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An integrative geotourism approach: bridging conflicts in tourism landscape research

Landscapes have a central position in many rural tourism destinations. They provide both assets and bounds for tourism development, and they indirectly provide the framework in which tourism is often envisaged as a regional development tool. However, the complexity of the interactions between landscapes and tourism has resulted in multiple and sometimes contrasting interpretations and research focuses dealing with landscape–tourism interactions. These contrasts have impeded constructive discussion, dynamism and progress in tourism landscape research in general. To manoeuvre in this complex and ‘chaotic’ field, we argue that a reinterpretation of the concept of geotourism provides a structured way forward. A focus on geotourism, although highly contested as a scientific concept, creates opportunities to bridge the gap between tourism-centred and landscape-centred strands that dominate and hence divide current tourism landscape research. The adapted geotourism framework presented here, in which geotourism is re-interpreted as an approach to study landscape–tourism interactions instead of currently contrasting definitions as either geological niche tourism or a form of sustainable tourism, builds on the idea that landscapes and tourism are inextricably connected. Landscapes provide natural and cultural assets for tourism development, with destination images being constructed by emplaced social and power relations. Simultaneously, the created ‘tourismscape’ has constitutive power to shape the landscape and the processes within it. By building on this continuum between tourism and landscape, the proposed geotourism approach provides a solid conceptual foundation for future research on landscape–tourism interactions and the interrelations between tourism landscapes and regional development.