Tourism and the Eurovision Song Contest

This month we published Tourism, Events and Leisure Perspectives on the Eurovision Song Contest edited by Oscar Vorobjovas-Pinta and Jack Shepherd. In this post Jack explains how the significance of Eurovision goes far beyond the geopolitical.

Tourism, Events and Leisure Perspectives on the Eurovision Song ContestIn 2019 I was in Tel Aviv conducting research on the Eurovision Song Contest as part of my doctoral work looking into tourism’s impact on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Eurovision had become the target of a boycott campaign by the BDS group who saw hosting the event a form of “artwashing” of Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians. I was there to find out why tourists were still coming to the event despite the call.

I had regularly watched Eurovision growing up. I was drawn by the contest’s eccentricity, such as Ukraine’s Verka Serduchka, and the showcasing of so many different cultures, but I didn’t lose sleep if I missed a year by accident. That was all to change in Tel Aviv. While researching this topic, I was swept up in the infectious enthusiasm Eurovision fans had for their event –  the way they knew all the songs by heart before the contest even began, their strong opinions on the good or bad staging of the songs the morning after the first semi-final, and the obvious sense that Eurovision was a once-a-year Christmas in the sun with friends, family, strangers and newfound lovers.

Not only did their enthusiasm rub off on me, leading me down the road of Eurovision fandom, but it also made me realise just how much of the Eurovision experience we have missed out on in Eurovision research where the focus has largely been on Eurovision’s importance to national identities and geopolitical posturing. Being at Eurovision shows it is so much more than just a stage for politics. It is a week-long touristic mega-event, where the emphasis is just as much on what to offer the hundreds of thousands of flaneuring visitors in town for the event as it is about the live shows. It is a city-wide event that has significant impacts on the lives of residents who, for better or worse, find themselves hosting the world’s largest non-sporting event. And it is a leisure event – a place of gathering for Eurovision fans from across the world, many of whom have built friendships around the event, and derive a deep sense of comfort and belonging from it.

This book is an attempt by Oscar Vorobjovas-Pinta and me to shine a light on these topics. Using the key words of tourism, events and leisure as a thematic umbrella, the book is made up of 14 chapters, split into three sections, with contributions from authors hailing from the US to the Baltics to Australia, and from disciplinary backgrounds ranging from tourism studies to sociology to human geography. In Section 1, we explore Eurovision as a touristic phenomenon. Here, we cover topics such as the growth of Eurovision tourism that extends well beyond the host city itself, with one chapter exploring, for example, the impact of the Eurovision film The Story of Fire Saga on the small Icelandic whale watching destination of Husávík. In Section 2, we place an emphasis on Eurovision fandoms, seeking to understand the “personality” of Eurovision as an event. This involves probing questions such as, what happens when an event so crucial to one’s friendship networks is cancelled? Or, what role does Eurovision play in one’s sense of belonging to a trans-national queer community? In the third section, the book contributes to existing work on the event’s political dimensions, but offers fresh perspectives on, for example, the event’s reaction to wars in both Ukraine and Israel, and on how the European public votes during times of crisis.

Now, seven years on from that Eurovision in Tel Aviv, I feel confident this book, and the process it has taken me on, has helped me understand this event so much better – its meaning to fans, to residents, to businesses, to volunteers, and to Europe as a whole. I hope that you too will find valuable insights in the volume.

Dr Jack Shepherd

For more information about this book please see our website.

If you found this interesting, you might also like Gay Tourism edited by Oscar Vorobjovas-Pinta.

What Does the Future Hold for Deaf Education?

We recently launched our brand new Deaf Studies and Sign Linguistics series, for which the first books are now in the pipeline! In this post Jenny Froude, the author of one of our very first books on deafness, Making Sense in Sign, reflects on her experience as the parent of a deaf son and looks to what the future might hold for deaf education.

At a time when Deaf Awareness is frequently to the fore, thanks in no small part to Rose Ayling-Ellis who has stepped beyond her Strictly fame to captivate a new audience with her winsome take on the subject, attention should turn its focus on the next generation of deaf youngsters.

