Tourism Geographies

The IGU Commission on Tourism, Leisure and Global Change & the IGU Commission on Islands cordially invite you to submit an abstract for consideration for the 2026 Joint Pre-Meeting, 14 - 16 August 2026, Büyükada, Princes' Islands, Istanbul, Türkiye.

The Pre-Meeting usually serves dual purposes: as a test lab for nascent ideas in progress or as a rehearsal for the wider congress that follows.

Arrival, 14 August - Delegates arrive in Büyükada
Day 1, 15 August - Pre-Meeting Symposium, Anadolu Kulübü Hotel
Day 2, 16 August - Büyükada Fieldtrip.

The 2026 Joint Pre-Meeting is dedicated to two of our staunchest supporters and long-serving members, the late Prof. Dieter K. Müller and the late Prof. Theano Terkenli.Dieter and Theano have made considerable contributions to the sub-field, tourism geographies, and their seminal works have guided particular areas of research on topics including polar tourism geographies, second home tourism, Sámi tourism, Arctification and regional change and labour geographies (Dieter), and cultural geography and landscape studies, critical tourism geographies, island studies, sustainable tourism and development, and everyday life and mobilities (Theano).

Accordingly, the overarching theme of the 2026 IGU Commission on Tourism, Leisure and Global Change & IGU Commission on Islands 2026 Joint Pre-Meeting, draws from the title of the book, Tourism, Mobility and Second-homes: Between Elite Landscape and Common Ground, (Hall & Müller, 2004) that presages the economic, social and environmental impacts of second homes, as well as their planning implications, placing discussions within the context of contemporary human mobility.

The Pre-Meeting usually serves dual purposes: as a test lab for nascent ideas in progress or as a rehearsal for the wider congress that follows.

Pre-Meeting Location:
In 2026, the IGU Commission on Tourism, Leisure and Global Change and the IGU Commission on Islands are jointly organising the 2026 Pre-Meeting to be held on the island Büyükada, situated in the Princes' Islands, Sea of Marmara, Istanbul.

Büyükada, is the largest of the Princes' Islands in the Sea of Marmara, with an area of about 5 square kilometres. It comprises the Maden and Nizam neighbourhoods in the Adalar District of Istanbul Province, Türkiye.

Call for Abstracts Deadline
The CFA will open from 18 May and close on 10 June 2026, and abstracts should be submitted to an online repository – see submission instructions below.

To submit an abstract, complete the online form or scan QR code:

https://forms.office.com/pages/responsepage.aspx?id=-aZLWjH1Mk-UZzmPGead5L_pR1DVy0JJpcq-kVQxi7dURDRSSUtSQURRVlNZQ1IzWTJDUUNYWjVTWC4u&route=shorturl

SAVE THE DATE

PRE-MEETING of the IGU Commission on Tourism, Leisure and Global Change in partnership with the IGU Commission on Islands, Büyükada, Princes’ Islands, Istanbul, Türkiye, August 14-16, 2026.

In 2026, the IGU Commission on Tourism, Leisure and Global Change and the IGU Commission on Islands are jointly organising the 2026 Pre-Meeting to be held on the island Büyükada, situated in the Princes' Islands, Istanbul.

The venue for the Pre-Meeting will be the Anadolu Kulubü Hotel on Büyükada https://www.anadolukulubu.com/en/.

Arrival, 14 August Delegates arrive in Büyükada
Day 1, 15 August Pre-Meeting Symposium, Anadolu Kulübü Hotel
Day 2, 16 August Büyükada Fieldtrip

Call for Abstracts to be released on 18 May 2026.

Please stand by for the Call for Abstracts announcement.

🎙️ In this week's episode of the Tourism Geographies Podcast, we feature the work of Chloe King, University of Cambridge, UK, and colleagues.

💥 In tourism literature and practice, pro-growth tourism management discourses argue that tourism growth can decouple from its negative impacts through improved management, whereas heterodox approaches reject tourism’s growth ethic and argue decoupling is infeasible and unlikely. Heterodox tourism scholarship increasingly seeks to imagine what a ‘beyond growth’ transition may entail, through concepts such as regenerative tourism, degrowth, and buen vivir. Among the first UNESCO World Heritage Sites and most iconic Biosphere Reserves, the Galápagos Islands in Ecuador present a critical case study, having experienced a 260% increase in tourism arrivals over the past two decades while attempting to enact a heterodox transition. The purpose of this paper is to examine how diverse stakeholders in these islands construct and contest discourses of tourism growth, with implications for transitions towards ‘post-growth’ or heterodox tourism paradigms. Building upon decades of combined research in Galápagos among our author team, this paper draws most specifically on data gathered from a three-day participatory workshop in August 2023 involving sixty key Galápagos tourism stakeholders. Findings identified two primary discourse coalitions—those critiquing and those defending land-based tourism growth—and compares how pro-growth and heterodox management discourses manifest among them. Findings reveal that although these coalitions adopt different discursive strategies where growth is most contentious, there is shared consensus around strategies for managing growth that align with heterodox paradigms. A key contribution of this paper is to highlight how managing tourism growth in Biosphere Reserves—of increasing concern as overtourism challenges proliferate globally—cannot rely solely on technical interventions. Our findings show how divergent discourse coalitions construct prosperity in competing ways, revealing why inclusive engagement with plural values, contested meanings, and local power dynamics is indispensable for navigating overtourism challenges in fragile island settings.

🆓 The paper is available Open Access and free to download.

King, C., Hunt, C., Barragán-Paladines, M. J., Muñoz-Barriga, A., Santa Maria, V., Cárdenas Díaz, S., … Sandbrook, C. (2025). Navigating the Galápagos paradox: tourism growth management discourses in protected areas. Tourism Geographies, 1–26.
https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2025.2582669

🎧 Listen to the podcast here from Friday, 10 April:
https://shows.acast.com/tourism-geographiess-podcast

Podcast Producer: Joseph M. Cheer
Podcast Executive Producer: Stephen Pratt