Travel and tourism

from imagined scenarios to disruptive events

Abstract

This article covers an analysis of my main papers, produced over the last 30 years. It is an attempt to evaluate how these texts interpreted the different facets of the travel and tourism sector, from the international context that influenced tourism research and teaching in Brazil, to the different characteristics, positive and negative, of the Brazilian scenarios in which tourism has had a difficult and bumpy development, despite the puerile enthusiasm that still surrounds its operation, management, and even research. Some critical points and the controversies that have marked these last decades of tourism in Brazil are commented on, including some of its “myths” or “dogmas” that are part of its history. Finally, it looks at how the Covid-19 pandemic has suddenly truncated the global travel and tourism system, taking the immense sector to its biggest crisis since World War II. What is evident throughout these years is the intensity and speed of the disruptive changes, already detected in the papers of the 1980s and 1990s, which reached increasingly impacting proportions throughout the 21st century.