Tourism and COVID-19 intimacy transformed or intimacy interrupted?

Abstract

This article is a rumination on the ramifications of COVID-19 on practices of intimacy. In first exploring what intimacy is, the article notes that what it means and how it is practised varies depending on the socio-cultural context and the protagonists involved. Taking the tourist as a central figure in a search for intimacy, the article argues that this is pre-dominantly seen in relation to sexual encounters. These occur in both tourists’ encounters with otherness as well as in tourism settings where there is little interest in other cultures. Magaluf, Mallorca, is one such example. In the light of lockdown and social distancing due to the global pandemic, the article asks to what extent touristic practices of intimacy will be transformed.