Prof Soile Veijola on tourism studies, overtourism, the present, and the future

For all its diverse onto­lo­gies and epi­stem­o­lo­gies, tour­ism aca­demia and research have not influ­enced industry prac­tice as much as it could have, accord­ing to Soile Vei­jola. That puts her hopes of an ‘eth­ic­al turn’ in tour­ism at risk and has her wor­ried about the future of the phenomenon.

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

Who is Professor Soile Veijola?

Soile Vei­jola, Pro­fess­or of Cul­tur­al Stud­ies of Tour­ism at the Uni­ver­sity of Lap­land, is a renowned the­or­ist of con­tem­por­ary tour­ism cultures.

Many tour­ism research­ers and stu­dents have been inspired by her art­icle “The Body in Tour­ism” (1994) with Eeva Jokin­en, which con­trib­uted to a paradigm change by embody­ing soci­olo­gic­al the­ory. It also pushed the bound­ar­ies of aca­dem­ic writ­ing and in fas­cin­at­ing, cre­at­ive ways. 

One of the most influ­en­tial voices in aca­demia in broad­en­ing our under­stand­ing and aware­ness of ’embod­i­ment’ in tour­ism the­ory, Prof Vei­jola has con­trib­uted to Finnish, Nor­d­ic and inter­na­tion­al tour­ism aca­demia for more than 40 years. She has been an inspir­a­tion to many research­ers, post­gradu­ates and students. 

I still remem­ber the first lec­ture by Prof Vei­jola that I atten­ded; some­time in the early 2000s at the Finnish Uni­ver­sity Net­work of Tour­ism Stud­ies. It was on cul­tur­al stud­ies of tour­ism. Her lec­ture opened up for me a whole new way of think­ing about the world; fas­cin­at­ing, chal­len­ging, yet so relat­able. I would call this a philo­soph­ic­al way of observing and won­der­ing about the world.

Her bound­ary-break­ing com­mit­ment extends to her chosen research top­ics. In addi­tion to field-work on Finnish charter trips in the 1980s and an ana­lys­is of embod­i­ment and gender in the­or­ising and shap­ing social space, her research themes have included:

• Body in tourism;
• ‘Hostess­ing society’; 
• Sleep in tourism;
• ‘Undressed places’;
• ‘Mobile neigh­bour­ing’;
• Silence in tour­ism; and 
• Respons­ible tour­ism planning.

Prof Vei­jola has pub­lished inter­na­tion­al and domest­ic art­icles and books in the field of soci­ology and cul­tur­al stud­ies, emphas­ising nar­rat­ive, inter­act­ive, and bod­ily rela­tion­ships in the con­struc­tion of reality. 

Find her pub­lic­a­tions at the research portal of the Uni­ver­sity of Lap­land.

Don’t miss oth­er “Good Tour­ism” Insight Interviews

Tourism studies vs tourism realities 

Soile Vei­jola reflects on the ways in which tour­ism stud­ies have or have not been able to influ­ence the tour­ism industry or the prac­tice of tourism. 

“The wider pub­lic does not attend our rig­or­ous con­fer­ences and finely tuned pub­lic­a­tions, do they? Mean­while, the tour­ism industry, by and large, seems to be doing what it’s always done.”

The only concept that seems to have caught on in both aca­demia and industry is sus­tain­ab­il­ity, accord­ing to Prof Veijola: 

“The concept of sus­tain­ab­il­ity is the excep­tion that has become the rule. It has moved from being a crit­ic­al, aca­dem­ic concept to being a house­hold word in the tour­ism industries.” 

The concept of sus­tain­able tour­ism has been used in a vari­ety of ways, and not always with the rigour it deserves: 

“[C]ritical tour­ism stud­ies have been ‘right’ about sus­tain­ab­il­ity as a primary goal of tour­ism devel­op­ment, but when it comes to hav­ing a real impact on soci­ety and cul­tur­al mean­ings, we have been right for no good. 

“We still cat­egor­ise con­tem­por­ary tour­ism as ‘tour­ism’ versus ‘sus­tain­able tour­ism’, don’t we? Should­n’t we be talk­ing about ‘tour­ism’ versus ‘unsus­tain­able tourism’?”

On diverse and multidisciplinary approaches to tourism studies

Des­pite the aca­dem­ic world’s lack of influ­ence in fun­da­ment­ally read­just­ing tour­ism prac­tice, Soile Vei­jola admires and respects its diversity because that in turn diver­si­fies the way we under­stand the phe­nomen­on of tourism: 

“[E]ach turn has chal­lenged, in one way or anoth­er, our onto­lo­gies (the ways in which we under­stand real­ity), our epi­stem­o­lo­gies (the ways in which we under­stand know­ledge), and our entire research methodology. 

“As we move towards more trans­par­ent and diverse research-based know­ledge, we are bet­ter pre­pared to con­sider the eth­ic­al aspects of the ways in which know­ledge about tour­ism is pro­duced and applied.”

For the future of tour­ism stud­ies, she would like to see dif­fer­ent dis­cip­lines work­ing togeth­er and learn­ing from each other: 

“I believe we should pur­sue our meth­od­o­lo­gic­al aspir­a­tions in close con­tact with basic dis­cip­lines such as soci­ology, psy­cho­logy, and the nat­ur­al sci­ences, but also with oth­er applied sci­ences, [such as] health sci­ences, sports stud­ies, and architecture.” 

How­ever, mul­tidiscip­lin­ary co-oper­a­tion is “not always easy”: 

“There are large and small dif­fer­ences in aca­dem­ic cul­tures of col­lab­or­a­tion and pub­lish­ing. But col­lab­or­a­tion helps to under­stand tour­ism and travel as a power­ful cul­tur­al, polit­ic­al, envir­on­ment­al, and eco­nom­ic force that deserves ser­i­ous attention.”

