Maartje Roelofsen, 20 September

Keynote presentation

Title: Situating the Digital Turn in Tourism

The digitalization of tourism has been commonly celebrated, encouraged, and generally associated with notions of progress, efficiency, competitiveness and even ‘smartness’. In this keynote address, Maartje will pay heed to the materiality and situatedness of data and data infrastructures that underpin the digital turn in tourism. What, precisely, is the digital made of and where is it sourced? Who exactly profits from infinite data and how is its value reflected and circulated in tourism economies? What do we make of unfettered data growth in times of energy crises and climate catastrophe?

In attending to these questions, this keynote proposes imperatives for the politics and transformations that are needed to pursue more sustainable and equitable digital tourism futures.

About Maartje Roelofsen

Maartje Roelofsen is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Cultural Geography Group at Wageningen University and Research in the Netherlands. She holds a PhD in Sustainable Urban and Regional Development from the University of Graz in Austria. Maartje’s research has examined digital transformations within the realm of tourism, urban space, and geography education.

Since 2014, she has engaged in a long-term ethnographic project on Airbnb and its transformation of the home, everyday life and the gendered, racialized and classed divisions of household labour. More recently, Maartje has made contributions to debates in geography education on the use of digital technologies in learning and teaching.

Maartje is an Associate Editor of the journal Tourism Geographies and has recently published a monograph on Hospitality, Home and Life in the Platform Economies of Tourism with Palgrave Macmillan.