Visual turn in tourism, hospitality and leisure research

Introduction

The landscape of tourism, hospitality and leisure studies has historically been dominated by number- and word- based research, somewhat similar to the wider social sciences and humanities. This phenomenon rapidly changed over the past few decades and visual based research started to emerge supported by the methodological publications in the wider social sciences and humanities (Banks, 2001, 2007; Banks & Zeitlyn, 2015; Margolis & Pauwels, 2011; Margolis & Zunjarwad, 2018; Pink, 2021; Prosser & Loxley, 2008; Rose, 2022) along with the first such methodological book-length publication in tourism (Rakić and Chambers, 2012a) and a special issue in events (Pernecky and Rakić, 2019).

The visual nature of imagination, experience/consumption and representation of tourism, hospitality and leisure could not be studied without the consideration, as Banks (2007) noted in relation to studies of society, of the visual. Visuals play a fundamental role in tourism (Urry and Larsen, 2011), both historically - in as far as the central importance of representational art within the various stages of the Grand Tour (Rakić and Lester, 2012; Franklin, 2018) is concerned - and within contemporary tourism, hospitality and leisure’s artistic, creative and popular visual culture which lies at the very heart of these sectors (e.g., Volo and Irimiás, 2021; Cohen et al., 2022; Richards, 2011). Importantly, contemporary technological advances have allowed for further developments such as instant sharing of photographs and videos online, and with these both the visual practice and the position of the visuals for tourists, destinations, businesses and other stakeholders in these sectors has also changed. These changes pose novel practical and scholarly challenges and knowledge gaps that require further attention (e.g., Balomenou and Garrod, 2019; Volo and Irimiás, 2021; Egger, 2023).

Although a number of fascinating visual and creative research studies and methodological publications emerged within the early stages of popularisation of visual methodologies, it was only the subsequent proliferation and widespread establishment of these methods as legitimate tools of scholarly enquiry that brought the multidisciplinary fields of tourism, hospitality and leisure studies to their ‘visual turn’. In aiming to make its own modest contribution to this increasingly evident ‘visual turn’, this special issue provides a space for a collection of articles showcasing some of the major contemporary themes of visual tourism, hospitality and leisure studies and an exploration of the variety of qualitative (e.g. Conti and Lexhagen, 2020; Matteucci, 2013; Scarles, 2012), quantitative (e.g. Cohen et al. 2022; Ma, Kirilenko and Stepchenkova, 2020; Yu and Egger, 2020, 2021), mixed (Filieri, Yen and Yu, 2021) or indeed creative (e.g. see Barbosa, 2020; Ivanova, Buda and Burrai, 2021) methods these studies are increasingly relying on. While acknowledging both that visual research is overwhelmingly multimodal, in that the visual is more commonly included and analysed alongside textual and/or numerical data rather than on its own, and that visual data can be collected, introduced, created (Rakić and Chambers, 2012b) as well as analysed (e.g. see Rose, 2022) through a reliance on a multitude of different methods - some of which are also innovative, unique and/or creative - this special issue invites proposals for papers on methodological approaches and themes across the fields of tourism, hospitality and leisure which may include but are not limited to: 

• Studies focusing on any thematic aspect of visual imagination, experience/consumption and/or representation of tourism, hospitality and leisure.
• In-depth (offline or online) qualitative studies of visual cultures of tourism, hospitality or leisure through a reliance on methods such as visual ethnography or netnography.
• Tourism, hospitality or leisure studies projects which focused on collecting and analysing visual or multimodal data sets from secondary sources and subsequently analysed these through either qualitative or quantitative methods (e.g. big data analytics) of analysis.
• Tourism, hospitality or leisure studies projects which incorporate an inclusion of visual data as either digital file(s) or material object(s) for the purpose of elicitation.
• Tourism, hospitality or leisure studies projects which relied on photo-voice.
• Studies which rely on the visual aspect of project data to produce a creative research output such as an exhibition, a video, a multimedia webpage or a documentary.

Submissions information

Submissions are made using ScholarOne Manuscripts. Author guidelines must be strictly followed.

Authors should select (from the drop-down menu) the special issue title at the appropriate step in the submission process, i.e. in response to “Please select the issue you are submitting to”.

Submitted articles must not have been previously published, nor should they be under consideration for publication anywhere else, while under review for this journal.

Submit your paperAuthor guidelines

Key deadlines

Deadline for submissions of abstract proposal: 07/11/2023 – please use the template provided and send to [email protected], [email protected] and [email protected] indicating the following subject line: CBTH – Special issue Visual Turn in THL.

Notification of abstract acceptance: 22/11/2023

Opening of the submission platform: 01/12/2023

Closing of the submission platform: 17/05/2024

Review process

Each paper submitted for publication consideration is subjected to the standard review of Consumer Behavior in Tourism and Hospitality. Based on the recommendations of the reviewers, the guest editors along with the Editor-in-chief will decide whether particular submissions will be accepted, revised or rejected. All papers need to strictly adhere to the specific guidelines of the journal Consumer Behavior in Tourism and Hospitality.

Please note that accepted articles will benefit from Emerald EarlyCite.

EarlyCite is the author proofed, typeset version of record, fully citable by DOI. At the beginning the EarlyCite article sits outside of a journal issue and is paginated in isolation. The EarlyCite article will later be collated into the special issue envisioned, according to the journals’ publication schedule, for spring/summer 2025.