Whale-watching tourism: Future sustainability trends

Abstract

In whale-watching tourism, ensuring responsible human-cetacean interactions has raised critical academic debate over recent decades. This chapter reviews empirical evidence with the aim of progressing towards new trends that yield managerial responses for reconciling whale-watching tourism with sustainability principles. A co-word analysis of the last 30 years of scientific literature is conducted to explore the evolution of the leading topics, relate these to some industry milestones, and identify the research and managerial gaps. The evidence urges a new socio-ecological relationship approach in whale watching for sustainability, to be achieved by 2030 and beyond, by reorienting management practices to a more integrative approach based on scientific breakthroughs and collaborative stakeholder networks.