Into the future: are individualisation risk and reflexivity influencing tourism policy directions?

This paper adopts a meta-theoretical approach to promote better understandings about Australian governments’ shifting approach to tourism policy. This shift is driven by perceptions of tourism risks and governments’ approaches to identifying, framing and responding to those risks. The particular meta-theoretical lens that this paper draws upon is reflexive modernisation and its key elements: individualisation, risk and reflexivity. Drawing from five recent reports and inquiries, the paper illustrates that a paradigm shift is underway in the way that governments conceptualise tourism. We argue that tourism futures research, if it is to be useful in informing this paradigm shift, requires deeper engagement with the nature and directions of social and political change and tourism public policy.