Identity-Continuous Reconfiguration: Rethinking Dynamic Change in Tourism Destinations
Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: Tourism destinations rarely remain unchanged. Markets shift, technologies alter patterns of demand and coordination, infrastructure is renewed, new actors enter, established businesses disappear, and crises can accelerate changes that might otherwise have taken years. Tourism research has developed several concepts for understanding such change, including resilience, adaptation, agility, transformation, and dynamic capabilities. Yet an important question remains less clearly addressed: what happens when a destination changes substantially without ceasing to be recognisably the same destination? This paper develops the concept of identity-continuous reconfiguration to examine this problem. The concept refers to a pattern of destination change in which substantial changes occur in the arrangement, relationships, and functions of tourism resources and actors while sufficient continuity is maintained in the meanings, narratives, and distinctive characteristics through which the destination remains recognisably itself. Drawing on work on resilience, complex adaptive systems, dynamic capabilities, destination transitions, and tourism identity, the paper distinguishes two dimensions that are often considered separately: the extent of structural reconfiguration and the continuity of destination identity. Three propositions are developed concerning functional diversity, the plurality of compatible identity narratives, and the role of collective sense-making and destination-level coordination. The paper concludes by proposing an empirical research agenda.
Author: Savaedi, Sadegh
Language: English
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7220953530