Chapter 1 Collaboration and technology for more sustainable and responsible tourism marketing

Abstract

Vulnerable is how we are nowadays. In fact, the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic is neither time limited nor spatially contained. But like many other natural disasters, the pandemic brought calamities and inequalities (Shklar, 1990), threatens the environment and raises a problem of precarity that is no longer limited to the poor and dependent as contagion patterns have no boundaries (Forester & McKibbon, 2020). So even more than revealing the vulnerability wealthy countries are facing, the pandemic forces us to recognize our progressively more interdependent lives in a globalized world and the responsibility to safeguard the planet. Economies all over the world were hindered by Covid-19 but tourism was completely devasted by this pandemic. In the first five months of 2020, international tourism arrivals decreased by more than half and some $320 billion dollars in exports from tourism were lost. Overall, some 120 million direct jobs in tourism are at risk (WTO, 2020). The current situation recalls emergency status for countries that depend on tourism and for minorities that may find in tourism a driver to social integration, empowerment and income. The Covid-19 crisis offers opportunities to rebuild tourism in a safe, equitable and sustainable way. To that end technology, partnerships and sustainable and responsible practices are strategic.