Post-disaster tourism: Towards a tourism of transition

Introduction

In September 2010 and February 2011, Christchurch, New Zealand, experienced major earthquakes, each followed by several thousand aftershocks. The February 2011 quake, registering 6.34 on the Richter Scale, was centred close to the city centre and caused major damage including 185 fatalities. Within 24 hours of the February 2011 earthquake, a state of emergency was declared and a cordon was placed around the entire city centre producing what became known as the ‘Red Zone’, which was secured by New Zealand army personnel. Although the Red Zone was reduced in size over time, it remained in place for 2 years, as damaged buildings needed to be cordoned-off for safety reasons until they could be demolished. In addition, many architecturally and historically significant buildings had collapsed, and the iconic stone Anglican cathedral was one of these (Dennis, 2013; McLean et al., 2012). The internationally reported damage done to that single building made it metonymic for the city in general, creating a sense of contemporary dystopia, producing in real life, the kind of post-disaster urban existence presented in Stalker and Banksy’s (2015) Dismaland, an installation in Weston-Super-Mare, where one of the metonymic objects of dystopia was the blue flashing lights of emergency services’ vehicles.

Given this devastating course of events, it was surprising when less than 2 years later, the city was placed onto Lonely Planet’s 2013 list of the world’s top 10 cities to visit, despite the point that the ‘rebuild’ effort at that time had barely begun. This brings to mind a comment made by Miller (2008) in her discussion of New Orleans tourism in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina:

The changes brought by such disasters challenge existing notions of what is normal (i.e. hurricanes in paradise). These changes are almost too much to comprehend and offer tourists a unique glimpse of nature forces, destruction, and beauty in an urban setting. (p. 126)

Indeed, tourism responses in post-disaster zones are understood to be highly variable. As Nepal (2015) argues, ‘(e)ven after post-disaster reconstruction has been completed, tourists often perceive a destination to be a place to avoid’, while ‘(a)t the other end of the spectrum, disasters can actually trigger increases to or a changing composition in the local tourism market’. This ‘changing composition’ might be what is known as ‘disaster tourism’, which is often considered to be a subset of ‘dark tourism’ (Korstanje, 2014; Podoshen, 2013; Prayag, 2016; Stone, 2013; Wright and Sharpley, 2016). An example relevant to the Christchurch case is that of L’Aquila in Italy where, following a major earthquake in 2009, it was reported that ‘the city immediately became a disaster tourism destination’, with tourists ‘attracted to the horror of the destroyed city’ (Wright and Sharpley, 2016: 5). Indeed, disaster tourism is broadly acknowledged as an increasingly common phenomenon in disaster zones. Not only does this ability to respond by creating new ‘post-disaster dark tourism’ (Prayag, 2016) product point to the flexibility of tourism (Miller, 2008), but it also highlights the links between tourism and the issue of disaster recovery, whether it is recovery of the tourism industry per se or the social and economic recovery of the place more broadly (Hall et al., 2016).

As Biran et al. (2014) point out, ‘In terms of tourism recovery following a disaster, … it should be recognized that a disaster may change the destination’s attributes and appeal’ (p. 2). It is therefore pertinent to study the tourism narratives which are prominent following a disaster, to look at how the disaster is ‘storied’ in and for tourism, and how those narratives may change as recovery from the disaster gets underway. By analysing regional and national media and tourism promotion material related to Christchurch, this article explores the post-earthquake narratives as they have played out through tourism during the 5 years following the major earthquakes of 2010 and 2011. The contribution this work makes to the literature is its highlighting not only of the different tourism narratives which were dominant during the various ‘post-earthquake’ phases but also the tensions induced between different narratives at certain times. In doing so, the article is intended to add further nuance to our understanding of both the relationship between ‘post-disaster tourism’ and ‘recovery’, and also the relationship between ‘post-disaster tourism’ and ‘dark tourism’. Before moving on to our analysis of media reports relating to tourism in the city, we will first provide an overview of the relevant literature related to tourism in ‘disaster zones’, as well as introducing the narrative methodology of the study.

