,
discovering a new tempo in an increased resonance
with the environment, people, and place. Meanwhile
the (re)invent proponents focus on the branches of
applied science and management to concoct a recov-
ery. This situation is making tourism studies, as a field,
vulnerable to a metaphoric severance of the metapho-
ric tree. Concurrently, the (re)think current moves
towards a more rhizomatic system of roots, alike a rhi-
zomatic willow such as the salix interior, bringing
tourism to other fields, looking for qualities such as
close encounters, relationality to living in a given
place, and short-distance leisure mobilities blurring
with daily life practices. This tourism (re)think pushes
the roots far from the main trunk in possible
offshoots that could carry tourism beyond our
current conceptualizing of it. While this rhizomatic
network moves away from the trunk of tourism
studies as we once understood them, the ontological
perspective of (re)inventing tourism might be morph-
ing into a self-referential movement where tourism is
the economic act of the tourist, with this transactional
conceptualization justifying tourism by tourism. As
they grow apart, in opposite directions, these two
movements threaten to sever the tree once and for
all, leading the field of tourism studies to rupture
and to plunge into a deeper canyon of difference.
Although we can see these two ontologies at war
(Butcher, 2021), with sections of the tree on the
verge of snapping, our analysis shows that at the
fulcrum of confrontation is emerging a field of possi-
bility where a greater resonance(Rosa, 2018) anchored
in the (re)thinking spawns new praxis and innovative
management practices that can (re)invent tourism
within different forms of alternative economy (Cave
& Dredge, 2020) that moves beyond growth as its
TOURISM RECREATION RESEARCH 543
sole aim. This could be metaphorically depicted as a
reflexive lichen, i.e. as two entities inextricably bound
to live and evolve together through exchange and
reciprocity in a symbiotic relationship. Tourism then
becomes, as it were, the lichen, with a (re)think nurtur-
ing new praxis that (re)invents, thus nurturing a new
flourishing of (re)think: algal-fungal symbiosis leading
to photosynthetic mycelium. While this hopeful view
closes our reflection on the tourism studies literature
of the pandemic times, this lichen-like entanglement
of tourism studies is far from being the dominant
strain, leaving our field vulnerable to severance and
dispersal.
Notes
1. Author’s translation of the following: Une crise a donc en
elle des potentialités négatives de régression et de
destruction, et des potentialités positives qui, grâce à
l’imagination créatrice, permettent de trouver de nou-
velles solutions. Ou bien, ce qui se produit souvent, de
simplement restaurer un statu quo ante.
2. Author’s translation of « Penser, c’est unifier des rep-
résentations dans une conscience, sous la norme de
l’idée vraie donnée ou possible ». Pour ce même
auteur, l’invention serait « plus qu’une découverte,
moins qu’une création. Inventer c’est faire être ce qui
n’existait pas avant ».
3. Author’s translations of the following: « qu’un document
n’est pas uniquement trace de contenu, mais aussi d’une
organisation de ces contenus traduisant, ainsi, le fait que
les dires et les écrits font état d’un rapport de connais-
sance du monde, une organisation sociocognitive,
plutôt que de simplement contenir des informations à
propos du monde vécu » (Sabourin, 2009, p. 426).
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes on contributors
Boualem Kadri is a Professor in tourism studies at the School
of Management Sciences of the Université du Québec à Mon-
tréal. His research fields research are the epistemology of
tourism studies, the critical analysis of the concept of tourism
studies and the process of touristification of the city.
Dominic Lapointe is a full Professor in the Department of
Urban and Tourism Studies at Université du Québec à Mon-
tréal. He is the director of Téoros, a French language tourism
studies journal and the holder of the research chair UQAM
on tourism dynamics.
Samira Tcherifet is an architect with a Master’s degree in urban
planning. She is pursuing her PhD in the Department of Urban
and Tourism Studies at ESG-UQAM. She is a teaching assistant
and collaborates in research within the same department in
the field of tourism and heritage.
544 B. KADRI ET AL.
ORCID
Boualem Kadri http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5416-6642
Dominic Lapointe http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5696-1471
Samira Tacherifet http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6650-9297
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