Tourism in contemporary cities: 6th ITSA Biennial Conference

of the International Tourism Studies Association (ITSA), held at the University of Greenwich, London, England from 17 to 19 August 2016. This was the first time that the conference had been held in Europe and it provided an opportunity to meet, hear from and network with tourism scholars and professionals from across Europe, Africa, Asia, Australasia and North and South America. ITSA has a mission to encourage interaction and cooperation between scholars from developing and developed countries and the conference was successful in attracting around 200 delegates from 29 countries. The theme of the conference was "Tourism in contemporary cities". Within this broad theme, four sub-themes were included: "Tourism cities and urban tourism", "The Chinese market for European tourism", "River, cruise and maritime tourism" and "Heritage tourism in cities". The sub-themes were chosen to reflect the unique location of the conference on the UNESCO Maritime Greenwich World Heritage Site, and London which is Europe's most visited tourist destination (Euromonitor, 2017). During the conference, two special sessions on "dark tourism and cities" and "tourism and communist heritage" were also presented, which have led to additional special issues of the IJTC.