Tourism in post-disaster zones

Disaster: A serious disruption of the functioning of a community or a society involving widespread human, material, economic or environmental losses and impacts, which exceed the ability of the affected community or society to cope using its own resources. (United Nations, 2007)

The connection between disasters and tourism is a rapidly growing field of research (see Hall et al. (2016) for an extensive review of how research on the Christchurch earthquake sequence fits in this context). Following a disaster, significant attention tends to be paid, first, to re-establishing a destination’s image as safe, and then to ‘restoring the destinations’ traditional, “pre-disaster” tourism markets and products’ (Biran et al., 2014: 3; see also Rittichainuwat, 2008). A growing body of research, however, suggests that diversifying markets and products is necessary, and that this may include creating new attractions and new markets based on the disaster. Consequently, while one aspect of the tourism and disasters literature takes a management perspective, focusing on tourism industry ‘recovery’ (e.g. Faulkner, 2001; Huan et al., 2004; Huang and Min, 2002; Hystad and Keller, 2008; Mair et al., 2016; Orchiston and Higham, 2016; Ritchie, 2004) and marketing/rebranding (e.g. Amujo and Otubanjo, 2012; Morrish et al., 2016; Scott and Laws, 2008), another aspect takes a tourist behaviour perspective, looking at tourist motivation as well as tourist experiences when visiting ‘disaster zones’ (e.g. Biran et al., 2014; Prayag, 2016; Rittichainuwat, 2008; Yan et al., 2016).

Unlike the management literature, which has tended to focus on reviving the traditional or pre-disaster product of the region (Biran et al., 2014), the tourist behaviour literature frequently links ‘disaster tourism’ with the notion of ‘dark tourism’, in that it focuses on the creation of new ‘dark’ product, based on the disaster. This latter literature argues that ‘disaster tourism’, as a form of ‘dark tourism’, is on the rise, as ‘many disaster sites, such as New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and Ground Zero after 9/11, have become popular tourist attractions’ (Biran et al., 2014: 2). On this, Yan et al. (2016) argue that ‘in contemporary society, tourists are increasingly visiting sites that commemorate natural or man-made disasters, such as sites of human death due to earthquakes, tsunamis, war, political conflicts and other macabre events’ (p. 108). Prayag (2016) argues that the ‘dark’ in the experience in visiting post-disaster sites is not necessarily ‘related to contemplating death per se but rather to contemplating one’s life in relation to the disaster and one’s mortality’ (p. 160).

The positioning of tourism to post-disaster zones within ‘dark tourism’ leads the research in this area to focus predominantly on trying to understand ‘motivation’ and what it is that attracts people to visit places which are deemed ‘dark’ (e.g. Biran et al., 2014; Rittichainuwat, 2008; Yan et al., 2016). Inevitably, the ‘motivations’ are found to vary according to different places. For example, Rittichainuwat (2008) argues that underpinning post-tsunami tourism in Phuket, Thailand, was curiosity about the outcome of the disaster. In relation to the largely domestic tourists visiting the Beichuan earthquake relics in China, Yan et al. (2016) also discuss tourist motivation concerning curiosity about the effects of the natural disaster, but in addition, those authors also discuss the political aspects of the tourism there whereby visitation to the post-earthquake region is undertaken in order to partake in ‘the government’s message concerning the spirit of collectivism and patriotism’ (p. 112) which was engendered by the government in the aftermath of the earthquake.

While much of the research in this area appears uncritically to draw a link between ‘disaster tourism’ and ‘dark tourism’, some scholars have questioned the conflation of the two terms (Rojek, 1997; Wright and Sharpley, 2016). Indeed, assumptions that disaster tourism is necessarily ‘dark’, in a negative sense, has also been questioned. For example, Prayag (2016) points out that, while research on emotions related to visitation at ‘dark tourism’ sites is a recent and welcome addition to this field, it tends to be ‘morbidly focused on negative emotions such as anger and fear, almost ignoring that such sites can also elicit positive emotions’ (p. 155). Bowman and Pezzullo (2010) also have problematised the ‘dark’ in the labelling of so-called ‘dark tourism’ sites. Arguing against the usefulness of simply naming particular sites and practices as ‘dark tourism’, Bowman and Pezzullo (2010) point out that ‘what one might imagine as “dark” can also contain the seeds of hope and radical social and political change’ (p. 191). An example of this is where, in relation to post-disaster tourism in New Orleans, Miller (2008) points out that ‘although disaster tourism may be criticized as putting tragedy on display, it offers the tourists a chance to view the rebuilding of the physical and social landscapes that are so important to this ethnically rich and diverse city’ (p. 128). Miller adds,