Award-winning deaf poet Raymond Antrobus’ new memoir The Quiet Ear (endorsed on the cover by Rose as “A must read”, with which I totally agree!) in some ways parallels my own book in its view on deaf education in the 80s/90s as possibly the best time. The National Deaf Children’s Society (NDCS) has long been raising the issue of a serious shortage of qualified Teachers of the Deaf (ToDs) and issues around training, apprenticeships, the Special Educational Needs and Disability (SEND) system and the lack of sufficient funding for a strong workforce to support deaf children and young people who need them. Raymond’s conviction, in an interview with The Guardian, is that the specialised support from which he benefitted after his diagnosis at the age of seven would, thanks to cuts and closures of deaf schools today, require aristocratic parents to fund it! “I owe the world a lot” he has said.

Photos of the author's son Tom throughout his childhoodI can relate to this. The excellent experiences of our son Tom (six years his senior) lovingly charted in my book were thanks to a forward-thinking ToD who, after the Rubella outbreak in the late 60s, recognised the need for local provision for deaf children, which eventually resulted in a specialised Unit being incorporated with a newly built mainstream school. By the time our son was left profoundly deaf from pneumococcal meningitis at 5 months in 1980, it was thriving and a Signing Policy had been introduced at a time when it was still a highly debatable issue in many areas. The same site has gone from strength to strength despite the added pressure on ToDs today, who are tasked with monitoring current sophisticated audiology, speech and language, safeguarding and studying for BSL qualifications, plus social issues, since the specialist social workers of that time no longer appear to exist.

Antrobus pays homage to his ToDs and likewise I have good memories of those who taught Tom from the age of one and remain our friends today, having played such an important part in our family history. Not only do ToDs have the power to help children and parents but in my experience they often inspire other teachers to go the extra mile and train, if it can be afforded, to get the extra qualifications to join them. One such brilliant ToD I know, now in charge of delivering the service, did just that and acknowledges the inspiring teachers who preceded her and whose legacy of work and good practices she and her team continue to build upon. Good ToDs can wield enormous power and are very special people, dealing with so many aspects of deafness for, as Antrobus points out “At no point in history was there a single universal deaf experience”!

I hope that, despite the current climate, deaf education can gather momentum and today’s and future pupils be seen as worthy of deserving the best teaching from skilled, committed people. ToDs, with their overwhelming responsibilities, are worth their weight in gold. To provide a seamless service despite overstretched budgets and staff is no mean feat and is to be very much applauded. As a result of their teaching those youngsters might even come to embrace the expression “Deaf Gain”, coined, according to Antrobus, 20 years ago by a performer who saw his own deafness not as a loss of hearing but as gaining deafness. A big concept for initially anguished parents of a newly-diagnosed infant, but hopefully a positive (though challenging) thought for that future child to consider.

You can purchase Making Sense in Sign on our website.

If you have an idea for a proposal in our Deaf Studies and Sign Linguistics series, get in touch here.

New Series: Technology in Language and Literacy

We recently launched a brand new series – Technology in Language and Literacy. In this post the series editors, J. Elliott Casal and Matt Kessler, introduce the series and its aims.

What are your backgrounds and personal research interests?

New Series: Technology in Language and LiteracyElliott: My research interests include corpus linguistics, discipline-specific and second language writing, computer-assisted language learning, and language/literacy technologies. I am also interested in applications of Vygotskian socio-cultural theory (particularly Concept-Based Instruction) to language and literacy learning. Prior to joining the University of Memphis, I completed a postdoc in Cognitive Science at Case Western Reserve University and my PhD in Applied Linguistics at the Pennsylvania State University.

Matt: In terms of research, my work primarily involves investigating the practical applications of computer-assisted language learning (i.e., teaching and learning additional languages with the support of various technologies and digital tools). However, I also conduct research involving second language writing and teacher education. Prior to joining my current institution – the University of South Florida in Tampa, FL, USA – I received my PhD in Second Language Studies from Michigan State University.

How did the idea for the series come about?

