Tourism systems are increasingly operating amidst accelerated change, disruption and uncertainty. Climate pressures, economic instability, geopolitical tensions, technological disruption, shifting visitor behaviours, social transformation and intersecting crises are challenging destinations, institutions, organisations and communities to rethink how tourism systems evolve, adapt and transform.

This Special Interest Group positions Systems Thinking as a vital approach for understanding tourism as a dynamic, interconnected and evolving complex adaptive system. It adopts a socio-ecological systems (SES) approach, recognising tourism as embedded within wider relationships between people, places, institutions, economies, technologies and ecosystems. Rather than treating tourism as a set of isolated sectors, actors or components, systems thinking explores the relationships, feedback loops, dependencies, networks of interaction and interdependence, boundaries and power dynamics that shape system behaviour, memory, evolution and transformation over time.

The SIG focuses on tourism systems in transition: how they absorb shocks, reveal vulnerabilities, reorganise under pressure, manage crises and evolve towards more resilient, adaptive and sustainable futures. It does not assume pre-determined targets or fixed end states. Instead, it captures the processes, pathways and conditions through which tourism systems transition, evolve and transform amidst change and disruption.

The SIG places particular emphasis on governance, crisis management, and change processes as systemic concerns. It examines how diverse actors, institutions and communities negotiate priorities, coordinate responses, support informed early warning capacities and shape pathways of change, including how they resist, accept, adapt to or actively steer transformation. In this context, system transformation and regeneration are not approached as fixed ideals, but as evolutionary trajectories through which tourism systems may renew, reconfigure and move towards more resilient, adaptive and enriching futures.

The SIG is particularly concerned with the ways short-term decisions generate long-term consequences, and how change in one part of the tourism system can produce intended and unintended effects across destinations, communities, markets, institutions and ecosystems. It therefore foregrounds governance, policy and decision-making as key leverage points for steering tourism systems through uncertainty, transition and disruption, with attention to multi-level governance, stakeholder inclusion and anticipatory, adaptive action.

The SIG welcomes both qualitative and modelling approaches to Systems Thinking, including conceptual and theoretical work, participatory and interpretive methods, causal loop diagrams, systems mapping, stakeholder mapping, network analysis, scenario planning, simulation, system dynamics, complexity-informed modelling, socio-ecological systems analysis and mixed-method approaches.

By bringing together researchers, practitioners and policymakers, the SIG will provide a platform for critical dialogue, collaborative research, methodological innovation and future-oriented decision making. It seeks to advance systemic thinking in tourism research, policy and practice, supporting more adaptive, reflexive and resilient tourism governance and futures amidst change, disruption and uncertainty.