Mega events are powerful drivers for tourism development, providing a platform to bring disparate stakeholders in and beyond the host city together to articulate new possibilities and act as a catalyst to expedite tourism policies and practices that may otherwise take years – if not decades – to come to fruition. Yet the tourism field has been slow to cultivate this area of research as many other disciplines and subjects have focused on the hosting and impacts of events, therefore the tourism effects and consequences have been less obvious and developed within the tourism academy. This special issue seeks to redress this imbalance in attention given that tourism development has become a central focus for all 21st century mega events, partly down to a shift away from functional innovation (e.g. large scale infrastructural projects) to representational innovation (e.g. tourism development), as event owners like the International Olympic Committee and Federation of International Football Association demand that net operating costs must be reduced to prevent excessive public spending and cost overruns.

Approaches to mega events and tourism development significantly change in scope, scale, and character depending on the host’s social, cultural, economic, political and tourism setting, and because mega events such as the Olympic Games frequently move between wildly contrasting contexts – across a mixture of new, emerging, and mature tourism destination destinations. This means scholars have a smörgåsbord of tourism policies, practices, opportunities and challenges to feast on to contribute to broader discussions on tourism development. This Special Issue is the journal’s attempt to profile this body of work and bring together the scholarly community to contribute and advance these debates. We seek to encourage innovative topics and perspectives that challenge traditional paradigms and push the boundary of tourism management, and that contribute to theoretical and/or methodological advancement through an interdisciplinary and international approach, in addition to having specific implications for tourism management/policy.

Each paper submitted will be handled as a normal Tourism Management paper and refereed under standard journal protocols. All accepted papers will be published in the next available issue of the journal and then a digital special issue akin to a virtual repository will be created to showcase the collection that will grow as more papers are accepted. The Special Issue will have a short preface written by the guest editors and a review article to set the scene and provide a review of the mega events and tourism field to connect the collection together.

Examples of topics we welcome, although this is not an exclusive list, include:

• Planning and policy

• Destination development, (re)imaging, branding

• Consumer behaviour and marketing

• Cultural development

• (Re)configuring space

• Urban tourism and mega events

• Tourist flows and circulations

• Community engagement and development

• Social, environmental and economic sustainability

• Legacies and field configuring events perspectives

• Inclusivity, rights and responsibilities

• Accessibility and universal design

• The political economy of mega events and tourism development

• Tourism, displacement and hosting mega events

• …and any other topic at the intersection of mega events and tourism development.

The process starts by our call for an extended abstract of up to 500 words setting out the arguments, contribution to knowledge, data that will be used as well as methodology and analysis to be used and the likely implications for tourism management and policy/practice. The journal will not be considering any papers that are conceptual pieces or commentary or shorter Research Notes. We are seeking full-length research articles as original contributions that have not been published previously.

• Call for extended abstracts (500 words) by 30 September, 2023.

• Review of extended abstracts and decision to invite or decline submissions by 31 October, 2023.

• Full papers to be submitted to the journal on a rolling basis no later than 30 March, 2024 but earlier papers will be handled as soon as they are received.

• Papers to be published on a rolling basis during 2024 to 2025 as determined by the peer review process.

In the first instance extended abstracts should be sent to Mike Duignan at michael.duignan@ucf.edu.

In the first instance extended abstracts should be sent to Mike Duignan at michael.duignan@ucf.edu.

Papers invited for full submission should be submitted through the Journal Submission System; submission guidelines can be found in the journal’s Guide for Authors. Please select the appropriate “special issue” category while submitting the full paper.