In terms of the series topic, we do quite a bit of work in this area, including a lot of work together. Regarding the idea to launch a series, it is a bit less straightforward. We enjoy exploring new roles and means of producing or guiding research in the field, and we’ve increasingly worked in editorial or service roles in recent years. Somehow, we agreed a while ago that we wanted to launch a series together at some point in our careers, and not long ago we felt ready.

What are the aims of the series?

The aim of the series is to explore the roles or uses of technology in a variety of areas related to language and literacy. Given the increasingly digital and multimodal nature of people’s everyday communications and activities, we are interested in a variety of book types (e.g., edited volumes, monographs) which explore the intersections of technology, language, and literacy.

What topics will be covered in the series?

Technology in Language and Literacy! We’ve heard in the early days since the announcement that many people are thinking AI, and yes, that is part of the series aim and part of why it is relevant right now. However, we are also thinking of multimodality and multiliteracies, computer-assisted and mobile-assisted language learning, and digital discourse analysis. We hope that book projects include a range of learners, languages, and literacies.

As co-editors, how will you work together and what knowledge, skills and experience will you each bring to the partnership?

We have a long history of working together, which dates back to when we were both master’s students in Applied Linguistics at Ohio University. Over the years, we have collaborated on numerous projects that span aspects of research, teaching, and service. Crucially, we also have slightly different skill sets and interests, so when working together, we find that our work is enhanced greatly. Finally, we both love what we do, and we particularly enjoy hearing new ideas, reading new research, and interacting with people from our own fields and from across diverse disciplines. Like any good partnership, we value each other’s perspectives and trust each other to do good work.

What made you want to work with Multilingual Matters on the series?

This one is easy and allows us to make a pitch to future contributors! We approached Multilingual Matters because we have had fantastic experiences publishing with them in the past, because we value independent publishing, and because we support pricing models that make academic books accessible for graduate students and researchers in many contexts.

Are there any areas you’re particularly hoping to receive proposals on?

There is not one specific topic that we are hoping to receive proposals on, although there are some exciting ideas in the works. New technologies and digital tools are constantly emerging, and as such, they are routinely influencing aspects of our daily lives – from the ways we communicate at work and in our free time, to the ways in which we teach and learn in the classroom. Because of that, we welcome any/all proposals, and we look forward to engaging in discussions with prospective authors!

For more information about the series please see our website.

Do you have an idea for a book in the series? Send your proposal to Rosie McEwan. You can find our proposal guidelines on our website.

Countering Deficit Narratives in an Era of Rising Xenophobia

This month we published Investment in Second Language Learning and Higher Education by Melissa Hauber-Özer. In this post the author explains what inspired the book and why she chose to take a narrative methodology approach in her research.

Investment in Second Language Learning and Higher EducationAs forced migration continues to rise globally due to conflict, political repression, and climate change, so do nationalist rhetoric and xenophobic policymaking in many host countries. For educational linguists and language educators, these trends present opportunities to support refugees and asylum seekers in acquiring new languages and navigating increasingly hostile sociopolitical environments.

This challenge inspired the research that became this book. As a language acquisition scholar and former second language educator from the United States living in Türkiye during the height of Syrian displacement, I wanted to disrupt deficit narratives spread through policy, media, and academia that portray refugees as victims, public burdens, or threats to social cohesion. To do so, I adopted an advocacy-oriented approach blending narrative inquiry and ethnography to document how a group of Syrian young adults navigated learning Turkish and accessing higher education during displacement in Türkiye, shifting the focus from the numerous barriers they encountered to their strategies for overcoming these obstacles.

Bonny Norton’s construct of investment, described in Identity and Language Learning: Extending the Conversation, provided a powerful lens for reframing participants’ efforts to learn and then learn in a new language. Investment complements motivation theory, which depends on the presence of an individual trait, by accounting for the impact of identity, structural and social factors, and power dynamics in supporting or impeding one’s ability to invest in learning at any given time. In turbulent times, this lens can offer insight into the roles that learners’ aspirations, migration histories, shifting national policies, and increasing anti-immigrant sentiment may play in language acquisition processes.

