Future of Sustainable Tourism: Opportunities in Health, Sports, Alternative Tourism, and Analysis of How Sustainable Tourism Will Be Shaped Post COVID-19

Introduction

Tourism is an economic activity which is affected by a number of factors found on the environment of the tourist industry (Belias et al., 2020; Belias et al., 2018; Belias et al., 2017; Koutiva et al., 2019; Rossidis et al., 2021; Rossidis et al., 2021b; Rossidis et al., 2019; Rossidis et al., 2019b; Belias and Trihas, 2022d; Belias and Trihas, 2022e; Belias and Trihas, 2022f; Ntalakos et al., 2022c; Ntalakos et al., 2022d; Belias et al., 2022; Belias et al., 2022b; Belias et al., 2022c; Belias et al., 2022d). During the past months the tourist industry, like every economic activity on this world has been affected by the pandemic of COVID-19 (Belias and Trihas, 2022a; Belias and Trihas, 2020b; Belias and Trihas, 2022c;). On many cases, demand for tourist services has collapsed or even disappeared (Polyzos et al, 2020). The pandemic has some unique characteristics that cannot be found on similar crises which affected the tourist industry, such as the 9/11. For example there is a high uncertainty and it is not easy to predict when tourism will be back in normal but also how this may happen (Gössling et al., 2020). Another feature is that there is not guarantee as on how tourists can be safe and what needs to be done so to ensure their safety, something that increases uncertainty among the tourists who are hesitating to travel when there are not travel bans due of the pandemic (Ghosh, 2020; Ntalakos et al., 2022; Ntalakos et al., 2022b; Belias et al., 2020b).

From the above it is understood that tourism has to face a severe crisis where there is not a guarantee blueprint to recovery. The tourist destinations and businesses must find ways to continue their operations during several crises (Belias et al., 2022a) but also to find ways to ensure not only the satisfaction but also the health of their guests. Romagosa (2020) claims that despite of the negative situation for the tourist industry, there are opportunities for sustainable and proximity tourism. For example, Fletcher et al (2020) argues that the current control and restrictions on the mobility of tourists, as it has been imposed by governments, indicates that where there is a will and a consensus from the society and the government to do so, hence it is possible to regulate the flows of tourists based on the sustainability of the destination something that before the pandemic was argued that it was not possible. Hence, the pandemic of COVID-19 can create new opportunities for sustainable tourism. However, there is a need to provide some investigation on this in order to conceptualize the different issues and factors which will determine on how there can be opportunities for sustainable tourism in the post-COVID 19 era. Therefore, the aim of this chapter is to investigate what are the opportunities for sustainable tourism in the post-covid 19 era and how to conceptualize them.

This chapter has great value since it can indicate on the academia and on professionals how sustainable tourism will develop after the pandemic and it can be the starting point for future empirical researches. It is a literature review which combines the existing theories on sustainable tourism with the latest publications on this issue. The material used has been retrieve from online search engines such as Scholar Google and EBSCO. It is important to note that the current literature is limited and there is a lack of empirical evidence which is the key limitation on this subject.