Prof Michael Hall on inspirations, fears, and tourism studies’ legitimacy problem

There is much to fear about the future of travel, accord­ing to Michael Hall, includ­ing the risks that attend its growth, and the rise of intol­er­ance. He also wor­ries about a lack of “genu­ine debate” in tour­ism studies. 

Pro­fess­or Hall par­ti­cip­ated in a Tourism’s Hori­zon Inter­view. For this “Good Tour­ism” Insight, Jim Butcher sum­mar­ises the high­lights. [The full tran­script is on Substack.]

Who is Professor Michael Hall?

Michael Hall is pos­sibly the world’s most pro­lif­ic aca­dem­ic author­ity on tour­ism. He plies his pro­fess­or­i­al trade in New Zea­l­and, at the Uni­ver­sity of Canterbury. 

Before his fam­ily emig­rated to Aus­tralia from the UK, Michael star­ted out life, and leis­ure, in the icon­ic UK resort of Mar­gate; a place I know very well as a res­id­ent of Can­ter­bury (UK) just 25 km away from Margate. 

Hall shares with us snip­pets of an early life that per­haps shaped his interest in tourism: 

“I grew up in the industry, maybe without real­ising it. My grandfather’s print­ing firm prin­ted the posters for Dream­land and the Winter Garden in Mar­gate. My moth­er had a B&B and my step­fath­er drove tax­is. I worked in hos­pit­al­ity and did cater­ing at university.” 

As a child, Michael would get fish and chips from the Emin’s fam­ily restaurant/café. His step­father­’s taxi busi­ness was a block away. 

UK read­ers may know that the name ‘Emin’ is now syn­onym­ous with Mar­gate. The artist Tracy Emin has a long asso­ci­ation with her homet­own, and has just bought the his­tor­ic Log­gia seafront build­ing which she intends to run as a com­munity facility. 

Inspired by ecology and geography

If he had­n’t become an aca­dem­ic, Pro­fess­or Hall sees him­self as “either an envir­on­ment­al act­iv­ist or a cook; maybe both”. 

His aca­dem­ic inspir­a­tions come less from ‘tour­ism stud­ies’ and more from writ­ings in eco­logy and geo­graphy (the field of his PhD) that cap­tured his imagination. 

He cites a 1973 Nation­al Geo­graph­ic art­icle on John Muir as a start­ing point for his interests in con­ser­va­tion, and sub­sequently tour­ism. Coin­cid­ent­ally Muir, too, left the UK (Dun­bar on the Scot­tish east coast) as a boy, in his case for the USA. 

Muir was a con­ser­va­tion­ist, famed for his role in the form­a­tion of the USA’s great nation­al parks in the late nine­teenth cen­tury. He also foun­ded the Sierra Club, a US-based envir­on­ment­al­ist mem­ber­ship organisation. 

Muir was a Romantic. He believed that a con­nec­tion with nature was intrins­ic to our human­ity, and that mod­ern devel­op­ment was under­min­ing the link. I sus­pect Pro­fess­or Hall would hap­pily accept any asso­ci­ation with Muir’s sentiments.

Anoth­er influ­ence on Hall is Marx­ist geo­graph­er Dav­id Harvey. 

Harvey’s ana­lys­is of how the his­tor­ic­al devel­op­ment of cap­it­al­ism has shaped the life of the major­ity in cit­ies extends to look­ing at how tour­ism real estate shapes cul­ture and soci­ety in cit­ies such as Bar­celona. 

Har­vey is a great example of a truly deep thinker and the­or­eti­cian who, argu­ably, sheds more light upon tour­ism than we might get from ‘tour­ism’ focused sources.

Don’t miss oth­er “Good Tour­ism” Insight Interviews

Doubts about tourism studies

Pro­fess­or Hall is not short of opin­ions on the state of tour­ism research and knowledge.

He bemoans the lack of a “dis­tinct­ive soci­ology of tour­ism know­ledge”. Tour­ism has yet to become “a legit­im­ate field of study in its own right; like migra­tion studies”. 