Narrative methodology was also a strategic choice: Stories have the power to reduce prejudice, bridge divides, and foster empathy toward difference. Representation of refugee experiences in their own words can humanize statistics, challenge deficit narratives, and shift public perceptions. In the book, each of the 11 participants’ stories appears individually, constructed from interview data around a common narrative arc, to characterize their individual identities, choices, and strengths while also highlighting shared experiences and strategies across the narratives. Individually and together, the stories call attention to the human faces of forced migration and the dynamic, relational, and context-dependent nature of learning in displacement.

I hope this book serves as a potent reminder that refugees are not problems to fix but contributors to our classrooms and communities. Our job – as educators, leaders, and researchers – is to help create conditions in which they can thrive by reshaping classroom practices, policies, and dominant narratives.

Melissa Hauber-Özer

For more information about this book please see our website.

If you found this interesting, you might also like Meeting the Needs of Reunited Refugee Families by Sarah Cox.

Why Diversity and Inclusion Matter in English Language Education

This month we are publishing Diversity and Inclusivity in English Language Education edited by Dat Bao, David O’Reilly and Melissa Barnes. In this post the editors explain what inspired the book and why diversity and inclusion are so important in English language education.

Diversity and Inclusivity in English Language EducationDiversity is often described as being invited to the party; inclusion as being asked to dance. The former brings people into the room; the latter gives them a voice.

This idea sits at the heart of our book Diversity and Inclusivity in English Language Education: International Perspectives – but for us, it became real during a quiet moment at a conference.

At the 2022 Diversity and Inclusivity in Language Education (DIELE) conference at Thammasat University, Bangkok, after a lively panel on refugee learners, a young teacher approached us during the coffee break. She said quietly, almost apologising, ‘I realised today that I’ve been trying to fix my students instead of listening to them.’ This was a moment of clarity. That brief exchange stayed with us. It captured what diversity and inclusion ask of us: not just policy shifts, but mindset shifts.

The conversations in Bangkok were thoughtful and at times challenging. Scholars and practitioners spoke candidly about neurodiversity in Japanese classrooms, about the lingering shadows of colonial curricula in South Africa, about multilingual learners negotiating identity in Australian schools, and about teachers in Vietnam navigating structural pressures while trying to sustain wellbeing. There was a sense of urgency in the room, alongside a spirit of generosity. People were not simply presenting research; they were sharing lived dilemmas.

Two years later, during the second DIELE conference at Soka University, Tokyo (2024), the dialogue deepened further. We recall a postgraduate student questioning whether the assessments in her programme genuinely reflected the diversity of learners they claimed to serve. The room fell silent — not awkwardly, but reflectively. That silence felt significant. It was the kind of silence that signals thinking in progress. It reminded us that inclusion is not a slogan; it is a practice that must be continually examined.

This book emerged from those encounters. It brings together research and practice from across Vietnam, Japan, China, South Africa, Poland, the UK and beyond, weaving together stories of inclusive pedagogy, strengths-based approaches with refugee learners, teacher education for neurodiversity, critical reflections on assessment, and innovative classroom practices involving silence, music, collaboration and multilingual meaning-making. The chapters move from theory to research to practical design, but what binds them together is a shared commitment to recognising learners — and teachers — as complex, capable and diverse.

Why does this matter for English language teaching?

It matters because English functions not only as a language but as a global system structured by opportunity and inequality. Classrooms are increasingly multilingual, multicultural and neurodiverse, and inclusion cannot remain an afterthought in ELT; it must inform curriculum, assessment and interaction.

Diversity without inclusion can lead to tokenism; inclusion without diversity can render difference invisible. English language education must hold both together — structurally, pedagogically and ethically.

If the book prompts teachers and researchers to pause, to listen more carefully, and to reconsider whose voices are centred in their classrooms, it will have served its purpose.

Dat Bao, David O’Reilly and Melissa Barnes

For more information about this book please see our website.

If you found this interesting, you might also like Radical Inclusivity edited by Gloria Park, Quanisha Charles, Shannon Tanghe and Marie Webb.