Tour guides act as gatekeepers that reframe the views disaster tourists see. On the tours, the guides point out the progress being made by workers, homeowners, and volunteers as they reframe the disaster landscape into a landscape of hope, survival, and renewal from utter devastation. (p. 128)

Miller’s research thus shows that post-disaster tourism does not necessarily elicit negative emotions, but it can also, as Pezzullo (2010) too points out in relation to New Orleans, ‘offer compelling opportunities for rebuilding, remembering, and critique’ (p. 24).

Pezzullo’s (2010) critique is developed further in the point that, even where disaster tours do put ‘tragedy on display’, this can play a (positive) role in lessening ‘disaster fatigue’ in that the ‘tours help remind tourists that the rebuilding necessity will continue to require federal aid, volunteer labour, and tourist revenue’ (p. 99). Also related to this notion of ‘disaster fatigue’, and of direct relevance to this article, Coats and Ferguson (2013) found in their examination of residents’ views of ‘disaster tourism’ product 2 years after the major earthquakes in Christchurch that it was important for residents who had lived through the earthquakes that memory of the disaster should be ‘kept alive’: ‘Over time, as buildings are repaired and new infrastructure established, our informants feel that the dark nature of the event will be diminished or forgotten and somehow their suffering is also diminished by this process’ (p. 44). The residents felt that earthquake-themed tours for visitors, both national and international, aided this desired process of keeping the memory of the disaster alive. Similarly, Wright and Sharpley (2016) found that, while residents of L’Aquila in Italy initially felt anger towards the tourists who came to view the aftermath of the earthquake there, later on many residents felt that this tourism had the more positive effect of preventing the plight of L’Aquila from being forgotten. Hence, the ‘multiplicity of tourist performances at sites that induce acts of remembering death’ is argued by Bowman and Pezzullo (2010: 193) to be generative of multiple meanings, rather than exhaustive – and simply negative. Moreover, since tourist performances are performances of narrative, it is important to consider the multiple tourism narratives being performed in post-earthquake Christchurch.

A narrative approach to disaster tourism

The above outline of key literature suggests the potentially paradoxical relationship both between ‘disaster tourism’ and the concept of dark tourism, and also between ‘disaster tourism’ and the issue of disaster recovery. First, the positioning of disaster tourism as dark tourism is complicated by the point that it seems that post-disaster tourism product often seems to include rebuild/recovery/renewal processes, rather than simply viewing the disaster, and the destruction and loss it created, as an end point. This suggests that further understanding is needed in relation to how disasters are positioned within tourism narratives, that is, as end points, mid-points or even as the beginning points of the narrative. In this article, we use a narrative analysis methodology (Berger and Quinney, 2005; Clandinin, 2007; Gubrium and Holstein, 2009) in order to contribute to understanding in this area.

A further complicating factor is that while ‘disaster tourism’ is frequently linked in the literature to the concept of ‘disaster recovery’, it tends to be done so with the assumption that it is the ‘newly formed “dark” attributes that emerge from the disaster [which] may offer another means for the destination to recover’ (Prayag, 2016: 157). However, ‘post-disaster’ product inevitably has a limited life span (Rojek, 1997), in that once the ‘rubble’ is cleared away and rebuilding is complete, or at least well underway, the ‘disaster’-related product diminishes, except for memorials and museum exhibits, which may become the tourism attractions (Wright and Sharpley, 2016). This is perhaps why the ‘recovery-management-focused’ research, referred to above, tends to focus instead on the regeneration, where possible, of ‘traditional’ or pre-disaster product. Again, a narrative approach is useful in determining the mix of, and potential tensions between, post-disaster recovery of pre-disaster tourism product and that based on the development of new product and new markets.

