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Despite well-established links between travel, learning and education in tourism studies, there is scant discussion around the ways in which ‘trouble’ emerges and unfolds in experience-based and field course learning scenarios. This exploratory research study aims to understand this neglected aspect of tourism education, drawing attention to its pedagogical value and to debate the purpose of trouble within the field, both the unintended and unexpected situations as well as the deliberate troubling scenarios. Specifically, drawing inspiration from collective memory work (cf. Haug, 1987; Small, 1999) we examine the ‘troubling’ memories of tourism educators that lead and organise field courses in domestic and international contexts. Analysis of findings reveal that unintended instances become purposeful for both students and educators, whilst deep learning can be triggered by a deliberate courting of trouble. Such troubles become transformative practices that afford opportunities to pause, reflect and re-think the ways in which we respond to differences and the evolving dynamics of the places we travel to for education. As educators are likely not trained to stay with, or more specifically to sway towards trouble, this paper imparts insights around how to create purpose from trouble inspiring educators to facilitate more critically-oriented tourism field courses.

The desire to explore the world around us is deeply embedded in many people’s psyche, but it comes at a cost to the environment and often to the residents of the visited communities. Much of tourism education has been closely linked to preparing students for future professional practice, but the challenges and opportunities linked to its consumption require that its future leaders must exhibit very different values and understandings to tackle ever more complex and wicked problems from which tourism cannot dissociate itself.

This special issue addresses the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in relation with informal economies and explores how informal economies need to be conceptualized, understood and connected to the SDGs in order to enable innovative sustainable development models.

There is growing imperative for the development of innovation competencies to address both economic and social/environmental issues in the travel sector, within the context of sustainable development and the fourth industrial revolution. This paper explores a unique combination of design-based and value-based learning to foster students' innovation competencies, utilising a case study involving 60 Master of Tourism students in ‘Innovation in Tourism’ course. Results suggest that the combined pedagogies are effective in fostering creative problem-solving, system thinking, goal orientation, teamwork and networking. However higher education institutions need to better adapt both the administration and the curriculum to accommodate different tasks and teaching roles.

The large number of commentaries in this special issue reflect the need that so many people have to express themselves as a way of releasing the anxieties and integrating the hopes that the COVID-19 pandemic has engendered in individuals and groups around the world. The guest editors of this special issue provide the following comments in reflecting on the major themes that are envisioned for travel and tourism in a COVID-19 world. Comments from the guest editors are individually identified in this conclusion editorial. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

This article addresses the transformative role that tourism might play in developing economies. The main emphasis is on investment in sustainable community-based tourism as a way to alleviate poverty and improve livelihoods. Communities are representing sustainable and rooted social life while at the same time as a form of social structure, which can foster both social change and secure social coherence. We seek to explore whether the resilience perspective brings something new to discussions about tourism development and community, since earlier discussions have touched on subjects resembling “resilience”. By analyzing resilience in a community perspective, we argue that it might constrain the analytical use of the community concept. It seems to be just another tendency to move towards policy processes that are based on global (agendas) for how to construct resilience. These processes represent a top-down approach, limiting the notion of community rather than unfolding the proximities and distance embedded in community logics.

This paper addresses the problem-based learning model (PBL) model and how PBL can be a catalyst to motivate 17 students in a master’s program in Global Tourism Development at Aalborg University (Denmark) through co-created events between the University and actors outside the University. In this case study, the students went to Cuba in March 2017 to solve real-life tasks related to tourism issues. The paper nuances the models of experiential learning as being “enough” to prepare students to take ownership for the experience of learning. The results show that students not only learn from experience and from general reflection but they also need to be motivated by creating meaningful events or situations in which they take ownership of their own learning experience and enhance knowledge accumulation, employability approaches and skills.

Cuba is at a crossroads in its transition from a socialist to a market-oriented mixed economy. The death of Fidel Castro, and the steps taken by Raúl Castro to normalize relations between Cuba and the US, have generated a wave of tourism opportunities. However, deep tensions remain between the Cuban state's centralized socioeconomic model and economic realities. Using the framework of diverse economies, we challenge tourism scholars to unlock the diversity of economies and exchanges that exist, and the Cuban case study in this paper assists in demonstrating why this is important. Within this sensitive political context, we analyse entrepreneurial businesses known as casas particulares, and their broader significance for Cuba's political futures within the framework of diverse economies. In doing so, we tap into debates about diverse economies. Ethnographic fieldwork is conducted in Viñales, a municipality which has experienced tourism growth, and since 1999 has been a UNESCO World Cultural Landscape. We explore everyday tourism practices and diverse exchanges in tourism to nuance the social and political significance of the State's policies.