The Future of Hotels: A Glimpse Into 2050

This month we are publishing The Future of Hotels edited by Hanneke Assen, Elena Cavagnaro, Erwin Losekoot and Ian Yeoman. In this post the editors touch on a couple of the potential future scenarios illustrated in the book.

The Future of HotelsThe newly published The Future of Hotels: Creating What’s Next offers one of the most comprehensive and thought‑provoking explorations of where the global hotel industry is heading. Edited by the Professors of the Hotel Management School Leeuwarden, Hanneke Assen, Elena Cavagnaro, Erwin Losekoot (now of Edith Cowan University) and Ian Yeoman, the book unpacks the forces reshaping hospitality, namely technology, sustainability, education and innovation, and provides a clear timeline of change leading up to 2050.

At its core, the book argues that hotels are in the midst of profound transformation. Automation, climate change, demographic shifts and new guest expectations are pushing the industry to reinvent itself. Yet despite this rapid evolution, one message runs throughout the book: hospitality still begins with people and the art of making guests feel welcome.

One of the major contributions of the book is the use of timelines to state how change will occur in the evolution of hotels from 2030 to 2050 and beyond. In one scenario, the book speculates the hotel of 2050 will be hyper‑automated, with AI systems and robotics managing tasks such as check‑in, housekeeping, room service and personalised recommendations. Guests may enter via biometric scan, sleep in beds that monitor their wellbeing and stay in rooms that adapt their design, temperature and ambience to individual preferences. Sustainability will be non‑negotiable – zero‑waste operations, renewable energy systems and circular building design will define the industry. Food will be hyper‑local. Water will be treated like fine wine.

But despite the technological leap, the book makes clear that the human touch will remain the soul of hospitality. Emotional intelligence, cultural sensitivity and authentic hostmanship will differentiate great hotels from merely efficient ones. Education and lifelong learning will prepare future professionals to blend human warmth with digital mastery.

The Future of Hotels paints a vivid, inspiring picture of a sector reinventing itself. It is a book that makes you think about the future. The editors and contributors may not be completely right about the future – no one can predict an exact future, only consider a series of futures. But whatever the future holds, the hotel of 2050 will be smart, sustainable and deeply personalized, yet still grounded in humanity.

For more information about this book please see our website.

If you found this interesting, you might also like 2075 – The Future(s) of Food Tourism edited by Sangkyun Kim, Una McMahon-Beattie, Eerang Park and Ian Yeoman.

Storying the Immobilities of Gender Violence in the UK and Mexico

This month we published Storying the Immobilities of Gender Violence in the UK and Mexico by Lesley Murray, Jess Moriarty, Paula Soto Villagrán and Olga Sabido Ramos. In this post the authors introduce their unique, bilingual, arts-based book and the project that inspired it.

Storying the Immobilities of Gender Violence in the UK and MexicoThe ethos of the book seeks to reflect the intention of the Storying the immobilities of gender violence in the UK and Mexico project: to be about women and by women working in partnership with the shared goal of wanting social and cultural change. We are so grateful to Multilingual Matters for recognising the importance of publishing our work as a bilingual text, enhancing accessibility for readers and writers of the book.

The chapters combine scholarship and arts-based practice from academics and artists in Mexico City, New Delhi, New York and Brighton, with work emerging from a transnational project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council that sought to explore the global rise in gender violence during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Artists were asked to respond to the stories collected from this time using fine art, film, graphic novel, poetry, short story and other styles and genre of storytelling. The book details this process, and provides a context for why it was made, and why change is still needed.

Our huge thanks go to all of the artists and writers who took part in the project and we hope that readers of the book consider their own responses – creative, critical, lived – as it is our firm belief that every story we identified on the project matters. That change matters. That this book is part of the conversation that will bring that change.

For more information about this book please see our website.

The book is open access and can be freely downloaded here.

If you found this interesting, you might also like Cultures of Sustainable Peace edited by Hyab Teklehaimanot Yohannes, Alison Phipps and tawona sitholé.

