Social issues and emerging debates in tourism and hospitality

The tourism and hospitality industry has earned global recognition thanks to its unprecedented growth prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. As tourism comes to play an increasingly important role in people’s daily lives and modern society, motivations for travel are no longer limited to pleasure and relaxation. Instead, tourism reflects diverse travel motivations including health and wellbeing (e.g. yoga tourism) (Dillette et al., 2019), human rights (e.g. social tourism) (McCabe & Qiao, 2020), business development (Tichaawa, 2017), education (Fu et al., 2018), and dark tourism (Sun & Lv, 2021). Darbellay and Stock (2012) accordingly described tourism as a complex interdisciplinary topic. The maturing field of tourism research has also birthed affiliated research streams such as tourism geographies, tourism economics, and tourism and medical interventions (e.g. Wen et al., 2022). Tourism holds growing socioeconomic importance worldwide (Darbellay & Stock, 2012). Relevant literature has closely examined the positive outcomes of tourism and hospitality development for destinations, local communities, and tourists; however, researchers have also begun to consider tourism’s role in and effects on society through some unique lenses. For instance, the nexus between tourism and peace has been discussed (Farmaki, 2017) in relation to justice (Farmaki & Stergiou, 2021). The association between tourism and death (Pratt et al., 2019) expands upon the role of tourism in everyday life from a somewhat unconventional perspective. As an example, the emergent topic of suicide tourism has been discussed through views of mental health (Zhi et al., 2019), human rights (Yu et al., 2020), and theory (Christou, 2021). This special issue presents a collection of high-quality research involving emerging debates in tourism and hospitality to shed new light on the discipline. It is worth noting that the tourism industry’s contributions are not uniformly positive; tourism and hospitality may generate social harm in addition to – and even alongside – its myriad benefits. Hospitality and tourism businesses can unknowingly contribute to human trafficking, logistically and otherwise (Aston et al., 2022; Paraskevas & Brookes, 2018). As an example, Romo (2017) reported on the case of Karla Jacinto, who was forced into 4 years of sexual slavery at age 12 in Mexico City as a victim of trafficking for sex tourism. Other legal and social issues warrant attention from tourism academics and practitioners as well, such as racial discrimination (Hudson et al., 2020), socially deviant tourism activities (Su et al., 2022), and emerging controversies including the legalization of recreational cannabis (Santaella-Tenorio et al., 2020). More interdisciplinary investigations are needed to profile potential threats to the tourism industry and identify solutions. Doing so will promote the industry’s sustainable development while raising public awareness, hopefully to the benefit of all involved parties. We, both humans and scholars, have a responsibility to consider how we can vanquish the “dark side” of tourism and hospitality. This topic represents another aim of this special issue.