View article

In 1950, 25 million tourists took an international holiday and today, that figure has reached over a billion. What is the future? Whether economic growth can be sustained in finite natural world is one of the earliest and most enduring questions in the economics literature. Does the world have enough resources to cope with 5 billion tourists in 2050?(Yeoman 2012). What would happen to international aviation beyond peak oil? Will there be such a thing as tourism in 2050 as holograms, digital immersion, haptic technologies and gestural interfaces bring about liminality in which reality and science fiction become blurred. Since no one can predict the exact future, the purpose of this special issue is to provide a range of alternative futures and directions in order to challenge our present perspectives in an informed, thoughtful and considered way