COVID-19 pandemic and tourism. (Not) Getting back to normal in tourism-dependent Pacific island economies.

The COVID-19 pandemic has severely affected the tourism industry on a global scale. While the reduction of flights and cruise ships during lockdown has positively affected global carbon emissions (Gössling et al., 2021), locally the decrease of leisure mobilities due to border closures has had a severe impact especially on tourism-dependent island economies, already suffering from climate change impacts and facing several economic and socio-ecological challenges. Indeed, if the virus has not reached the majority of Pacific Island states and territories due to their preventive efforts to stop international arrivals to preserve health systems - contextually causing delays in the repatriation of citizens stranded abroad (McClure, 2021) - the lack of tourism and related mobilities from march 2020 caused one of the biggest economic contractions in their history, with remittances and private investments that suddenly plummeted. Nonetheless, is it worth noting that, even if confronted with severe losses of income and in the absence of effective political measures, many Pacific Islanders have been able to cope by relying on customary knowledge, systems, and practices (Scheyvens & Movono, 2020) while many businesses have been able to rapidly adapt to the new tourism market (procedures of health control, digitalization, promotion of nomadic work). In this context, the post-pandemic recovery is being represented as a unique opportunity to reset entrenched systems (Foley et al., 2022; Gössling et al., 2021; Lamers & Student, 2021) and enhance policies that can favor a just green recovery in different sectors, tourism included. In this respect, it has been suggested that substituting the globalized international flows with more sustainable local/regional ones might contribute to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals (Seyfi et al., 2022). Moreover, the post-pandemic recovery might be a stimulus to move toward more ethical forms of tourism (Sheller, 2021a), thus paying attention to its environmental impacts as well as to how tourist practices both affect the governance of movement and are impacted by kinopolitics. Through an in-depth literature review, ranging from tourism studies, to development and mobilities studies perspectives, the aim of this chapter is to elaborate preliminary considerations on the necessity to resist and restructure unsustainable tourism models in Pacific small island states after the pandemic. Specifically, the present chapter attempts to give answers to the following questions: have tourism practices changed in tourism-dependent Pacific Island economies after the pandemic disruptions? Is COVID-19 an opportunity to rethink the entire model of tourism in the Pacific region and make it more sustainable, thus providing economic benefits without sacrificing socio-environmental concerns? Or is the crave for a fast economic recovery and the uneven pressure on tourism-dependent economies, such as small island states, leading to “getting back to normal, even if normal was the problem”?