The Papacy and tourism: insights for overtourism from servant leadership

Many tourism destinations are grappling with the negative effects of overtourism. Fractured stakeholder discourse is often the pretext for such challenges, with different stakeholder groups often struggling to buy-in to a collective responsibility to safe-guard the natural and social world. In this context, the present paper will consider the role of servant leadership in promoting more empathy and awareness in the wider tourism stakeholder mix. This is achieved through a focus on the servant leadership of the Papacy in areas such as Vatican City and Rome. Servant leadership refers to a leadership philosophy centred not on the leader themselves, but on the servant leader’s capacity to empower others and ensure society’s collective well-being. This paper introduces Coetzer’s notion of a Servant Leadership Wheel into the overtourism discussion, exploring the way in which it can provide a conceptual tool for situating leadership issues and wider papal and religious teaching into the management of contentious tourism destinations.