Tourism in a VUCA World
The international tourism industry grew exponentially during the latter part of the 20th and early 21st century due to the advent of cheap air travel and a growing moneyed class. However, it witnessed a calamitous slowdown during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the world came to a standstill and was unable to travel. It brought to the fore the fragility of the tourism industry in the face of bio-threats and other uncertainties such as climate change, disease, war, and terrorism.
These issues have led to a growing need for a strategic re-evaluation of the tourism industry vis-a-vis volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA) in the environment. Tourism in a VUCA World: Managing the Future of Tourism is an attempt to identify the new approaches to tourism in the near past, present, and future. Novel solutions can be expected through an integration of knowledge from the fields of social, physical, and biological sciences.
Naser Ul Islam is an Assistant Professor of Tourism and Hospitality in the School of Skill Education at Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India.
Manjula Chaudhary is currently working as Director, Centre for Distance and Online Education (CDOE) at Kurukshetra University Kurukshetra, Haryana, India. Prior to this, she worked as a Professor in Tourism at the same university.
Izidora Marković Vukadin is a senior researcher at the Institute for Tourism in Zagreb, Croatia.