Relevant to the present research is Hall et al.’s (2016) volume which presents a wide ranging evaluation of responses to the Christchurch earthquakes, including organisational and individual responses. While Mills (2016) is the only contributor in this volume to directly use the form of narrative, Hall’s (2016) chapter at the end of the volume is also highly relevant to a narrative approach to studying post-disaster tourism. Hall (2016) provides a useful critique of the way in which ecological metaphors, especially resilience, tend often to be used in the ‘post-disaster recovery’ context. Hall points out that in the post-disaster recovery literature’s frequent borrowing of the ecological principle of ‘resilience’, the process of ‘concept transfer’ from ecology includes also the notions of ‘disturbance’ and ‘succession’. An example would be where Miller (2008), whose work on New Orleans is referred to above, points to ‘the flexibility (resilience) of the tourism industry after a catastrophe (disturbance) and noting that tour guides frame the reconstruction process as “signs of hope” and “rebirth”’(succession) (parentheses ours) (p. 121).

Hall (2016) argues that while concept transfer may be useful in particular settings, unquestioned recruitment of such ecological notions is problematic. This is because ‘there is often a significant divergence between how the concept is used in an ecological sense and how it has been transferred into other knowledge domains’ (Hall, 2016: 284). For example, the way in which the disaster-related literature views ‘disturbance’ and ‘succession’ contains ‘the assumption of long-term stability in the (socio-economic) system prior to, (and after), disturbance’ (Hall, 2016: 271). This is despite the point that ‘In ecology the portrayal of ecosystems as inherently stable, in equilibrium and predictable has given way to a much more complex understanding of ecological system dynamics … and change over time’ (Hall, 2016: 280).

The concept transfer of ‘disturbance’ and ‘succession’ and related assumptions regarding, for example, long-term stability versus change over time, thus, links with questions of narrative. Hence, the narrative approach we take to studying Christchurch’s post-earthquake tourism is intended to further develop understanding of how disasters (disturbances), and also the periods before and after the disaster, become framed through tourism. Narrative is taken here to be

an analytical frame enabling small-scale stories to be located in relation to a wider (temporal, spatial) context of bigger stories, by perceiving connections, to one degree or another, between stories… The result is a meta-narrative, the interpretational overview produced by the researcher. (Stanley, 2008: 436)

We therefore ask, ‘What narratives, in relation to the earthquakes, are produced through tourism?’ ‘How do the post-disaster narratives change over time?’ ‘How do the post-disaster narratives relate to, or fit with, “dark tourism”?’ and ‘Are there competing narratives, which give rise to tension in post-disaster tourism?’

Typically, narrative involves four elements: ‘(i) situatedness, (ii) event sequencing, (iii) worldmaking/world disruption and (iv) what it’s like’ (Herman, 2009). These metaphorical narrative building-blocks were used here to produce a storytelling resource, which we then utilised to create a picture of the key narratives that arose in relation to tourism in Christchurch during the 5 years following the earthquakes. While the authors had periodically visited Christchurch during this 5-year period, thereby experiencing first-hand the Red Zone Tours, ‘Quake City’ and many of the transitional projects, the raw material for the study predominantly comprises secondary data culled from archival digital and print media: New Zealand newspapers and magazines; tourism industry reports and planning documents and archival New Zealand television news coverage. The Press is the major regional newspaper for the Christchurch and Canterbury region and provided the most extensive coverage. The New Zealand Herald is the leading national newspaper, and Stuff (stuff.co.nz) is a national web-based news repository. Various other newspapers ran earthquake stories, but these usually were syndicated and offered within Stuff. Where authors of media articles are named, the articles are referenced here under the author’s name. Where author’s names are not stated, the title of the publication or the publishing organisation is referenced.

