Re-imagining sustainable tourism futures with others : A critical introduction and exploration of sustainable tourism co-design as a multifaceted innovation endeavour for better worldmaking

With less than a decade left to Transform Our World (United Nations, 2016), the world has yet to transition to sustainable development. A key challenge for research and practice is to facilitate collaboration beyond silos of public, private and civic organisations, groups and individuals. Design and co-design are possible ways to involve others in order to better speak to the wickedness of sustainable development transitions including the sustainable development goals. This is an article-based dissertation that seeks to critically introduce and explore how it may be possible to collaboratively design tourism (tourism co-design) to enable sustainable development transitions and to identify latent opportunities that may help to enhance the values of locals, tourists and nature. Tourism co-design is framed as a process of inquiry that can be informed by action research. In this pursuit, the dissertation brings together various philosophical and theoretical perspectives with lessons learned from co-designing tourism in Norway and Denmark to advance an abstract, yet highly concrete, understanding of collaboration for sustainable tourism development as sustainable tourism co-design. In designing tourism with, not for, others, the dissertation advances an understanding of sustainable tourism co-design as a multifaceted innovation endeavour for better worldmaking, whereby it simultaneously reveals and challenges some of the underlying assumptions on which extant approaches to sustainable tourism development often rest. By doing so, the dissertation addresses the widening gap between the principles and theory of sustainable development and actual change and operationalisation in tourism practice and research. Bridging theory and practice through co-design, the main contribution of this dissertation is enriched understandings of collaboration for sustainable tourism development. It is my hope that, by inviting readers into the reflexive realms of sustainable tourism co-design, it may be possible to re-imagine and restore a sense of ethical, emphatic and respectful awareness about our values in relation to others’ and nature’s values in the becoming of sustainable tourism futures

Co-designing emergent opportunities for sustainable development on the verges of inertia, sustaining tourism and re-imagining tourism

Extant literature point to difficulties related to enabling transitions to sustainable tourism development. Supplementing hereto, this study explored how we may collaboratively design (co-design) opportunities for sustainable tourism futures. Based on fieldwork involving co-designing tourism with a diverse range of practitioners centred on Lake Mjøsa in Norway, it unfolds how an understanding and construction of ‘Our Mjøsa’ surfaced. By analysing the contingent processes and ensuing outcomes, the study introduces a framework for understanding how opportunities may – and may not – emerge and enable sustainable development. The framework comprises four dynamic zones including two of inertia, one of sustaining tourism and one of re-imagining tourism. The study argues that traditional tourism approaches often are located within zones of inertia and sustaining tourism and consequently overlook or fail to engage series of opportunities for sustainability transitions. Within the latter zone of re-imagining tourism, it shows how opportunities can emerge as ‘yours and mine’, together as our sustainable tourism futures. Altogether, the findings suggest that the ongoing tempo-spatial shifts and flows on the verges of inertia, sustaining tourism and re-imagining tourism allow for simultaneously revealing and making more transparent the implicit and explicit assumptions underpinning current tourism practice, while re-imagining our sustainable tourism futures.publishedVersio

“Picking our Oysters” and “Swimming with our Whales”: How innovative tourism practices may engender sustainable development

n an unfolding scenario of environmental gloom and doom where humans have become the key disruptors and exploiters of nature, our article presents an optimistic and hopeful approach to how humans may interact with nature on nature’s premises—with reverence. To illustrate this communicative praxis, we carry out cross-case analyses of two real-life scenarios that we label “picking our oysters” and “swimming with our whales,” revealing how human beings interacting with others and nature through locally situated tourism interventions can spark cascading interactional effects into yet newer and expanding communities of caring for nature. When such happens, we contend that it represents the kind of sustainable development that the world badly needs, especially in the present perilous times. We contend that the insights emerging from our cross-case analyses have wide-ranging implications for both scholars and practitioners of tourism and communication—that is, collaborative local interactions, actions, and interventions can cascade into emergent and resilient sustainable development practices.publishedVersio

Exploring sustainable experiences in tourism.

This study explores the vaguely defined concept of sustainableexperiences. Specifically, it questions how perceived experiencevalue at tourism destinations can be enhanced through sustainableexperience dimensions. Although experiences and sustainabletourism are intrinsically interlinked, knowledge of sustainableexperiences and how they can be included in experience design toenhance perceived value is limited. Within a lake context, localstakeholders, researchers and students were invited to activelyidentify and co-design sustainable experience dimensions using,among others, interviews with residents and tourists. Ourfindingssuggest four sustainable experience dimensions: interaction withthe natural environment; interaction with the cultural environment;insights and views; and lake-based activities. The study advocatesfor future research and management to better incorporatesustainable experience dimensions to holistically enhance tourists’perceived experience value and destination sustainability.publishedVersio