Abstract
At the end of December of 2019, the first cases of COVID-19 alerted the health authorities about the rise of a new pandemic. Although some voices have claimed that mass tourism as well as the public and private transport system are fertile ground for lethal virus propagation, governments systematically overlooked these alerts. In this respect, COVID-19 generated an unparalleled halt to the tourism industry and the transport system. The globalization world sets the pace to new fractured geography fraught with geopolitical tensions, chauvinist, and separatist discourses without mentioning the rise of global fears and anxieties. Having said this, the chapter discusses critically the effects of COVID-19 and the future guidelines of research for the next years. The chapter holds the thesis the world is being feudalized towards an atomized climate that marks a new form of production/consumption. Far from being a foundational event, COVID-19 reaffirms culturally and symbolically a trend initiated just after the War on Terror was declared during Bush´s administration.
TopIntroduction
From its outset, tourism and transportation industries have faced serious and global threats (Bianchi 2006), some of which were potential of high destructive capacities for the services sector (Williams & Balaz, 2015; Becken & Hughey, 2013). The modern tourism industry derives from the technological breakthroughs applied over the transportation system, which facilitated physical movement. Dispersed geographical points were connected in hours (Cresswell 2008; Vannini, 2012; Korstanje 2018). To some extent, the modern transportation system and tourism are inextricably intertwined (Cresswell & Merriman, 2016). Over the recent years, some global risks such as terrorist attacks, natural disasters, and of course, global pandemic have placed the transportation system and tourism in jeopardy (Rack et al 2005; Kozak, Crotts & Law, 2007). No matter the nature of these risks, experts have reached a consensus that the turn of the century has brought many unseen dangers such as natural disasters, climate change and terrorism without mentioning lethal virus outbreaks which escaped the national controls of states (Ritchie 2004; 2008; Laws, Prideaux & Chon, 2007; Saha & Yap, 2014; Tzanelli 2016). This was precisely the case of H1N1, SARS, Ebola and today COVID-19.
Key Terms in this Chapter
COVID-19: Is a new virus outbreak known as SARSCOv2, whose firsts cases were originally reported in Wuhan China in 2019.
Transport System: Is a net of composed infrastructures, devices, institutions, people and terminals oriented to grant the citizens´ mobilities.
Tourism Research: Is a subdiscipline of tourism studies which focuses in tourism as its main object of study.
Pandemic: Is an outbreak or disease which spreads through a whole portion of countries.
Mobilities: Are a set of theories which integrates a contemporary paradigm in social science that studies mobile societies.