Description

This paper sets out the key logics, relations, and strategies which composed the global practice of touristic security before the Covid-19 pandemic and asks how these may or may not be transformed in the new context. Before Covid-19, touristic security was regularly presented as a “win-win” security practice using the following logic: (a) that tourism is vital for global sustainable development; (b) that tourists are risk adverse; and, following, (c) that making the world safe for tourists helps to make the world richer and safer for all. Accordingly, the enactment of touristic security entailed securing tourists to sustain tourism. This centred tourists’ fears and vulnerabilities and supported the use of four security strategies – assuring, webbing, bubbling, and disciplining – to make tourists feel safe and keep them from bodily harm. While academics have problematised touristic security’s logics, relations, and strategies, showing it not to be a “win-win” security practice (Becklake 2019, 2020, forthcoming), the Covid-19 pandemic has given rise to heightened public awareness and debate concerning the relationship between tourism, development, and (in)securities; whose security matters in the touristic relation; and, what (if any) security strategies should be employed to help re-start tourism. Following these debates and using future thinking, the paper outlines potential continuities and/or transformations in the logics, relations, and strategies of touristic security and sets out what the likely consequences of the different trajectories would be.