Turismo regenerativo: fundamentos e reflexões

Humanity is at a critical moment in its history, a process that world leaders and international organizations have called the global polycrisis. Tourism, as a complex and systemic phenomenon, is not immune to such impacts. Amid the challenges posed by these disruptive and increasingly frequent global events, an integrated and forward-looking approach called regenerative tourism has emerged as an alternative to traditional models of tourism exploitation. But what, after all, is (and is not) regenerative tourism? What principles guide this epistemological approach? What are the implications of the notion of regenerative tourism for the understanding of contemporary tourism? Based on these reflective questions, this article aims to discuss the notion of regenerative tourism, presenting the principles and conceptual basis of this epistemological approach in the light of contemporary tourism. As a theoretical-conceptual essay, reflective, interpretative and critical in nature, the study offers introductory analyses and reflections on the notion of regenerative tourism. It is a conceptual, qualitative and descriptive article, based fundamentally on bibliographic research aimed at mapping the central theme of the investigation. The core theoretical framework draws on Bellato and Pollock (2025) and Corral-Gonzalez et al. (2023), who examined the theoretical and conceptual details of regenerative tourism through a state-of-the-art review and a bibliometric analysis, respectively. The results point to an emerging perspective, in which the concept and principles of regenerative tourism remain undefined and without consensus; they highlight gaps in the literature and critically reflect on the use of regenerative tourism as a new travel paradigm, proposing instead to understand it as an epistemological approach that expands and challenges the sustainability paradigm.