Speculative Vs. Actual Tourism?

a recent interview about Speculative Tourism, by an actual tourism agency

A couple of weeks ago I was interviewed by Nadja Von Buseck for her company’s blog. The company, Where About Now, is a B2B tourism company specializing in contemporary art trips. The reason for her interest was of course learning about Speculative Tourism.

Here’s a link to the full interview.

This isn’t the first time our project gets interest from people working in actual tourism. In an initiative that sadly fell through last year, we were approached to create a collection for a city in Estonia that was looking to boost its tourism in innovative ways. Recently we were interviewed by an academic who researches tourism design (if you’re reading this text in the future: look up “Springer Handbook of e-Tourism” where the essay is meant to be published). And now this interview. I am still amazed by this interest; I tend to imagine Speculative Tourism will be seen as antagonistic to the current tourism industry. It’s quite humbling to receive positive attention from people working in this field.

The researcher mentioned above explained it this way: while for us “Speculative Tourism” is understood mostly as “tours through speculations”, he also sees value in the other meaning of the title: a speculation about what tourism can be. In our project’s case, it’s tourism that marvels at the potentials of places and the dangers that face them, instead of just at what has already calcified.