Dear Colleagues,

Humanity has always been confronted by pandemics. Some of them were recorded in our collective history due to the demographic, economic, and socio-cultural impacts which they caused, and others have been remembered whenever it is necessary to carry out a retrospective analysis of our pandemic past and make the collective memory present.

In 2020, the tourism sector has been one of the most affected by the  ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, preventing individuals from traveling and getting out of their ordinary daily life. How can we learn from the COVID-19 crisis to put in place more sustainable tourism strategies? What can be done to overcome this pandemic and contribute to the sustainability of destinations? Why is a sustainable solution so hard to achieve in the tourism industry? What can be the role of circular economy in this process? What role can less massified tourism segments take in the establishment of a new tourist path? Can pandemics put an end to massified tourism models? Can we face the emergence of new trends where domestic tourism will play a larger role in tourist development strategies? What is the role of different stakeholders (e.g., politicians, residents, tourists) in tourism strategies aiming to prevent and overcome pandemic scenarios? What about the role played by technologies such as Geographical Information Systems (GIS), Webmapping, Augmented Reality, and others? What is the potential of big data in the management of this kind of crisis and overcoming it?

This Special Issue aims to provide a forum to discuss the sustainability of the tourism industry in pandemic scenarios (present and future ones) and beyond them, learning from the present health crisis and from past ones. Conceptual approaches and empirical ones—namely, case studies from different countries and regions around the world—will be accepted. Less successful and successful cases will both be welcome.

We are organizing a Special Issue for the Sustainability journal (ISSN 2071-1050; impact factor: 2.576) aiming to discuss present and future tourism sustainable trends in pandemic contexts and beyond them. Pandemic periods are becoming more and more common in the present century and perhaps will continue to be so in the near future. Nevertheless, tourism has been revealed to be an extremely dynamic and adaptive phenomenon. Keeping this in mind, we believe that there is a need to look for new approaches to tourism development. No doubt, we should work on making the tourism industry more sustainable.

There has been a lot of literature published in the last eight months on the COVID-19 pandemic concerning its impacts in tourism activity. The present issue will usefully supplement the literature that has been produced on the issue. 

Dr. Paula Remoaldo
Prof. Dr. José Cadima Ribeiro
Dr. Juliana Alves
Guest Editors

• Conceptual approaches to more sustainable forms of tourism and pandemic scenarios: • New sustainable approaches to pandemic scenarios—the role of circular economy
• The relationship between climate change, pandemic scenarios, and sustainable destinations
• The role of creative tourism and other non-massified segments in pandemic times Rethinking tourism in the ongoing pandemic and post-COVID-19 period—the role of cities and of less urbanized territories
•  Environmental, economic, and social effects of pandemics on tourism destinations
• The role of different stakeholders (e.g., politicians, residents, tourists) in tourism strategies to prevent and overcome pandemic scenarios
• The role of (new) technologies (e.g., GIS, Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality) and big data in the development of tourism strategies in the ongoing pandemic and post-COVID-19 period
• Tourists’ perceptions of the risk of pandemics
• Case studies at local, regional, and international scales.