The Stuff website was searched, initially using the term ‘Christchurch+earthquake’ and then following whatever leads that emerged, and particularly leads that linked with tourism. Also, a whole-of-Google search was conducted using many related terms, specifically seeking magazine articles and reports. Connections were then sought between stories in order to sort them into ‘bigger stories’, or narratives. A number of thematised narratives were thus derived from the material, and these thematised narratives were taken as being the prominent ‘frames’ for post-disaster tourism in Christchurch at different times following the major earthquakes. The sections below outline these prominent frames, thus showing how post-disaster tourism can transition, over time, from a narrative of loss to, not only one of positivity and hope but to a tourism based on transition itself.

From a loss of tourism to a tourism of loss

Inevitably, the Christchurch earthquakes caused an immediate and dramatic drop in the number of inbound tourists. Pre-quake Christchurch had functioned as a significant tourist gateway to New Zealand’s South Island, with the city itself contributing 16 percent of the total national tourism activity prior to the earthquakes (Orchiston and Higham, 2016). In the immediate aftermath of the February 2011 earthquake, however, while a state of emergency was in place, and for some time afterwards, tourists were told not to come. For some considerable time, Christchurch had a severe accommodation shortage, since over half of the city’s accommodation premises were either damaged or inside the Red Zone and so beyond reach. The remaining visitor accommodation that was useable was filled by first-response workers, and later by earthquake assessment engineers and other personnel from around the country who were called in by the government and insurance companies in order to get the recovery underway. The Christchurch and Canterbury Tourism (CCT) chief executive said, ‘I think we’ve got to accept that, for the next few weeks particularly, we want to discourage people from coming to Christchurch for leisure purposes because we need that hotel stock for more important tasks’ (Hembry, 2011). Hembry’s article in The New Zealand Herald, published 10 days after the earthquake, reported, ‘A Hotel Council spokeswoman said 23 hotels were within the cordoned area, which could be accessed only by authorised emergency personnel’. The article continued,

‘Christchurch hoteliers are waiting to assess the damage to tourist accommodation with the safety cordon around the city centre, covering about 3000 hotel rooms’… ‘Matt Taplin, the vice-president of operations at Millenium, Copthorne and Kingsgate Hotels said that the company had not had any access to its properties: “At this stage we’ve got no knowledge of how our three hotels have fared inside the cordon, so we’ll just have to sit and wait…. I think they’ve got far greater priorities in front of them at the moment”’. (Hembry, 2011)

Even at this early stage, it was pointed out that, apart from Christchurch, the rest of New Zealand’s South Island was ‘operating completely normally in a tourism sense’ (Hembry, 2011) and authorities were keen that tourists should not be discouraged from arriving through Christchurch Airport, the main air transport hub for the South Island, even if only in transit. Inevitably, though, significant cancellations did occur during those initial months, particularly among the ‘more risk sensitive’ Asia-Japan markets (Hembry, 2011). In addition to a general fear of ongoing aftershocks, the earthquakes had forced the indefinite closure of many of the city’s tourist attractions. The cancellation of a number of planned events, including the 2011 Rugby World Cup games which were scheduled to be played in Christchurch, also impacted on the city’s visitor numbers. Overall, it is estimated that Christchurch city experienced NZ$235 million of direct losses in visitor expenditure during the 18 months following the February 2011 earthquake (Orchiston and Higham, 2016).

It was not long, though, before a small amount of visitation began to trickle back. In May 2011, a Lonely Planet author wrote on the lonelyplanet.com site about what visitors to Christchurch at that time might expect:

In the city, hundreds of buildings now lie in ruin. Empty, already-cleared blocks sit next to buildings that are being held up by elaborate displays of steel reinforcement. Buildings that still feature in the ‘Welcome to Christchurch’ brochures at the airport are now awaiting reconstruction or demolition. A huge Arts Centre chimney sits on the ground beside the cracked and now closed building, rather than on top.