How Can We Support Marginalized Students in US Classrooms?

This month we published Supporting Asian American Students in Multicultural Contexts by Chaehyun Lee. In this post the author explains the inspiration behind the book and how it will help educators to create more equitable, just and inclusive classrooms for their students.

Supporting Asian American Students in Multicultural ContextsIf you’re like most educators today, you’ve already noticed a powerful shift: our students speak more languages, come from more diverse cultures, and bring more complex identities into schools than ever before. Globalization, migration, and intercultural exchange have shaped a generation that defies monolithic ideas about who “belongs” in our classrooms. Yet, despite this rapidly changing reality, our education system still leans on long-standing monolingual and monocultural norms. English is treated as the only legitimate language of learning. White, middle-class culture is still positioned as the universal benchmark. Systems and policies assume a single norm – and too often expect multilingual students to assimilate rather than thrive.

For years, in my work as a critical social justice teacher, teacher educator, and researcher, I’ve listened to students from racially, linguistically, and culturally diverse backgrounds describe what this experience feels like. They have shared what it means to grow up between languages – praised for their English one moment and shamed for their home languages the next, celebrated for their “global skills” yet racialized because of how they look or sound. I’ve seen how curriculum choices, instructional practices, and school cultures can unintentionally erase these realities, sending students an implicit message: You may bring the “acceptable” parts of yourself, but not your whole self.

Asian American students, in particular, are often rendered invisible in the multicultural landscape of U.S. schooling. Their complex linguistic, cultural, and racial stories are rarely centered and frequently overlooked. Their identities are misunderstood through stereotypes rather than authentically heard. One of the Asian American students in my classroom once told me that she and her Asian American friends are often depicted as nameless, faceless, and/or voiceless foreign figures in the books they read for school. This contradiction – between the richly multilingual/multicultural lives students lead and the monolingual/monocultural norms schools still cling to—is one of the main reasons I wrote Supporting Asian American Students in Multicultural Contexts: Language, Culture, Identity and Power in the US.

This book is my invitation to rethink how we understand, teach, and support Asian American youth – and, by extension, all multilingual and marginalized students navigating U.S. schooling today. Although the book highlights Asian American voices, the frameworks and insights extend across racial, linguistic, and cultural groups. Educators in any context can draw from these ideas to build classrooms where every student feels recognized, valued, and empowered.

My hope is simple: that after reading this volume, you will feel more prepared – and more inspired – to create equitable, just, and inclusive learning communities in your classroom, your school, and beyond. And that you will join me in imagining what education could be if every child were allowed to bring their full story to school.

For more information about this book please see our website.

If you found this interesting, you might also like Asian Americans in Bilingualism and Bilingual Education edited by Khánh Lê, Zhongfeng Tian, Alisha Nguyen and Trish Morita-Mullaney.

Weaving Life: Storying Possible Worlds Through “Translingual Encounters”

This month we published Bodies, Matter and Language in Transnational English Teachers’ Storying by Cristina Sánchez-Martín. In this post the author explains why she chose a storying approach for her research.

Bodies, Matter and Language in Transnational English Teachers’ StoryingWhat possible and more just worlds do you, dear reader, imagine? What does language look like in those worlds?

As a critical language educator living in the US, but working with people from different places, it has become, once again, evident that non-conforming to normative “English” is increasingly seen as an excuse to target communities, reinforce dominance, and promote imperialism. Those of us who know how language works and care about the wellbeing of linguistically diverse communities, land, and those around us, can sometimes feel discouraged and powerless against the injustices happening in our workplace and communities. So what can we do as language teachers and teacher educators when the world feels too overwhelming and unmanageable?

Inspired by people who shine bright light and imbue life in their communities, I started to notice “small translingual encounters:” moments when languages and colonial hierarchies are not only transgressed but create alternatives for meaning-making through the cultivation of connections within ourselves, communities, the environment. And all of a sudden, the critical language pedagogies of transnational English teachers like me appeared to be filled with these moments: a queer teacher from the US in Spain choosing multiple gender expressions in the classroom to connect their body to the world outside, a Chinese teacher in the US reconnecting with their family’ strengths, ethnicities, and language knowledges; or a Panamanian teacher sharing how Cucuá trees participate, and are in fact the genesis of a century-long cultural practice in her school. With these practices, the teachers were creating worlds that sustained and nourished themselves, their communities, and the environment.

