Anatolia

An International Journal of Tourism and Hospitality Research

ISSN: 1303-2917 (Print) 2156-6909 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rana20

The future of tourism: innovation and

sustainability

Elisabetta Ruspini

To cite this article: Elisabetta Ruspini (2018): The future of tourism: innovation and sustainability,
Anatolia, DOI: 10.1080/13032917.2018.1552055

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/13032917.2018.1552055

Published online: 14 Dec 2018.

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ANATOLIA

BOOK REVIEW

The future of tourism: innovation and sustainability, edited by C. Cooper and

E. Fayos-Solà, Cham, Switzerland, Springer International Publishing, 2019, 337 pp., $89.99
(Hardcover), ISBN-13: 978-3-319-89940-4

If we reflect on the future of tourism and on the relationship between tourism and innovation,
a number of key questions arise: What exactly are tourism innovations? Does tourism need
innovation? If yes, what kind of innovation? How innovative is the tourism industry? How can
innovation shape a successful future for tourism? What do we mean by sustainable innovation?.
Tourism is currently facing enormous challenges: the explosion of ICTs(Information and
Communication Technologies), global economic restructuring, increased international migration,
environmental limits to growth, and climate change. Other challenges have to do with the huge
generational shift that is taking place in today’s tourism community. The younger generations
(Millennials and Generation Zers) are different in many ways from earlier generations due to the
fact that they have a specific socio-historical location.
Millennials – currently the youngest adult generation, women and men born from the early
1980s to the late 1990s – have grown up amid major global economic and environmental crises:
they prefer to make sustainable choices, to support socially responsible brands, to live experiences
instead of materiality, focusing on meaning, authenticity, and sustainability. Gen Z members – or
post-Millennials, born from approximately 1996 to 2012 – have global values and are increasingly
conscious consumers, too: they are aware that the one thing we all have in common is our planet
and are concerned about climate change. These generations have been shaped by the global spread
of the Internet, the social networks, smartphones, and constant digital connectivity: technology
can actively promote environmental awareness and a sustainable lifestyle.
For these reasons, among others, sustainability is today central in the destination’s competi-
tiveness: the protection and conservation of natural resources, sociocultural heritage, and living
cultures is considered an essential component of the tourism experience. Following UNWTO,
tourism should take full account of its current and future economic, social, and environmental
impacts, balancing the needs of visitors, the industry, the environment, and host communities.
Tourism needs innovative approaches to ensure both its growth and commercial success and its
economic, social, and environmental sustainability.
The necessity of this book arises from the need to understand rapid global changes and the link
between sustainability, resiliency, and innovation. The rich book is 337 pages long, organized into
18 chapters, including one introductory chapter and a conclusion. Chapters have been written by
35 authors, both leading tourism academics, and tourism entrepreneurs, destination managers,
government officials, and civil leaders. The collection of essays is probably broad in its overview
but at the same time impressive in what it accomplishes.
The volume begins with an introduction of the book’s aims and structure. The primary
objective is to explore the actual processes of innovation in framing the role of tourism in future
societies. The development of innovations is a strategic driver to achieve competitiveness and
productivity in tourism. However, research shows that innovation has long been underestimated
in service activities and excluded from the scope of government interests and policies. Moreover,
research-based knowledge on innovation in tourism firms remains scarce. A further point is that,
as the editors write (Chapter 1 by Eduardo Fayos-Solà and Chris Cooper), innovation is full of
uncertainties and needs a public sector pro-active role. Many chapters in this book openly
embrace a pro-active public sector in tourism. Research has shown that public sector
2 BOOK REVIEW

