While tourism research has extensively explored host-guest dynamics and land-use conflicts, the interactions between tourists themselves remain underexamined despite their profound influence on experiences, destination image, and potential tensions. This study addresses this gap by investigating intra-tourist gaze, that is, how tourists observe, interpret, and influence one another, within the unique context of a European naturist resort, where nude and clothed visitors coexist. Drawing on 225 TripAdvisor reviews and autoethnographic reflections, the research reveals that conflicting gazes among tourist subgroups create a multilayered common gaze, shaped by cultural practices and destination management. In naturist settings, the absence of clothing intensifies the power of the gaze, transforming it into a visceral, embodied experience that can evoke discomfort, connection, or resistance. The presence of clothed tourists, for instance, disrupts the liberating ethos of naturism, reintroducing social scrutiny and challenging the destination’s identity. These tensions highlight the fragility of shared spaces and the need for managers to proactively balance inclusivity with the preservation of core values. By framing intra-tourist interactions as a dynamic, co-productive process, this study underscores their critical role in shaping both individual satisfaction and the broader sustainability of tourist destinations.

Cute animals attract visitors. This study adopts a multispecies ethnographic approach to deconstruct the anthropocentric, unidirectional construction of “cuteness.” It explores how giant pandas’ cuteness shapes tourists’ cognition and emotional experiences in wildlife tourism, while motivating a commitment to conservation. Cuteness, as a form of agency enacted by giant pandas, manifests their “agentic subject” status through their appearance, behavior, and interactions with tourists, which all shape tourist perceptions. Moreover, pandas’ cuteness elicits emotions like tenderness, care and concern, prompting attention to both the welfare of individual pandas and species survival. The study thereby provides empirical support for the synergy between animal conservation and tourism value. Transcending anthropocentrism, this study frames “cuteness” as a form of animal agency. It uncovers the role of cuteness in structuring interspecies relationships, ultimately orienting toward a multispecies coexistence ethic that acknowledges species’ intrinsic value.

Wildlife tourism is rapidly growing worldwide, drawing significant attention from both academia and the tourism sector. However, the complex and multi-dimensional experiences arising from the interactions between tourists, wildlife, and local communities are difficult to fully capture. Often grounded in anthropocentrism and focussing on the tourist perspective, wildlife tourism risks undermining its conservation and educational goals, especially under the narratives of Anthropocene. This article bridges tourism studies and anthropology by applying multispecies ethnography and proposes a framework called Wildlife-Tourist Sociality , which examines the dynamic interactions between humans and non-human species in tourism. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork on the Tibetan Plateau, this study explores three interrelated dimensions: wildlife spectatorship, ferality, and pastoral affect. These analytic entry points illuminate the ecological, affective, and sociocultural dimensions of wildlife encounters, while also foregrounding the distinctiveness of Tibetan wildlife tourism, characterised by its high mobility, alpine geography, and culturally (religious and pastoralist aspects) embedded modes of co-habitation.

Despite being a key market segment, representations of Black individuals’ leisure travel in American film are lacking, particularly for women. The intersectional experiences of Black women travelers are frequently ignored, while limitations on Black movement and leisure travel persist today. Popular media frequently influences travel patterns; therefore, this paper analyzes two films: How Stella Got Her Groove Back and Girls Trip function as counter-narratives to the real and perceived restrictions to Black women’s mobility. We find that through the normalization of Black women’s success and power, freedom of movement, girlfriendship, and sexual scripting, these films counteract long standing assumptions about Black women and their leisure travel. We also find that through both idealized and authentic destination portrayals, the film locations are presented as safe spaces to Black women audiences. We, therefore, suggest that film can be used as a key strategy to promote destinations to Black travelers, particularly women, who face intersectional layers of bias and mobility constraints, to foster authenticity, freedom, joy, and pleasure.

Examining the intersection of check-in tourism and travel vlogs within the context of Zibo, China—a destination popularized on social media platforms for its barbecue culture—this study analyzes 24 check-in vlogs from Bilibili platform. Through the rite of passage theoretical lens, this work investigates how vloggers utilize digital storytelling to shape and construct destination narratives. The research reveals how tourists assert agency over space by integrating place, body, and narrative elements, contributing to an extraordinary tourist experience comprising liminal moments of ordinariness and authenticity, thereby effectively (re)writing Zibo as a welcoming city of barbecue and a slow-life destination. This investigation provides insights into the evolving dynamics of contemporary tourism influenced by social media practices, highlighting the transformative role of digital narratives in shaping tourist perceptions and experiences, as well as meaning-making processes.

This article examines a conflict over land on Las Islitas beach in San Blas, Nayarit, Mexico, between the owners of small beachfront eateries or enramadas and an Indigenous communal agrarian organization. We interpret this conflict as being not only a struggle over land but also as a struggle between the enactment of different tourismscapes and the corresponding ontological premises upon which these are based. To build our argument, we explore the historical production of tourismscapes in San Blas and the crucial part that a colonial parchment and littoral drift play in this. As we show, the conflict has created a public, that is, a confederation of dissimilar actors who are united by a shared experience of harm and who take important decisions and engage in politics. We conclude with some ideas as concerns the need to account for the ontological politics that emerge from tourism-related conflicts.

This study examines the reinvention of Portugal’s traditional arraial festival in the postcolonial city of Macau. It assesses the transposition of the arraial’s cultural significance from a Portuguese summertime event to an innovative tourist attraction that integrates Portuguese colonial symbols with interactive augmented reality experiences in three historic Macau neighborhoods. The research draws on stakeholder interviews, ethnographic observations, and analysis of game content to scrutinize how this tourist festival forges Macau’s hybrid post-colonial identity through visitor virtual engagement with Portuguese heritage. While the arraial is unique among Macau’s tourist festivals for its emphasis on Portuguese culture, it sometimes sanitizes colonial events or perpetuates historical social divides under the premise of harmonious cultural fusion. The research offers insights into the dynamics of tourism in postcolonial regions, the impact of cultural festivals as tourist attractions, and the educational potential of gamification in conveying heritage.

Social media have reconfigured place-making in tourism so that industry-led place promotion through professionally produced media representations is nowadays intertwined with bottom-up processes involving online influencers and ordinary people. The emergence of wanghongjingdian (i.e. internet-popular tourist attractions) in China is a case in point. This article aims at contributing to our understanding of the production of wanghongjingdian through a focus on the bottom-up negotiation between influential bloggers and ordinary users, especially on the “authenticity” of travel photos. We conducted a virtual ethnography and visual and textual analyses of 290 blogs on Xiaohongshu, a highly popular visual-oriented platform in China. Three authentication strategies, which relate to existing theoretical conceptualizations of authenticity in nuanced manners, are identified, and the negotiation process between influencers and ordinary users is marked by a critical participatory culture, multiplicity of practices, and individuality-in-community. These features help us understand the production of wanghongjingdian on Chinese social media.