Proximity tourism: A thematic literature review

Abstract

This literature review aims to build an understanding of the scope and amount of research published on the topic of proximity tourism within the tourism and hospitality literature. In addition to referring to a particular form of tourism that emphasises local destinations, short distances and lower-carbon modes of transportation, proximity tourism builds upon an idea of seeing our proximate, everyday surroundings anew. Despite the currency and relevance of the topic of proximity, the existing literature in tourism and leisure studies on proximity tourism is relevantly scarce. In addition, there is variance in the usage of concepts referring to proximity tourism. With these notions forming the motivation for our study, we conducted a systematic, thematic literature review of international research publications concerning the topic at hand. We identified a considerable potential in this emerging strand of research of proximity tourism to renegotiate tourism, its concepts and future(s). By re-examining the dichotomy between tourist and local; challenging the definition of tourism on the basis of distance as ‘nearness’ and ‘farness’ and; envisioning brave new tourism futures, the reviewed research literature of proximity tourism disrupts the very basic concepts of tourism. The existing literature of proximity (in) tourism is thus able to create space for new conceptualisations within tourism studies that make way for the plurality of tourism futures.