organisations can play crucial roles in supporting, facilitating, and fostering innovation in the
private sector, from smaller innovations to more radical ones.
The book is divided into three parts. The first part (Tourism Futures and the Technological Facets
of Innovation) analyses the challenges and opportunities that technology and science provide for
sustainability in the future of tourism. Chapter 2 (by Margarita Robaina and Mara Madaleno)
discusses both the complexity of the relationship between tourism and the environment, and focuses
on the necessity to engage in eco-innovation adoption and development in all tourism sectors and
typologies also in order to increase the eco-efficiency of tourism companies. Chapter 3 (by Carlos
Romero Dexeus) examines the major digital forces that are changing the tourism industry: Internet;
mobile networks and smartphones, the Internet of things; big data, the new cloud services; the smart
wereables; faster connectivity networks; social networks; artificial intelligence.
Chapter 4 (by Larry Yu and Philippe Duverger) explores the role played by three economic
paradigms (globalization; ecological economics; Internet economy) in order to provide conceptual
grounding for the analysis of the future of tourism, oscillating between authenticity and con-
nectivity, offline and online experiences. Chapter 5 (by Natarajan Ishwaran and Maharaj Vijay
Reddy) reflects upon the necessity to build new bridges between tourism and science and to
encourage innovation through the use of innovative research technologies, such as big-data
analytics, citizen science, and cultural ecosystem services. The chapter also provides recommen-
dations for a selected number of initiatives to promote sustainable tourism practices. Finally,
Chapter 6 (by Chris Cooper, Eduardo Fayos-Solà, Jafar Jafari, Claudia Lisboa, Cipriano Marín,
Yolanda Perdomo, and Zorita Urosevic) focuses on a fascinating subject: astrotourism.
Astrotourism not only refers to travel activities with astronomy related purposes but also to
archeoastronomy experiences and visits to scientific resources of physics and astrophysics, such as
observatories, laboratories, science museums.
The second part (Cultural Paradigms and Innovation), aimed at exploring the role of heritage
and the ethics of inclusiveness as drivers for sustainable tourism, opens with Chapter 7 (by
Enrique Bigné and Alain Decrop). This chapter focuses on innovation in marketing, changes in
tourist behaviour and new approaches to face emerging trends and needs. The chapter details
postmodern challenges to contemporary marketing and underlines the need for managers and
policymakers to adopt an innovative perspective in managing tourist relationships. Chapter 8 (by
David A. Fernell) develops a framework for the future of ethics in tourism, with a specific focus on
UNWTO Global Code for Ethics in Tourism (CGET). The chapter also offers an overview of the
history of ethics in tourism, as well as a summary of social contracts theory and codes of ethics in
the tourism sector.
Chapter 9 (by Chiara Ronchini) reflects upon the relationship between heritage, tourism, and
innovation. The author discusses how many heritage sites around the globe are trapped by the fear
of change and react with cultural inertia to the challenges posed by tourism. The chapter not only
discusses the concepts of “museumification” and “disneyfication” but also presents best practices
in policymaking.
Chapter 10 (by Salvador Anton Clavé) concentrates on urban tourism and walkability. The role
played by walkability in future tourism seems crucial and should be recognized as a key aspect for
cities, place attractiveness, visitor experience, and for future sustainability of urban tourism.
Chapter 11 (by Jaume Mata) discusses the challenges that urban tourism is facing in order to
be sustainable, arguing that city tourism requires innovative solutions to cope with contemporary
challenges. The chapter reviews some key examples from European cities that are investing in
technologies to become more accessible, sustainable, and livable both for locals and visitors. The
last chapter (Chapter 12 by Chris Cooper, Francois Bedard, Benoit Duguay, Donald Hawkins,
Mohamed Reda Khomsi, Jaume Mata, and Yolanda Perdomo) focuses on the challenges posed by
rapid urbanization and migration to sustainable development and urban tourism. This chapter
discusses different case studies in order to understand how successful city tourism can be in
balancing the needs of both residents and visitors.
 ANATOLIA 3

The third part of the book (Tourism Governance Innovation) investigates new ways and means
in governance and policymaking for tourism. Chapter 13 (by Rodolfo Baggio) discusses key
methodological challenges that emerge when one wants to study tourism and meaure its impacts,
and suggests future room for improvement for tourism research. Essentially, there is a need to
perform more basic research; to promote interdisciplinarity and the use of mixed-methods
research; and to foster cooperation between public institutions and the private sector. Chapter
14 (by Alan Fyall) focuses on the marketing of destinations: more precisely, it discusses the
challenges posed for the tourism sector by the emergence of new destinations around the world.
The chapter analyses strategies, tools, and techniques adopted by destinations to position and
reposition themselves in the tourism marketplace.
Chapter 15 (by Maya Damayanti, Noel Scott, and Lisa Ruhanen) examines the notion of
governance and the relationship between collaboration, cooperation, and coopetition (collabora-
tion and competition at the same time) in tourism. By using the Institutional Analysis and
Development (IAD) Framework as a comprehensive tool, the authors explore behaviours and
interactions among stakeholders within a destination. Chapter 16 (by Conor McTiernan, Rhodri
Thomas, and Stephanie Jameson) examines the role of trust in tourism networks – especially in
knowledge management and exchange – a widely recognized element of good governance. The
chapter offers both a set of recommendations for effective practice and highlights the need for
further research on this under explored issue. The last chapter (Chapter 17, by Chris Cooper,
David Betbesé, Bertil Klintbom, and Beatriz Pérez-Aguilar) focuses on financing innovation in
tourism. This is a major challenge for the tourism sector because start-ups and innovators have
a limited access to traditional funding opportunities and also because there is a high level of
implied risk in innovation.
In sum, this book offers a fascinating journey across tourism and a number of elements to
predict its future: within this framework, participative innovation becomes a key element to create
a resilient and sustainable tourism sector. This book is highly recommended to researchers,
students, and the academicians studying the nexus between tourism, innovation, and sustain-
ability, as well as to other actors, such as industry players, policymakers, and decision-makers
interested in the future of tourism development.

Elisabetta Ruspini
University of Milano-Bicocca, Italy
elisabetta.ruspini@unimib.it
© 2018 Elisabetta Ruspini
https://doi.org/10.1080/13032917.2018.1552055