The “war over tourism”: challenges to sustainable tourism in the tourism academy after COVID-19

COVID-19 is widely recognised as a challenge or even a game-changer for travel and tourism. It has also been a catalyst to serious debate in the “tourism academy,” as revealed by a discussion on TRINET Tourism Information Network via email in May 2020. The catalyst to this debate was an email by academic Jim Butcher announcing his work entitled “the war on tourism,” published in an online magazine. Presenting a binary between industry recovery and reform, Butcher’s article denounced a body of tourism work he portrayed as hostile to the industry and as using COVID-19 as an opportunity to attack it. He argued that this resulted in harm to tourism businesses, tourism workers and ordinary tourists. These TRINET discussions worked to present a binary in schools of thought, divided by being either for the tourism industry or against it. This analysis explains how advocates of industry rapid recovery stand opposed to wider efforts to reform tourism to be more ethical, responsible and sustainable. The struggle concerns both the proper role of tourism and tourism academics. Outcomes from this debate have repercussions for the development of the discipline, the education of tourism students and the future of tourism practices.