Large-scale tourism transformations through regeneration: A living systems perspective on tourism developments in Ukraine during the war

This article investigates the complex changes in Ukraine's tourism system in the first year after Russia's full-scale military invasion from a living systems perspective. To capture the dynamic and multi-level changes that constitute a large-scale transformation, an interdisciplinary regeneration framework was used as a theoretical lens in a critical realist thematic analysis of Ukrainian online news media. The findings show how the Ukrainian tourism system transformed itself, in order to survive, changing both its structure and functions. The new functions extended beyond recreation to include humanitarian efforts, rehabilitation, community and nation building, which helped to establish tourism's essential and distinctive contribution to the country's larger social-ecological system. The empirical application of regeneration theory contributes to the knowledge of large-scale tourism transformations with patterns, such as scaling down for regrouping, strengthening of relationships with other systems, and the decentralised cumulative actions of small tourism actors. • Regeneration and living systems thinking is applied to tourism transformation. • Changes in Ukraine's tourism system during full-scale war are captured. • General patterns of transformation dynamics are identified and described. • Shrinking for regrouping is presented as a feature of large-scale transformations.