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 globally, particularly impacting tourism-dependent island economies already suffering from climate-related hazards and disasters. The lack of tourism and related mobilities from march 2020 caused one of the biggest economic contractions in history. Nonetheless, even if confronted with severe losses of income and in the absence of effective political responses, many Pacific Islanders and businesses have been able to cope with the tourist crisis, both relying on customary knowledge, systems, and practices and rapidly adapting the tourism market to the new reality. The post-pandemic recovery is being represented as a unique opportunity to reset entrenched systems and enhance policies that can favor a just green recovery in different sectors, tourism included. In this respect, it has been suggested to substitute the globalized international flows with more sustainable local/regional ones (Seyfi, Hall, Saarinen, 2022) and to consider the post-pandemic recovery as a stimulus to move toward more ethical forms of tourism, by paying attention to its environmental impacts and to its uneven kinopolitcs (Sheller, 2021a). Through an in-depth literature review, this chapter aims to elaborate preliminary considerations on the necessity to resist and restructure unsustainable tourism models in Pacific SIDS after the pandemic.