Tourism, as a “displacement phenomenon”, fully participates in the global circulation of people, concepts, objects, imaginaries, experiences, norms and models. "Indeed, far from being a secondary socio-economic sector, tourism is a major vector of globalization" (Chapuis & Boukhris, 2016), mobility and traffic. "In 2013, the World Tourism Organization announced for the first time that it had exceeded the symbolic threshold of one billion international tourist arrivals. Tourism is, therefore, an object of (global) circulation particularly capable of making us reflect both on the formation of territorialities and subjectivities. We apprehend it as a total social fact and not as a space-time disconnected from the everyday life of individuals " (Chapuis & Boukhris, 2016). It is part of socio-economic processes and brings into play relations that need to be analysed and understood, at all different scales – from the individual to the local to the global. Studying tourism through the “circulation” lenses in particular means taking into account the diversity of contemporary mobilities that include temporary and long-term migrants, involve many diverse (and often new) tourism intermediaries, and are highly affected by the development of digital technologies. 

The 5th edition of the International Meeting of Young Researchers in Tourism Chair UNESCO “Culture, Tourism, Development” aims to put into perspective the notion of “tourism circulations” and to explore its multi-faceted and multi-level implications. It thus welcomes research papers that can shed light on the development of new imaginaries of people, places and destinations, increasingly produced and consumed by diverse populations around the globe (Axis 1: Tourism and Circulation of Images and Imaginary), to the (re-)invention of tourist objects (Axis 2: Circulation of Tourist Objects: Between Tradition and Invention) as well as to the “diffusion” of urban models, increasingly replicated across different tourist destinations (Axis 3 Circulation of Urban Models: Some Examples of Development of Tourist Sites). Another important axis is related to the development of new digital media has definitely expanded the modalities and scope of tourism circulations: it is thus crucial to understand if and how researchers are addressing the challenges and opportunities offered by our ‘digital traces’ both to reshape and better track and appreciate tourism practices (Axis 4: Tourism, Traffic and ‘Digital Traces’: The Potential and Challenges of Digital Media to Re-Shape and Study Tourism Experiences). Last but not least, tourism internationalisation also implies the global circulation of laws and standards and this is why we also call for research papers that examine the (increasingly) international dimension of heritage laws as well as of the corollary notions of intellectual property rights (Axis 5: Tourism and Circulation of standards: what impact on UNESCO World Heritage Sites and Axis 6: Tourism circulations vis-à-vis Intellectual Property rights and culture-related revenues Issues).