The missing link between overtourism and post-pandemic tourism. Framing Twitter debate on the Italian tourism crisis

Purpose This paper aims to exploit existing tourism knowledge to frame the unprecedented pandemic tourism crisis, its key aspects and impacts on the tourism industry. It builds a conceptual bridge and discusses the opportunity to capitalise on the missing link between the pre-COVID overtourism and the post-COVID “undertourism” debates. Design/methodology/approach A cross-fertilisation between the overtourism knowledge and the emerging COVID-19 literature stream is proposed and supported by an online media analysis focussing on the Italian tourism debate on Twitter. A text analysis of 2,500 posts helps discuss the conceptual framework. Findings The analysed Twitter debate prioritised socio-economic impacts, regulative actions and the recovery approach, representing government as the pivotal actor to overcome the pandemic crisis. An integrative interpretative framework results from this research, opening three areas of inquiry, such as the recovery–reform continuum, managerial approaches beyond regulative frames of action and a critical sizing of digital technologies deployment. Research limitations/implications Samples with different geographical and temporal coverage may provide further and multifaceted insights into the emerging tourism online media debate. Originality/value An original conceptualisation counter-intuitively frames post-pandemic tourism scenarios. Additional elements of originality are the online media analysis contributing to the emerging COVID-19 agenda and the use of Twitter social platform to investigate the tourism debate.