Lessons from the East: Rethinking Urban Mass Ecotourism from a Contemporary Sustainability Perspective

Recent events, principally the pandemic, have prompted reflection on the future of sustainability in tourism. It necessitated ‘proximity tourism’ – effectively, staying closer to home and discovering the proximate environment, the only tourism allowed for the mass of people. A form of proximate tourism, mass urban ecotourism, can sound like contradiction in terms twice over - neither ‘mass’ nor ‘urban’ are associated with ‘eco’ in the western imagination and literature shaped by that outlook. This in part resides on a Western view of ecotourism (and human / nature relationships), shaped by a tradition of romanticism that seeks respite from modernity in solitude or in remote settings. Conversely, his paper argues that mass urban ecotourism deserves far higher attention in the West. The pandemic might have necessitated urban mass ecotourism, but in the aftermath, it can be viewed as an inclusive and democratic form of leisure for the masses that also renders therapeutic benefits. Drawing from Asian philosophical and practical traditions, this paper constructs a principally logical rather than empirical case for the development of a mass, urban ecotourism that addresses both sustainability and the leisure needs of the masses. In doing so it makes the case for western tourism planners and academics to take on board important perspectives derived from eastern traditions.