"Collaborative economy and tourism is an effective tool to help educate practitioners on the true nature and complexity of the CE and stimulate a much-needed academic debate. ... is an enjoyable thought-provoking read that succeeds in its stated goals of challenging myths and stimulating an academic debate." (Brendan Richard, Anatolia, Vol. 29 (2), 2018)
Introduction.- Part I: Theoretical Explorations.- Part II: Disruptions, Innovations and Transformations.- Part III: Encounters and Communities.- Part IV: Futures.
Dianne Dredge is Professor (Tourism and Destination Development) in the Department of Culture and Global Studies, Aalborg University, Denmark. She is Chair of the Tourism Education Futures Initiative (TEFI), a network of tourism educators who believe in the powerful transformative effects of education in building sustainable and just forms of tourism for the future. Originally trained as an environmental planner, Dianne has research interests in tourism and development, collaborative governance, community capacity-building, tourism policy ecologies, policy learning, knowledge dynamics and higher education. Her preference is for active engaged research that pushes boundaries and that bridges theory and practice. While originally from Australia, Dianne has also lived and/or worked in Canada, Mexico, China and Denmark, experiences that have sharpened her interest in embedded community case study methodologies, community participation, capacity-building, cross-cultural communication and knowledge dynamics in and across research and practice worlds.
Szilvia Gyimóthy is Associate Professor at the Department of Culture & Global Studies Aalborg University, Denmark. She is head of Research at the Tourism Research Unit, a multidisciplinary team specializing in transformative research projects shaping of sustainable and smart tourism futures. Her research focuses on strategic placemaking and competitive differentiation of regions in the experience economy with a primary interest in collaborative value creation. Szilvia’s research is moving beyond singularized notions of tourism production and consumption, and captures its embeddedness with leisure, popular culture and food production. In the past few years, Szilvia investigated novel value-creation mechanisms focusing on the involvement of consumer tribes, communities and digital endeavours and explored the potentials of the collaborative economy for urban and coastal destinations alike.
This book employs an interdisciplinary, cross-sectoral lens to explore the collaborative dynamics that are currently disrupting, re-creating and transforming the production and consumption of tourism. House swapping, ridesharing, voluntourism, couchsurfing, dinner hosting, social enterprise and similar phenomena are among these collective innovations in tourism that are shaking the very bedrock of an industrial system that has been traditionally sustained along commercial value chains.
To date there has been very little investigation of these trends, which have been inspired by, amongst other things, de-industrialization processes and post-capitalist forms of production and consumption, postmaterialism, the rise of the third sector and collaborative governance. Addressing that gap, this book explores the character, depth and breadth of these disruptions, the creative opportunities for tourism that are emerging from them, and how governments are responding to these new challenges. In doing so, the book provides both theoretical and practical insights into the future of tourism in a world that is, paradoxically, becoming both increasingly collaborative and individualized.