To weave in these life-giving moments, I found myself moving away from traditional research methods, specifically those that, in an attempt to bring order and structure to our ideas, reinforce rationality and leave aside affect and experience, like the moment when the presence of a Giant Sequoia took over and haunted conversations with teachers, moving our sense-making into an unpredictable path. These are moments filled with “spirit” when “feeling” and “thinking” go hand in hand and can’t be documented through structured methods. Instead, I let these moments affect me, and by chasing the spirits in them, I was able to stitch the threads connecting the teachers’ pedagogies. Storying these moments showed me that transnational teachers doing critical language work are indeed creating more just worlds.

So dear readers, it is my hope that the stories told in my book Bodies, Matter and Language in Transnational Teachers’ Storying:Tejiendo vida, can offer some joy, comfort, and inspiration. The teachers you will meet as you read it demonstrate that critical language educators can continue to cultivate love and possibility without falling into despair.

Cristina Sánchez-Martín

Can Luxury Tourism Be Sustainable?

This month we published Sustainable Luxury in Tourism and Hospitality edited by Anita Manfreda, Frans Melissen and Catheryn Khoo. In this post Anita explains why we should reimagine luxury in tourism through a sustainability lens.

Sustainable Luxury in Tourism and HospitalityI have lost count of the times I have heard some version of: “Luxury tourism is the problem.” Sometimes it is said with genuine moral concern. Other times with the smug relief of having found a convenient villain. Either way, the story is tidy, and that is precisely why it is dangerous.

Because when luxury is only ever talked about as the villain, we miss the opportunities it brings. Luxury is where the industry has the resources to move first, the influence to set new norms, and the cultural power to make “better” feel desirable rather than dutiful. If that sounds uncomfortable, it should. The same machinery that sells indulgence can also normalise credibility, care, and responsibility if we stop pretending sustainability is just a mood board.

This tension sits at the heart of our edited volume, Sustainable Luxury in Tourism and Hospitality: Contemporary Principles and Evolving Practices. The book’s intent is straightforward: to push the conversation beyond “luxury = bad” versus “luxury = aspirational” and toward something more useful. What happens when we treat luxury as a contested space, capable of both harm and leadership, and ask what it could become in a climate-, workforce-, and legitimacy-constrained future?

We open the book by sitting with the conceptual and ethical frictions that make sustainable luxury such a complicated idea in the first place. Guest perceptions and misconceptions about green practices matter because they shape what gets rewarded. So do the harder, often politically messy questions about power: whose land, culture and labour underpin the “experience”, and how easily sustainability talk can reproduce older inequalities.

From there, the book turns to practice as a set of decisions that reveal priorities. How are “sustainable luxury signals” communicated (and misread)? What changes when conservation becomes central to strategy? What does sustainability look like when it’s enacted by luxury operators in specific places, or when it is expressed through choices such as who gets selected and valued as an artisan within a luxury experience?

Finally, we look forward, because sustainable luxury is not only about fixing what exists but also about what is being invented right now. That includes the rise of luxury travel performances on social media, regenerative luxury framed through experiences, shifting “snow-as-luxury” relations in winter tourism, transformative luxury tied to stakeholder wellbeing, and even space tourism as a provocative edge case for the future luxury experience economy.

If luxury becomes nothing more than a polished moral alibi, the whole sector will pay the price, because luxury shapes the story everyone else copies. We wrote this book to make the alternative harder to ignore: sustainable luxury can withstand scrutiny, redistribute benefits more credibly, and help tourism and hospitality move toward a better future without pretending the contradictions are not real.

Anita Manfreda

For more information about this book please see our website.

If you found this interesting, you might also like Sustainable Tourism by David A. Fennell and Chris Cooper.