Book review – Sustainable and Collaborative Tourism in a Digital World

Citation

Seraphin, H. (2021), "Book review – Sustainable and Collaborative Tourism in a Digital World", Journal of Tourism Futures, Vol. 7 No. 3, pp. 411-412. https://doi.org/10.1108/JTF-09-2021-228

Sustainability is a major topic of research in the field of tourism (and related topics) and also an important issue for the 21st century (Sloan et al., 2013; Visser, 2015). As for collaboration amongst all the stakeholders of the tourism industry, it is presented as central for the sustainability of the industry. Overtourism exacerbated the importance of collaboration (Séraphin et al., 2019). As for the role of technology (digitalisation) in tourism, it is presented as contributing to the improvement of customer experiences and/or production optimisation (Decrop et al., 2021). Sustainable and collaborative tourism in a digital world provides an exploration of sustainability, collaboration and digitalisation in tourism. To do so, a variety of destinations (Japan, European Union, Barcelona, Venice, etc.), and other types of case studies have been selected.

The design of the book makes it suitable for students, and researchers in fields such as history, tourism, geography, leisure, etc., and to some extent, to practitioners. One of the best features of Sustainable and collaborative tourism in a digital world is the fact that each chapter starts with some objectives. As for the parts of the book, they are well balanced in terms of number of chapters (three chapters on average per part). This book is also a “one-stop-shop”, as it is one of the very few books combining sustainability, collaboration, overtourism and digitalisation. On that basis, the editors are suggesting that when investigating tourism, a holistic approach should be adopted. Additionally, the book is edited by four worldwide leading academics in tourism, and only includes the best chapters from the ATMC 2019 Namur Conference. It is also worth mentioning the fact that the book series “Advances in tourism marketing” publishes cutting-edge research, authored by leading academics. The only limitation of this book is based on the fact that the title of each part of the book could be a book itself. As a result, more chapters are expected to be included under each part, to have the title of the part fully investigated.

Part 1, mainly discusses the importance of co-(-creating) value as an important aspect of tourism stakeholders’ experience. Part 2, explores platforms within the sharing economy. As digitalisation is quite central for both parts, they could have been merged. As for Part 3, it discusses how important the collaboration between locals and visitors is for the sustainability of the tourism industry and more particularly for cultural heritage. As for the final part of the book, Part 4, it explains how overtourism has altered the perception of residents and millennium of tourism development. Both parts could have also been together. This suggested structure for the book would have addressed (partly) the limitations identified earlier. The research questions listed in the introduction are addressed throughout the chapters and summarised in the conclusion. Having said that, the last sentence of the first paragraph of introduction, could be said to be setting the tone of this edited book: “the pandemic forces us to recognise our progressively more interdependent lives in a globalised world and the responsibility to safeguard the planet” (Decrop et al., 2021, p. 1). The conclusion reinforces this idea, while underlining the Janus-faced character of both the tourism industry (Sanchez and Adams, 2008) and the society we live in. Indeed, this world is “more and more digitalised and virtualised, but at the same time characterised by a growing desire of many to restore straight and genuine human connections” (Decrop et al., 2021, p. 222).

This book is of importance not only because it has combined together four topics (sustainability, overtourism, technology and collaboration) which are often discussed separately but also because it ends with suggesting an important topic for future research, namely, how to restore trust and well-being in the tourism industry after crisis. This is all the more important as the pandemic has impacted tourism customers’ psyche. Indeed, “the Coronavirus pandemic has revived people's existential anxieties by reminding them of their physical and economic vulnerability” (Kock et al., 2020, p. 10).