International Tourism Congress ITC2022: Call for Sessions

Posted on by Tomasz Napierała

ITC2022 call for sessions is open till 28th February 31st March 2022. International Tourism Congress ITC2022 is organized by the Faculty of Geographical Sciences, University of Lodz (Poland) in cooperation with CiTUR Centre for Tourism Research, Development and Innovation. ITC2022 is also final event disseminating achievements of the SPOT project. ITC2022 will be held on November, (16)17-19 2022 in Lodz, the city located in the very heart of Poland.

As a SPOT project team, together with our partner institutions: Faculty of Geographical Sciences at University of Lodz (Poland) and CiTUR Centre for Tourism Research, Development and Innovation (Portugal), we are glad to announce a call for sessions for the International Tourism Congress ITC2022 which will be held in Łódź (Poland) between (16th)17th and 19th November 2022.

Tourism – Going Back/Forward to Sustainability

Sustainable tourism has been widely discussed since the beginning of the 1990s. The roots of the notion are embedded in the concept of ‘green tourism’, resulting from understanding the negative impacts of a boom in mass tourism dating back to the 1960s, and a much broader and older idea of ‘sustainable development’ (Swarbrooke, 1999). Recently, sustainability has been reconsidered as the response of tourism to nature-based challenges like climate change, bio- and geodiversity crisis, and cultural landscape degradation influenced by consumption-oriented and profit-oriented capitalist economies treating nature as a cheap asset (Moore, 2016). Similarly, sustainable tourism nowadays addresses social and spatial injustice resulting from social and economic inequalities (Leśniewska-Napierała et al., 2019), lack of territorial cohesion, and tourism’s spatial failures like over tourism or tourism hypertrophy (Holden, 2017; Kowalczyk-Anioł, 2019; Zarębski et al., 2019). Sustainability, along with innovation (including information technology, mobile technology, robotics, and big data) are indicated as the most vital forces shaping the development of future tourism (Napierała & Birdir, 2020). Thus, in contemporary tourism, we are going both back and forward to sustainability.

Sessions of ITC2022 will address the widely known United Nations’ programme called ‘Tourism for sustainable development goals’ (UN-WTO, 2019). According to this global initiative, special focus should be placed on people, planet, prosperity, peace, and partnership. Thus, the role of human and social capital, as well as cultural heritage, in sustainable tourism development should be addressed by ITC2022’s debate. Special attention is expected to be paid to tourism- and travel-related sectors, whose ability to shorten supply chains and to promote locality is overwhelming, such as gastronomy (mainly slow food and local cuisine) and handicraft (Kılıçhan et al., 2022). On the other hand, discussion of environmental issues related to or influenced by tourism is necessary during ITC2022.

Partnerships that foster prosperity should be stimulated and coordinated by proper management and marketing strategies of sustainable tourism destinations. This is strictly related to the questions of how to become sustainable, and how to be perceived as sustainable. Sustainability as an idea targeting interests of all tourism stakeholders recently and in the future should be considered in a wider context of the ability to collaborate by competing stakeholders affected by rational calculation, emotional bond, brand and personal reputation, and the embeddedness of stakeholders in social networks (Czernek & Czakon, 2016). Thus, coopetition and networking in tourism, including both managerial and marketing perspectives, should be discussed during ITC2022. Peace and tourism considered in parallel should lead to a discussion on political and ethical issues of tourism development towards a more just global order (Higgins-Desbiolles, 2008). As the COVID-19 pandemic is one of most discussed phenomena shaping tourism development, identification of sustainable tourism dimensions in post-COVID times is expected as one of ITC2022 goals.

