COVID-19 and the End of Hospitality: At Least as We Know It in the West

Introduction

The outbreak of a new virus in Wuhan, China, SARS-COv2, known as COVID19 has paralyzed not only the tourism industry but also the global commerce placing the health system of developed countries in the brink of collapse. Centered on a precautionary logic which is oriented to prevent risks, governments adopted the decision to close their airspaces, and borders while tightening the domestic controls. Lay-citizens were locked down or forced to keep the social distancing in the streets. As experts agree, the lack of a vaccine leads the world to live a type of new normality and of course, tourism is not an exemption (Higgins-Desbiolles, 2020; Romagosa, 2020; Gossling, Scott & Hall, 2020). Other voices called the attention to the urgency of thinking new methods of research in a world without tourists (Wen et al 2020). These studies focus on COVID19 as a foundational event which opens the doors to new opportunities and challenges for tourism research. Though eloquently, in essence, were believe rather that these studies overlook the fact that COVID19 seems to be part of a previously-established tendency which started after 9/11. This epoch was characterized by a tradition widely based on a much deeper process of securitization where the figure of the “Otherness” is neglected. We dubbed this process as the “end of hospitality”, at least as we know it (Korstanje 2017; 2018). The goals of the paper are twofold. On one hand, we review conceptually the effects of COVID19 in the tourism and hospitality industries. On another, we revise the concept of hospitality and the philosophical problems of West to understand the “Non-Western Other”. The present authors would like to see it as a continuum of events beginning with 9/11/ and the War on Terror; in our earlier works, we have dubbed this progression as the End of Western Hospitality. A general review of this tendency will be summed in the present paper. To some extent, terrorism mined the social trust introducing the idea nobody is safe any longer and anywhere. The figure of the non-Western Other was framed and demonized as a potential enemy of democracy, paving the ways for the rise of chauvinist and xenophobic expressions oriented to neglect the Foreigner. The attacks on Sept 11 not only closed the Western civilization itself but changed the cosmologies revolving around the “Non-Western Other”. Anthropologically speaking, the archetype of the noble savage, which revived the curiosity of travelers for travel writing and the discovery of over-seas territories – mainly during the colonial period- sets the pace to the doctrine of living with the enemy inside (Korstanje 2007; 2018). Last but not least, one of the limitations of the present essay-review is the lack of an empirical basis to validate research hypotheses, but at a closer look, it is not aimed to be an empirical but philosophical paperwork. Rather, it discusses critically the continuum of COVID19 and the War on Terror while laying the foundations towards a new understanding of hospitality rite.