The universality of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is being pursued aiming for progress towards a wide range of sustainable development targets as the way forward to a create responsible futures. The aim of this paper is to reflect on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and analyze how a neglected part of real-life taking place in the area of informal, diverse economies in this case marketplaces in different Latin American countries can contribute to elaborate and rewrite sustainable development models. Throughout the history, marketplaces in Latin America have provoked strong political debates, increasingly being integrated as tourist attractions in controversial strategies often leaving vendors torn between policies and programs devised at higher scales and the complex realities of the cities in which they work and often live too. The informal, diverse economies constitute more than half of the GDPs in the Global South including Latin America. Despite repeated claims about the importance of informality as one of the fastest growing phenomena of our time and increasingly an issue of public and political concern, no systematic studies within tourism engages with the SDGs dealing with informality. The paper concludes by encouraging SDGs to involve already existing practices if SDGs are to create pathways for realizing human wellbeing in which GDP growth is not the main focus.

This article addresses the transformative role that tourism might play in developing economies. The main emphasis is on investment in sustainable community-based tourism as a way to alleviate poverty and improve livelihoods. Communities are representing sustainable and rooted social life while at the same time as a form of social structure, which can foster both social change and secure social coherence. We seek to explore whether the resilience perspective brings something new to discussions about tourism development and community, since earlier discussions have touched on subjects resembling “resilience”. By analyzing resilience in a community perspective, we argue that it might constrain the analytical use of the community concept. It seems to be just another tendency to move towards policy processes that are based on global (agendas) for how to construct resilience. These processes represent a top-down approach, limiting the notion of community rather than unfolding the proximities and distance embedded in community logics.

This chapter addresses collaborative economy in four Latin American countries: Argentina, Colombia, Chile and Mexico. It challenges one of the taken for granted assumptions about the collaborative economy that it creates a more equal society with a fairer, more inclusive economic model (Botsman and Rogers, Harvard Business Review, 2010). The chapter argues that the collaborative economy is underpinned by fundamentally different rationales and structures in Latin America compared to Western societies. The chapter’s Latin American perspective suggests limitations in existing conceptualizations of the collaborative economy. In Latin American societies, digital collaborative economy is adopted into a sociocultural, political and economic context and has become an extension of well-established and social embedded historical practices of collaborative production and consumption. It has often replicated old patterns of privileged access for some and denial for others. Even though the digital collaborative economy has increased significantly, and Latin America is characterized by a solid information technology, it becomes clear that the informal sector keeps playing a pivotal role in the understanding of practices related to collaborative economy.

Enacting social entrepreneurship is about individual engagement, innovative ideas and creating social change. This article challenges this proposition of the individual social entrepreneur, rather social entrepreneurship is to be understood within the facilitating roles of networks through the process of mobilising collective interaction, trust and collaborate activities within networks. This case study considers the increasing flow of North Americans settling in Mexico to be social entrepreneurs. Their tourism-related business often has a social aim, not only generating economic growth but also addressing emerging socio-cultural needs in the Mexican communities. Through their non-profit organizations these transnational social entrepreneurs gain acknowledgment to the extent that they challenge the authorities’ power and even shape the meaning and nature of development. Here network ties and trust are essential factors for the sustainability of the ideas of the social entrepreneurs. We argue that these ties are based on symbolic and concrete practices such as national identity, global imaginaries and transnational practices, which makes it necessary to position transnational social entrepreneurs in tourism within a broader economic, sociocultural and political context and not understand entrepreneurship only as individual engagement.

Con la idea de que las prácticas cotidianas entre los inmigrantes mexicanos permiten construir y redefinir el espacio transnacional, como punto de partida, en este artículo se explorará la noción de la migración desde la perspectiva del transnacionalismo, en el marco de las tendencias contemporáneas del fenómeno migratorio en México. Al examinar las interacciones de los inmigrantes en el transporte público en San Diego, California, se buscará entender cómo se crean y recrean sus acciones. Este acercamiento desde un espacio social, permite analizar las interacciones específicas entre sociedades con historias y procesos de desarrollo diferentes.