One of the ITC2022’s goals is to present achievements of the project ‘SPOT. Sustainable Spatial Planning of Tourism Destinations’. Special session with that reason will be organized. However, additional sessions addressing issues of spatial planning of tourism areas are encouraged. Sustainability of tourism in terms of both spatial planning and strategic planning is the core of the SPOT project’s inquiry: On the one hand, tourism significantly affects land use, landscape and cultural landscape. On the other, the direct focus of spatial planning on tourism issues is limited. In consequence, we observe significant pressure of tourism development, with limited response coming from spatial planning – the only domain able to target these problems successfully. Moreover, tourism is usually not considered in strategic planning in complete perspective. This happens because tourism is identified only as an opportunity, but not as a threat or a challenge. Thus, spatial governance of sustainable tourism development in destinations should include contributions from both spatial planning and strategic planning. This justifies research interests in introducing ideas of sustainable tourism development into spatial planning.

Call for sessions

Call for sessions is open. If you are interested in suggesting or organising a session during International Tourism Congress ITC2022, please approach the organisers directly via email (itc2022@geo.uni.lodz.pl). Please send the following information:

  • Your name, surname, title, institutional affiliation, and email address,
  • Session title,
  • Brief description of the session proposed (200-300 words related to ITC2022 theme),
  • Information whether the session is proposed by a group of researchers (research institution, project or lab, scientific association including its commission or branch),
  • Information if you want to participate in ITC2022 and chair the session proposed.

The deadline to submit session proposals expires on 28th February 31st March 2022.

References

  • CZERNEK, K., & CZAKON, W. (2016). Trust-building processes in tourist coopetition: The case of a Polish region. Tourism Management, 52, 380–394. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2015.07.009
  • HIGGINS-DESBIOLLES, F. (2008). Justice Tourism and Alternative Globalisation. Journal of Sustainable Tourism, 16(3), 345–364. https://doi.org/10.1080/09669580802154132
  • HOLDEN, A. (2017). Mass Tourism and the Environment: Issues and Dilemmas. In D. Harrison & R. Sharpley (Eds.), Mass Tourism in a Small World (pp. 75–84). CABI.
  • KILIÇHAN, R., KARAMUSTAFA, K., & BIRDIR, K. (2022). Gastronomic trends and tourists’ food preferences: scale development and validation. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 34(1), 201–230. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCHM-03-2021-0308/FULL/PDF
  • KOWALCZYK-ANIOŁ, J. (2019). Hipertrofia turystyki miejskiej – geneza i istota zjawiska [Urban tourism hypertrophy – the orgin and essence of the phenomenon]. Konwersatorium Wiedzy o Mieście, 32(4), 7–18. https://doi.org/10.18778/2543-9421.04.01
  • LEŚNIEWSKA-NAPIERAŁA, K., TOBIASZ-LIS, P., NAPIERAŁA, T., & WÓJCIK, M. (2019). Sustainable Tourism Development Towards Spatial Justice: Evidence from Masłomęcz. In K. Birdir (Ed.), The Third International Congress on Future of Tourism: Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Sustainability (Futourism 2019) (pp. 407–410). Mersin University.
  • MOORE, J. W. (2016). Anthropocene or capitalocene? nature, history, and the crisis of capitalism. In J. W. Moore (Ed.), Anthropocene or capitalocene? nature, history, and the crisis of capitalism (pp. 1–13). PM Press.
  • NAPIERAŁA, T., & BIRDIR, K. (2020). Competition in Hotel Industry: Theory, Evidence and Business Practice. European Journal of Tourism, Hospitality and Recreation, 10(3), 200–202. https://doi.org/10.2478/ejthr-2020-0017
  • SWARBROOKE, J. (1999). Sustainable Tourism Management. CABI Publishing.
  • UN-WTO. (2019). The Tourism for Sustainable Development Goals Platform. Retrieved January 8, 2022, from https://tourism4sdgs.org/
  • ZARĘBSKI, P., KWIATKOWSKI, G., MALCHROWICZ-MOŚKO, E., & OKLEVIK, O. (2019). Tourism Investment Gaps in Poland. Sustainability, 11, 6188. https://doi.org/10.3390/su11226188
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