Catching our breath: breathing fresh air into tourist geographies and mobilities

Breathing, 'a physiological process involving the inspiration of oxygen and the expiration of carbon dioxide', is emerging as an important concern for the social sciences and humanities. In tourism geographies and mobilities, the examination of breath and breathing remains an even newer topic, and it is time to pause and catch our breath. This article aims to provide some new directions for research by developing a review of the field in order to open a scholarly dialogue between breath, breathing, air, and tourist mobilities and geographies. Our aim is to mobilise a deeper understanding of tourists' sensuous, affective, molecular, and aesthetic engagements of breathing. We first discuss the links between respiration and tourism in a review of the historical emergence of tourism in relation to industrial pollution; alpine tourism; and well-being holidays and leisure to illustrate the centrality of breathing to tourist encounters, experiences, and economies. We then move on to reconcile and map existing and new directions and provinces of possibility for an emerging field of enquiry. We argue for new approaches to breath and tourist geographies and mobilities through tourist performances, affective and aesthetic experience, and, in the moist condensations of tourist atmospheres, in new and existing methods.