Per­haps more wor­ry­ingly, Hall believes that des­pite the expo­nen­tial growth of pub­lished work, and of vari­ous newly declared ‘fields’ and ‘turns’, there is “prob­ably less genu­ine debate than ever before”. 

It’s a not­able obser­va­tion giv­en the wide­spread per­cep­tion that these are espe­cially troubled times for mass tourism. 

Don’t miss oth­er “GT” con­tent tagged ‘edu­ca­tion and train­ing’

‘Carrying capacity’ more useful than ‘overtourism’

We asked Pro­fess­or Hall about the fash­ion for see­ing tourism’s issues through the prism of ‘over­tour­ism’. He sug­gests that car­ry­ing capa­city was, and is, more useful. 

Over­tour­ism has encour­aged “techo-ration­al solu­tions [that] do not deal with the under­ly­ing issues of con­sump­tion, con­test­a­tion for space, and justice”. 

One does not have to share Hall’s view on the nature of the prob­lem or the pro­spect­ive solu­tions to see that the issues are deep-rooted in the organ­isa­tion of our society. 

Per­haps we focus too much on the ques­tion of ‘which policy’ rather than ‘whose policy’? How demo­crat­ic is the pro­cess of get­ting to it? (Demo­crat­ic engage­ment with devel­op­ment is an issue high­lighted by Dav­id Harvey.)

Don’t miss oth­er “GT” con­tent tagged ‘car­ry­ing capa­city’

Much to fear

There is a pess­im­ism run­ning through his inter­view, a mood shared by many who are con­sid­er­ing tourism’s role in our futures. For Pro­fess­or Hall, there is much to fear:

He views the growth of travel with trep­id­a­tion, and feels that in terms of mit­ig­at­ing cli­mate change, we may already be “too late”. 

He fears the rise of a gen­er­al­ised intol­er­ance; not a ‘tour­ism’ issue, but cer­tainly one that would affect tourism. 

And, in the after­math of COVID-19, he fears that “high-speed mobil­ity and humanity’s destruc­tion of nature now make [pan­dem­ics] more likely and impactful”. 

Are his fears justified? 

There are counterpoints: 

• We are on the cusp of a renew­able and nuc­le­ar energy informed future that holds out the pro­spect of a low emissions; 
• Opin­ion polls indic­ate that most soci­et­ies have become more tol­er­ant and accept­ing of oth­ers over Hall’s life­time, and; 
• Mod­ern medi­cine and sci­ence have led to a drastic decline in deaths from infec­tious diseases.

Hall writes from the heart and with great author­ity in this inter­view. There is much food for thought here. 

We hope that this inter­view, and the oth­er Tourism’s Hori­zon Inter­views, will prompt the very thing Hall iden­ti­fied as lack­ing; ser­i­ous debate on the future of tour­ism and what it means to be a tourist.

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About the author

Jim Butcher is a lec­turer, and the writer of a num­ber of books on the soci­ology and polit­ics of tour­ism. Dr Butcher blogs at Polit­ics of Tour­ism, tweets at @jimbutcher2, and ini­ti­ated Tourism’s Hori­zon: Travel for the Mil­lions (a “GT” Part­ner) on Substack.

About the Tourism’s Horizon Interviews

“Good Tour­ism” Insight Part­ner Tourism’s Hori­zon: Travel for the Mil­lions, in col­lab­or­a­tion with “GT”, has sought the can­did views of well-known and respec­ted experts on tourism’s past, present, and future. 

The Tourism’s Hori­zon Inter­views involves Jim Butcher, Vil­helmi­ina Vain­ikka, Peter Smith, Saverio Francesco Ber­to­lu­cci, Dav­id Jar­ratt, and Sudip­ta Sarkar as inter­view­ers. The “Good Tour­ism” Blog will pub­lish their high­lights and com­ment­ary as “GT” Insights. 

Read the full tran­scripts of each inter­view on Tourism’s Horizon’s substack.

Featured image (top of post)

Pro­fess­or Michael Hall (pic­tured) reck­ons there’s “prob­ably less genu­ine debate than ever before” in tour­ism studies.

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