From Privileged Gaze to Undesired Guest: Reimagining Worldmaking in Postpandemic Tourism

This conceptual article examines the transformation of tourist–host relationships in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic through the lens of Keith Hollinshead’s worldmaking theory. Drawing on the historical roots of tourism in colonial curiosity and travel writing, we explore how the pandemic has disrupted long-standing power dynamics in global mobility. The article argues that the tourist, once valorized as an ambassador of liberal democracy and economic progress, has been recast as an “undesired guest” in a world grappling with new anxieties about health, borders, and cultural exchange. By synthesizing Hollinshead’s worldmaking concept with contemporary scholarship on relational tourism and the “Virocene,” we offer a critical reinterpretation of how tourism shapes and is shaped by global crises. This analysis reveals the urgent need for a more ethically grounded, relationally aware approach to tourism that can navigate the complex intersections of mobility, hospitality, and cultural encounter in a postpandemic world. Our findings contribute to ongoing debates about the future of tourism and its role in fostering or hindering intercultural understanding in an era of heightened global tensions.