… Outside the city, many homes, some split in half, will never be lived in again. There are still ‘portaloos’ dotting nature strips on suburban streets and nearly all of the cars on the road are utility vans. There’s so much to fix. (D’Arcy, 2011)

Included in this sense of devastation and loss was the considerable damage caused by the earthquakes to many of the buildings in the city which were classed as ‘heritage’ buildings (Amore, 2016). An article in The Press titled ‘The moment that changed our nation forever’ reported,

It took 160 years to build the city of Christchurch. It took an earthquake 24 seconds to rip the heart out of it. Some buildings were reduced to piles of masonry and concrete and twisted metal almost instantaneously. Hundreds of others remained standing but damaged beyond the point of salvation. A century and a half of human endeavour was wasted in less than half a minute. (Stevens, 2012)

Hundreds of Christchurch’s damaged historic buildings faced demolition because of the high cost of rebuilding or restoration to a more stringent building code. This was considered a great loss for the region’s tourism (Wood, 2013). Arguably, the most prominent feature of the city’s ‘heritage attractions’ to be damaged in the earthquakes was Christchurch Cathedral in the centre of the city. Years of legal wrangling have ensued over whether the Cathedral will be demolished entirely and a new Cathedral built in its place or whether the Victorian Gothic ‘original’ should be repaired and restored. The Anglican Church remains in favour of demolishing the existing, partially collapsed, building, but other groups, and especially heritage preservation groups, have fought for it to be ‘saved’ (Anderton, 2014; TVOne News, 2014).

An article in The Press reported that the overall most common reasons for people wanting to restore the Cathedral were ‘the preservation of Christchurch heritage and the benefit of the building for tourism’ (Gates, 2012). The Restore Christchurch Cathedral campaign argued, also, that ‘The ambitious design by leading architects George Gilbert and Benjamin Mountforth took 40 years to complete and is the jewel in the crown of Christchurch’s renowned Victorian Gothic architecture’ (Restorechristchurchcathedral, 2014). These assertions are the performance of a reactionary voice, one which wishes to hold on to the past and one which underpins a ‘tourism of tradition’, or heritage tourism. Tucker and Shelton (2014) have argued that tourism of tradition is the predominant performance of apocalyptic thought in tourism, which promotes a fear of the ‘end of tradition’ (see also Alsayyad, 2004). This notion of ‘tradition’ is encapsulated within ‘heritage’ buildings, and ‘heritage tourism’ based on these heritage buildings promotes the need to safeguard and maintain them ‘as they were/are’. The tourism of tradition narrative disallows, or rejects, any notion of change or transition and so if change, particularly drastic change, does occur, it is regarded as loss.

Meanwhile, while the fate of many of the city’s heritage buildings, including the Cathedral, remained undecided, the earthquake damage itself started to become a tourist attraction in its own right, albeit at first for a niche market. D’Arcy, in her online Lonely Planet article written in May 2011, wrote, ‘people are wandering around, taking photos. It’s hard not to gawp in awe at the destruction; it’s incredible’. This sentiment was a foretaste of what might be termed the ‘tourism of loss’ that was to develop in Christchurch. By later in 2011, several tourism operators had begun to offer post-quake tours in the city. In an article in The New Zealand Herald titled ‘Christchurch operators tackle disaster tourism’, Cropp (2011) wrote,

Several Christchurch operators are running bus, walking and Segway tours around the perimeter of the cordoned off CBD while tours via helicopter and light aircraft provide an aerial view of the shattered central city and large rock falls and damaged homes in the seaside suburbs of Sumner and Redcliffs. (Cropp, 2011)

The company Christchurch Tours had begun to offer ‘quake tours’ a year earlier, following the initial earthquake in September 2010 (Mathews, 2014). A year later, claiming in their promotional material, ‘We have never stopped operating and have lived every single earthquake; You can’t get more experienced than this!’, they started Red Zone Tours, described as ‘two hours of the most amazing earthquake sights you will ever see’. Another tour operator, Hassle Free Tours, also developed ‘post-quake’ tours offering viewings of the earthquake damage from open-top double-decker buses. Late in 2011, transport company Red Bus won the tender process with the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority (CERA) to offer the first public tours actually within the cordoned city centre ‘red zone’, which was otherwise not accessible to the general public. For the first time since the February 2011 quake, residents and visitors to the city both were able to get a close-up view of the damaged Christchurch Cathedral and the extent of the damage in and around Cathedral Square, previously the heart of the central business district and the hub of tourism activity in the city.

