From Overtourism to Regeneration – a Co-Creative Approach to Rejuvenating Destinations

In recent years, the unsustainable growth of tourism and its impact on visitors, residents, and destinations have become increasingly pressing matters for management and communities in tourism hotspots. While some destinations struggle with overtourism and stagnation, others have rejuvenated themselves by strategically choosing a regenerative approach, emphasising the social and cultural values tourism can contribute to local communities. However, there remains a gap in understanding how destructive and collaborative processes influence a destination’s life cycle, particularly in the context of overtourism and rejuvenation. This chapter examines how destinations are shaped by co-creative and co-destructive processes, viewed in the stages of the Tourism Area Life Cycle. It further investigates how these processes come into play in hindering or promoting sustainable practices that could contribute to destination development past the point of stagnation, reaching toward rejuvenation. Using the cases of Geiranger, Norway, and Murupara in New Zealand, findings indicate that overtourism destinations can avoid stagnation by learning from regenerative destinations, making radical changes by leaving the traditional tourism model, and putting a more significant emphasis on sociocultural aspects of sustainability. Without such changes, entering the stage of decline becomes imminent.