Blurred boundaries: the implications of new tourism mobilities for destination community well-being

Abstract

"Tourism is traditionally treated as an escape from everyday life and tourism theory is concerned with extraordinary places. Tourism and everyday life are conceptualized as belonging to different ontological worlds." (Larsen, 2008, p. 27). According to Hall (2004), this approach to defining tourism as something outside the ordinary life of both tourists and destination residents has meant that tourism researchers have paid little attention to the "new mobilities paradigm" (NMP) described by Sheller and Urry (2006). Adopting the NMP in tourism research means rethinking a number of assumptions made about, and theories used to explain, different aspects of tourism. This paper will examine how new forms of mobility can be connected to new types of tourist, new relationships between tourism and residence, and, through these, to different ways in which tourism can be connected to sustainability. For this paper sustainability is being defined within a destination community well-being framework.