The latest EasyJet in-flight magazine has an article about Lisbon as “Capital of Cool”. It praises the “friendly neighbourhoods where fado fills the streets and independent shops and bars thrive.” It is certainly true that there is plenty of fado music these days. A recent article by  Iñigo Sánchez-Fuarros , Daniel Malet Calvo , Daniel Paiva & Jordi Nofre in Tourism Geographies shows that in the central neighbourhood of Alfama, fado venues increased 9-fold between 2012 and 2024. This...

Walking through the Eixample in the centre of Barcelona one encounters an interesting exercise in bottom-up critique of urban speculation and touristification. A series of posters erected at the bottom of Passeig Sant Joan by the Associació de Veïns i Veïnes de la Dreta de Eixample  -  (Residents Association of the Right of the Eixample) provides a stark example of the effects of speculation and tourist pressure in the centre of Barcelona. Density of tourist beds in the Eixample District in...

When an email from Tripadvisor popped into our inbox headed “Psst… Our Trendcast knows where you should go next” that rang a bell. A while ago, Wendy Morrill and I wrote a blog piece on  “the intention economy”, which outlined how consumer desires and motivations as the drivers of tourism demand. The growth of AI, and algorithms able to predict our wants, the ‘intention economy’ means that companies can know what we want and where we might travel, before we do. Creative tourism: back to the...