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This article presents a conceptual framework for examining the tourism encounter as a geopolitical encounter. In establishing this framework, we identify the theoretical intersection of tourism, geopolitics, and encounter in order to conceptualize how experience reflects and shapes power relations at national, regional, and global scales. We examine three dimensions—long central to tourism analysis—of the geopolitical tourism encounter: temporal encounters, bodily encounters and identity encounters. In doing so, we demonstrate the significance of tourism in the everyday dimensions of geopolitical discourse and practice. This article offers a critical lens through which scholars can theorize the geopolitical drivers and implications of the tourism encounter.