(2020). Proposing “healing tourism” as a post-COVID-19 tourism product. Anatolia. Ahead of Print.

This exploratory ethnographic study aims to understand the visitation experience and to identify health hazards at pilgrimage sites in India. Specifically, this research aims to assess the tourism potential of holy Hindu temple sites located along well-known pilgrimage routes. During our fieldwork, we visited several of the most significant Hindu temples in India. Framed by a critical ethnography lens, our study used unstructured interviews with local stakeholders, as well as observations and reflexive notes. The findings revealed that most of the temples have serious safety, hygiene, accessibility, and environmental issues. A lack of action could lead to serious consequences for locals and tourists. For example, important for tourism, warnings of pandemics have been sounded over the years, and disease pandemics originating in India may only be a matter of time. We propose some immediate solutions and areas for future research.

Tourism scholars have called for critical engagement with transformational co-creative methodologies. Within this call, there is a need for researchers to be positioned as facilitators and co-creators; rather than lone experts. We provide a critical review of the Ketso method. Ketso is a facilitated ‘workshop in a bag’; a toolkit that enables people to think and work together. Ketso can be used for data collection and as a supplementary analysis tool. Critical reflections on Ketso are provided to illustrate how it co-creates knowledge and collaborative solutions for transformational tourism. As a data collection tool, Ketso provides an innovative and authentic approach to stakeholder collaboration and decision making. As a supplementary data analysis tool, it provides an opportunity to address some of the limitations of thematic analysis such as simplicity and lack of coherence. In providing critical reflections on Ketso, we contribute to future thinking for the adoption of this co-creative method for tourism research.

In recent decade tourism researches turned their attention to creative qualitative methodologies to gain the deeper understandings of tourism phenomena. Despite the considerable body of research focusing on creative methodologies there is a need to challenge and creatively disrupt conventional methodological approaches as they are criticised for their inability to be participant driven, capture the co-construction of research context or to address the impact of wider social dynamics to knowledge creation in tourism studies. Based on our research focused on host–guests experiences participating in the World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms (WWOOF) programme in New Zealand we provide a critical consideration of LEGO^® SERIOUS PLAY^® for tourism studies. LEGO^® SERIOUS PLAY^® is a communication tool aimed at developing creative thinking through building metaphors around identities and experiences using LEGO^® bricks. To demonstrate how the method can be used in tourism studies, we draw on examples from three LEGO^® SERIOUS PLAY^® workshops to illustrate the benefits and challenges of this methodological approach. LEGO^® SERIOUS PLAY^® offered a metaphorical way for participants to construct creative artefacts and explain their ideal WWOOFing experience, representing sometimes complex, entrenched and emotional issues, and relationships that may have been difficult to express via traditional methods. The method enables participant driven, co-production of knowledge in a playful, free-flowing way to foster creative thinking, meanings and possible solutions. The method helps participants creatively communicate complex and sensitive issues, especially around their relationships – to objects, landscapes, people and identities – aspects that may otherwise be silenced by traditional research methods. As a novel method LEGO^® SERIOUS PLAY^® provides opportunities for researchers who want to gain a deeper understanding of the social dimensions of tourism, to co-create spaces for knowledge exchange and develop an in-depth understanding of socially constructed relationships and realities.