A research­er today is able to pick from a wide selec­tion of meth­od­o­lo­gies and the­or­ies, and thus has cre­at­ive free­dom in know­ledge production:

“The great thing about crit­ic­al tour­ism aca­demia is that it meets one’s curi­os­ity halfway by offer­ing a rich vari­ety of meth­od­o­lo­gies (ways of research­ing) to choose from. You can get to the bot­tom of whatever is troub­ling or tempt­ing you. In this respect, aca­demia is very hospitable.”

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

‘Tourism planning has not evolved at all in 40 years’

Soile Vei­jola recalls one book that had a big effect on her: Die Fer­i­en­menschen (1984), trans­lated as The Hol­i­day Makers (1994). It’s by the eco­nom­ist Jost Krip­pen­dorf whom Prof Vei­jola con­siders “one of the found­ing fig­ures of tour­ism studies”.

Prof Vei­jola re-read that book while final­ising her edited book pro­ject about respons­ible tour­ism plan­ning, Matkailunkestävä Suomi? (2023). She real­ised that the sus­tain­ab­il­ity issues raised by Krip­pen­dorf are as rel­ev­ant today as they were then: 

“[T]he world of tour­ism we were try­ing to sort out in our new book was actu­ally an update of the Alps in the ‘80s! Appar­ently, the prac­tices and pro­cesses of tour­ism plan­ning had not evolved at all in 40 years! “

One of the curi­ous things about the sus­tain­able tour­ism trend has been the devel­op­ment of plat­forms and col­lab­or­at­ive eco­nom­ies that have taken the ideals of hos­pit­al­ity bey­ond the usu­al tour­ism estab­lish­ments and into com­munit­ies and homes: 

“Little did Krip­pen­dorf know that his idea of truly authen­t­ic hos­pit­al­ity would gradu­ally, and later on massively, become a busi­ness – again!”

‘Overtourism’ and dreaming of an ‘ethical turn’

Over­tour­ism is a concept that Soile Vei­jola finds use­ful in many situations: 

“Of course, I want to cel­eb­rate all the pos­it­ive impacts that tour­ism has brought to places and people around the world, and to cher­ish the joys of travel. But it is neces­sary to also have a word to describe a situ­ation of too many tour­ists, of too much tourism.”

Des­tin­a­tions need to be live­able places for loc­al people. 

“In short, if a place can­not wel­come and accom­mod­ate its inhab­it­ants, it has too much tour­ism, or the wrong kind of tour­ism. Why offer authen­ti­city only to tour­ists and not to locals?

Although we have seen many mass move­ments around cli­mate change, sus­tain­ab­il­ity, and tour­ism, tour­ists them­selves are not a mass move­ment in the polit­ic­al sense, “let alone an eth­ic­al one”. 

“If only the bil­lions of [trav­el­lers] were united in their com­mon noble goal of a sus­tain­able world, and vis­ited places accord­ingly […] and if we instead [improved] our own liv­ing envir­on­ments as spaces of enjoy­ment and well-being, we might [see] an ‘eth­ic­al turn’ in tourism.”

Jost Krip­pen­dorf would be thrilled!

Don’t miss oth­er “GT” posts tagged ‘mass tour­ism & over­tour­ism’

Mass tourism and contemporary culture

Soile Vei­jola thinks that for travel & tour­ism to blend into con­tem­por­ary cul­ture most appro­pri­ately, the industry must “grow inwards, not outwards”.

“It will do so wisely if it fol­lows one of its clas­sic motiv­a­tions, which is to under­stand itself and the world bet­ter (which is not the same as con­quer­ing the world).”

Prof Vei­jola argues, for example, that instead of build­ing new hotels, the industry could help repair and restore her­it­age build­ings for the pur­poses of both tour­ism and the pre­ser­va­tion of loc­al land­scapes. The old built envir­on­ment not only appeals to most people who travel, but also to the inher­it­ors of those same places. 

Fur­ther­more, tour­ism should pro­tect nat­ur­al her­it­age, not turn it into “car parks”.

“Each of us should learn to dwell wisely and attent­ively both in our home envir­on­ment and in those of oth­er people and spe­cies. I think this is a noble enough goal for tour­ism, in the cur­rent his­tor­ic­al moment.”

The future of tourism

Soile Vei­jola finds ideas about pos­sible futures at the uto­pi­an and dysto­pi­an extremes. 

“When con­sid­er­ing future tour­ism, inspir­a­tion can be found in uto­pi­an and dysto­pi­an depic­tions of future soci­et­ies […] marked by the shift­ing baselines of liv­ing con­di­tions, which are deteri­or­at­ing for all species.”

“The uto­pi­an ver­sion promptly acknow­ledges and addresses the impacts of the accel­er­at­ing trans­form­a­tion on a plan­et­ary scale. 

“In con­trast, the dysto­pi­an ver­sion pri­or­it­ises selfish, select­ive short-term interests of tour­ists, real estate investors, tour­ism indus­tries, and nation­al states, ignor­ing cli­mate change and loss of biodiversity.“ 

These lines of thought may both be seen oper­at­ing at the moment, but which one will we, human­kind, follow?

Con­tents ^

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About the author

Vil­helmi­ina Vain­ikka is a post-doc­tor­al research fel­low at Tampere Uni­ver­sity, Fin­land. She is work­ing on the HUMANE-CLIMATE pro­ject (2022 – 2026), “The civic poten­tial of cli­mate mobil­ity”, which is fun­ded by the Academy of Finland.

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 Soile Vei­jola. Photo by Kaisa Sirén. “GT” cropped the photo and added the quote.

Con­tents ^