All of these city centre tours were promoted as an opportunity to experience the post-earthquake devastation. Not unlike the tours offered through New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina (Miller, 2008; Pezzullo, 2009), referred to above, and similar post-disaster tour products, these post-quake tours of Christchurch city centre enacted, initially at least, a predominantly ‘dark’ post-disaster narrative of the city by emphasising the damage and loss that was on display. Heritage buildings such as the Cathedral became incorporated into this ‘tourism of loss’ narrative with, as The Press reported, ‘discovery Christchurch’ tours showing the ‘heritage’ buildings to tourists and ‘talking about the buildings that we have lost’ (Gates, 2012). Among residents, the tours were reportedly controversial (The New Zealand Herald, 2013), largely because of residents’ sensitivity regarding what they saw as tourists ‘rubber-necking’ – or ‘rubble-necking’, as Christchurch blog-writer, Margaret Agnew, described the activity: ‘I have coined the phrase “rubble-necking” for the tourists who like to drive through disaster zones gawping’ (Agnew, 2011). As well as being popular with international tourists, though, the tours were popular also with domestic visitors from other parts of the country, especially former Christchurch residents (Mathews, 2014; Prayag, 2016). Once the Red Bus Tours were granted access inside the cordoned ‘red zone’, many Christchurch residents themselves took the opportunity to view the loss and damage within that area. During the two-and-a-half-year life span of the Red Bus Tours taking people inside the cordoned area of the city, the tours took more than 37,000 passengers into the ‘red zone’ to view the earthquake damage (King, 2013).

A narrative of renewal

With the total cost of damage as a result of the earthquakes estimated to exceed NZ$30 billion (McLean et al., 2012), however, it was not long after the earthquakes that the city council, together with the CERA, began planning a blueprint for regeneration. Only rarely in peacetime does a city find itself in the situation of being required to, or, more positively, given the opportunity to, plan a large part of the city centre and central business district from scratch (Amore and Hall, 2016). The aim was to make visible progress as soon as possible; primarily through restoration of the retail sector. This imperative led to the creation of the Re:START mall, among the first of many ‘pop-up’ structures, the opening of which in October 2011 was a significant turning point for the city in general and also for tourism. A The New Zealand Herald (2011) article titled ‘Part of the Christchurch CBD to reopen’ reported that ‘The reopening is being timed to cater for Canterbury’s Cup and Show Week in November. Mayor Bob Parker said the project was the first “really bright ray of sunshine” for the central city’. Positioned in a previously cordoned section of the ‘red zone’, the Re:START retail mall was built out of shipping containers which were painted in bright colours. Initially operating with 27 retail stores and food outlets, the mall formed a new post-quake hub in the central city which, regularly attracting arts and crafts stalls, street performers and buskers, became popular not only with local residents but acted also as a tourist ‘hub’ as tourism in the city began to pick up again during the summer of 2011–2012. By 2014, and having grown from 27 businesses in the mall to well over 50, the Re:START website stated, ‘Since opening, Re:START has been the cornerstone for the tourist industry in Christchurch and helped rocket Christchurch to number six in the Lonely Planet guide to the “must visit” places in the world’ (Re:START Mall, 2014). This ‘breathing of new life’ (Re:START Mall, 2014) into Christchurch’s otherwise closed-off city centre 6 months after the February 2011 earthquake was crucial to ensure the city centre did not remain a ‘no-go’ zone both for residents and visitors alike (Finsterwalder and Hall, 2016).

