Hotel Anthropocene

• Hotel Anthropocene is a new hotel advertised as a luxury all-inclusive resort. It was until recently operated under the name of ´Hotel Holocene´, but due to the widespread attention the Anthropocene has received the new owners decided to change its name. The day at the Hotel Anthropocene, written in the form of fiction, renders different ways of knowing, feeling, sensing, conceptualizing, and practising real time ecological mutation. The guests are increasingly dissatisfied and they gradually realise that something is terribly wrong with the hotel. The dialogues and heated discussions take place in the hotel lobby, corridors, rooms, the pool-bar, the restaurant, the common room, and they disclose cognitive and emotional dissonances in relation to the future.The chapter invites the reader to critically reflect upon tourism futures in relation to contemporary climate change and planetary ethics. It disrupts the idea of touristic bubbles without entanglements and responsibility with the ongoing crisis. The chapter also draws attention to a fundamental paradox of tourism, where search for wellbeing and hedonistic joy simultaneously contribute to accelerating climate change. The story at the hotel problematizes the conceptualization and practices of a ‘common future’, especially the future as a utopian time that lies ahead. Consequently, towards the end, the guests begin to realise that there is, unfortunately, no check-out from this hotel.The story of Hotel Anthropocene also raises questions about our responsibilities as researchers and teachers when using fiction as method for producing and sharing knowledge of our current and future planetary situation in the Anthropocene. How do different kinds of stories tune us in, or out? What kinds of storytelling and story listening should we engage in if we wish to contribute to a more caring, sustainable, hospitable and peaceful co-existence in our one and only common “hotel” when cast in dire predictions of its planetary future?

Subject headings

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Annan samhällsvetenskap -- Övrig annan samhällsvetenskap (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Other Social Sciences -- Other Social Sciences not elsewhere specified (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Turismvetenskap

Tourism

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

kap (subject category)