Este articulo analiza la forma en que la construccion e institucionalizacion de las representaciones sociales sobre Tepoztlan, Morelos, Mexico, han influido en la definicion de la actividad turistica en esta poblacion. Proponemos el concepto de “economia de la experiencia intima” para analizar las formas de institucionalizacion que tienen los lugares, las practicas, los simbolos y las relaciones que al reunirse producen lo que la mayoria de la gente considera como vivencias autenticas, de recreo y confort. El articulo concluye que el turismo es una compleja red de dimensiones y relaciones sociales donde existe una tendencia a la creacion de relaciones asimetricas de explotacion del trabajo y la cultura.

Con la perspectiva del espacio social de Bourdieu analizamos un pueblo mexicano que ha convertido al turismo en su principal actividad productiva debido a la presencia de una comunidad de estadounidenses que cambio su lugar de residencia a otro país. El objetivo es estudiar cómo este grupo de migrantes mediante su dinero, estilo de vida, creencias, formas de organización y cooperación construyen una distancia social (simbólica y física) entre ellos y los mexicanos. Este uso de sus capitales les permite ejercer ciertas prácticas de poder y justificarlas, además de definir las características y tipo de turismo que se desarrolla en la localidad, esto último relacionado a una imagen que ellos tienen sobre lo mexicano auténtico. With the perspective of Bourdieu’s social spaces we analyse a Mexican village that has transformed the tourism into its main activity due to the presence of a group of North American immigrants. The objective is to analyse how this group of immigrants through their money, lifestyle, beliefs, values and ways of organising and cooperating create a social distance (symbolic and physical) between them and the Mexicans. Using these capitals allows them to exercise certain power practices and furthermore legitimise them. Besides, these capitals define the characteristics and type of tourism that are developed in the community, the latter is related to the image that the immigrants has of the authentic Mexico.

espanolEl articulo analiza el conflicto que se produce entre una comunidad y el Estado por el uso de un lugar. Especificamente dos espacios sociales que presenciaron dos protestas sociales significativas o Revoluciones culturales; la ocupacion de una instalacion militar y el surgimiento del Ejercito Zapatista de Liberacion Nacional (EZLN). Estudiaremos los casos de Christiania en la ciudad de Copenhague, Dinamarca y San Cristobal de las Casas en el estado de Chiapas, Mexico. Para el analisis utilizaremos la gubernamentalidad de Mitchell Dean basada en los escritos de Foucault. Este marco teorico nos permitira conocer los procesos mediante los cuales un Estado y distintos grupos sociales negocian la conformacion de lo publico, imagenes y significados de actividades, recursos, leyes relacionados a la actividad turistica. EnglishThe article analyzes conflicts over the use of place between a community and the State. We address two specific cases: Christiania in Copenhagen (Denmark) and San Cristobal de las Casas in Chiapas (Mexico) where significant social protests or cultural revolutions have taken place. In Christiania we explore the occupation of a military installation whereas in San Cristobal we analyze the emergence of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN). Our theoretical framework is founded on Mitchell Dean’s use of governmentality based on the writings of Foucault. This framework allows us to understand the processes by which a particular state and different social groups negotiate the construction of the public place, images and meanings of activities, resources and laws related to tourism.

Despite ten years of strategic focus on growth through sustainable tourism, few research projects generated understanding of how development policy initiatives contributed to community benefits locally. This article addresses this research gap and explores how the aims of local development and cultural sustainability defined in the Mexican national tourism program Pueblos Magicos are put into practice. The analysis is focused on how citizenship, local participation and democracy are operationalized and what are the local consequences of this governmental program in the community of Alamos. By following the constitution and decision-making processes in the local Pueblos Magicos committee, we demonstrate how different groups bargain on behalf of the ‘community’ and how they seize the opportunity to promote different development priorities. In particular, we address the role of a North American migrant community in shaping sustainable tourism development as cultural brokers, social entrepreneurs and mediators of market knowledge. The paper criticizes the notion of homogenous local communities as an instrumental condition of sustainable and participatory development.