Fair vs. fake touristic degrowth

• Asunción Blanco-Romero ^[1] ; Macià Blázquez-Salom ^[2] ; Robert Fletcher ^[3]
  1. [1] Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

     Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

     Barcelona, España

     
  2. [2] Universitat de les Illes Balears

     Universitat de les Illes Balears

     Palma de Mallorca, España

     
  3. [3] niversity and Research, Wageningen, Netherlands

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• Localización: Tourism recreation research, ISSN 0250-8281, Vol. 50, Nº. 2, 2025, págs. 435-439
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • This contribution aims to advance consideration of the potential and pitfalls entailed in discussionsof degrowth within tourism development. Many mass tourist destinations suffer from saturation impacting local working conditions, access to housing and the collective enjoyment of publicgoods, among the many common drawbacks of so-called ‘overtourism’. Yet proposals toaddress the negative impacts of mass tourism can become contradictory or evencounter productive. In one manifestation of this dynamic, prominent industry actors increasin glyclaim to have embraced the agenda of touristic degrowth by focusing on what iseuphemistically termed ‘quality tourism’ (fewer tourists who spend more money), which inreality designates elite travel by the most powerful and wealthy social classes. But just asrecession is not degrowth, neither can such elitization be considered genuine touristicdegrowth, because it does not address the industry’s general eco-social overreach via measuresto promote social and environmental justice as degrowth advocates. It could thus instead belabelled ‘fake’ degrowth. By contrast, fair degrowth is defined by a decrease in the flow ofenergy and materials per capita, in a planned and democratic way, to contribute to equitable redistribution of resource use and access.