Studying Tourism During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Digital Platforms and Methodological Problems of Tourist-Centricity

Introduction

Doubtless, the COVID-19 pandemic not only ground global trade but also the tourism industry to an unparalleled halt (Baber 2020; Korstanje 2021). The disposed of restrictive measures adopted by governments to contain the virus dissemination, which included the closure of borders and airspaces, lockdowns as well as strictest travel bans, harmed seriously the industry (Papas 2021; Barbosa et al 2021; Korstanje 2020). Although the literature in this direction abounds, the main goals of this book chapter are not oriented to discussing (or describing) the negative effects of COVID-19 on tourism, but also in the epistemology of tourism, which means the set of beliefs, notions, and ideas revolving around how to investigate tourism precisely in a world without tourists. As Wen (2021) et al put it, COVID-19 triggered a socio-economic crisis that transformed radically the ways of seeing tourists, tourism as well as travel behaviour. In the mid of this mayhem, scholars should rethink not only new innovative methods but in interdisciplinary methods to change the object of study in the constellations of tourism research. Although interdisciplinary research is engulfed in many disciplines, in tourism and hospitality, it faces no fewer barriers. Interdisciplinary research is strongly suggested to integrate produced knowledge in times of crisis or uncertainty as well as for finding innovative solutions to the challenges posed to the industry in a post-COVID-19 context. No less true seems to be that a systematic review of the published works reveals two important aspects of the pandemic. At a closer look, in a post covid, 19 pandemic tourism research mutates towards new forms and shapes. Secondly, a whole portion of the literature, which saw the light of publicity in recent months, focuses strictly on the economic effects of COVID-19 in the tourism and hospitality industries (Casado-Aranda, Sanchez-Fernandez & Bastidas-Manzano, 2021). However, there are no systematic approaches that tackle the problem of tourism methodologies after the pandemic. As Korstanje & George (2021; 2022) eloquently observe, the COVID-19 outbreak originally reported in Wuhan China, rapidly expanded to the entire planet. Tourism and modern transport means disseminated the virus over the question of months. This affected seriously not only the tourism industry but also the pathways tourism research has historically taken. Tourist-centricity, a term originally coined by A. Franklin, speaks to us of an obsession to interview tourists as the only valid source of information for applied research. The crisis accelerated by the virus exposed one of the main limitations of tourism research, displacing tourists to a peripheral position. Given the problem in these terms, the main point in this discussion is associated with the fact professional fieldworkers were hand-tied to study tourism in a world without tourists.