While tension would inevitably exist between the two narratives, one of loss and another of renewal, the development of a narrative of renewal and hope occurred gradually and alongside the narrative of loss rather than replacing it outright. This was evident in The Press’ announcement of the memorial events to take place 1-year-on in February 2012. The notice began by saying, ‘A year on from the February 22 earthquake is a time for Christchurch to remember those lost and to look forward to the future with hope’ (The Press, 2012). Memorial events included a ‘river of flowers’ at various sites along the Avon River: ‘The sites will each have a bucket of rose petals and a Tree of Hope to which messages can be pinned throughout the day’ (The Press, 2012). The Press’ notice announced also the opening that day of a new Canterbury Quakes Exhibition at the Canterbury Museum, which would ‘explore the science behind the quakes, celebrate aspects of the human spirit in the face of disaster, and give a glimpse at some of the future plans for the recovery of the district’ (The Press, 2012). This exhibition went on to become so popular with visitors to Christchurch, both international and those from other parts of New Zealand, it was later moved from the Canterbury Museum and relocated at the RE:START Mall. In its new location, the exhibition was renamed Quake City where, by remaining popular as an attraction for overseas and domestic visitors (personal communication with Quake City staff), it further embeds the RE:START Mall’s position as a new tourist hub in the city. As visitors to Quake City move around the attraction, they are initially invited to engage with a narrative of loss, and then the second half of the exhibition elicits a more hopeful response as it develops a narrative of resilience and renewal.

Later in 2012, the narrative of renewal was further embedded when a new festival event called Luxcity took place in the inner-city area. Also known as the Festival of Transitional Architecture (FESTA), and developed by architecture students from around the country, the objective of the event was to create leverage for the renewal of the city and its (transitional architecture) image; to fill it with a sense of novelty rather than fear and to develop a culture of regeneration and rediscovery (The Press, 2013). The day after the event, TVNZ (2012) reported that

Spirits were high in the shattered heart of Christchurch last night. People came in their droves to see the dark, empty streets filled with light in a special architectural display … In the yawning spaces where buildings once stood; a blaze of light. Sculptures glowing against cracked walls. Some held high by the same cranes used to demolish hundreds of buildings in the Christchurch CBD. People filled the abandoned city blocks …

The inventiveness and creativity demonstrated in the installations created a positive sense of vibrancy and renewal in the inner city. The Press reported, ‘Who saw this one coming? Damn if a bunch of architecture students didn’t make a disaster zone look mighty pretty for a night, using lights to imagine a rebuilt urban city centre in the red zone’ (The Press, 2013).

This narrative of renewal and hope had gained in momentum and sophistication throughout 2012, with the blueprint for the regeneration of the city being released in July of that year (Cairns, 2012). Also, in the latter part of 2012, 18 months after the February 2011 earthquake, CCT launched the ‘Christchurch Reimagined’ marketing campaign, which focused on the renewal and revitalisation of the city, utilising social media and the Internet with Twitter and Facebook links (Orchiston and Higham, 2016). Towards the end of 2012, the Lonely Planet online travel guide announced ‘New Zealand’s comeback city is a must-see for 2013’ (Atkinson, 2012a). It was at that time, also, that as mentioned above, Christchurch was named by Lonely Planet as one of the top 10 cities in the world to travel to in 2013. The reason given for Christchurch’s new ‘must-see’ status was ‘how fascinating it all is’ (Atkinson, 2012a): ‘Healthy doses of Kiwi inventiveness, creativity and resilience have created positive and innovative urban solutions’ (Atkinson, 2012a).

In this way, the narrative of renewal emphasised the innovative and creative nature of new developments occurring around Christchurch, many of which were ‘pop-up’, temporary projects such as Gap Filler, Greening the Rubble, Street Art and the Pallet Pavilion, which filled many of the empty spaces left after large inner-city buildings had been demolished. These projects provided activities and points of interest, such as giant board games, a live music venue with a stage built entirely out of wooden pallets, a ‘sound-garden’ made from demolition debris and an outdoor library with books stored in an old fridge, and sofas to sit on and read. ‘Popping-up’ around the city centre, the projects soon became stops on guided tours. While only some of the Gap Filler sites were accessible for coach tours, new Segway tours were created which enabled tourists to be guided around to view not only the damage caused by the earthquakes but also the creativity and innovation emerging in the city.

These less formal innovations, together with the more formal renewal projects such as the Re:START Mall, created attractions for tourists which reduced the strength of the narrative of damage and loss and instead placed emphasis on the rebuild and the renewal of the city. In an article titled ‘Christchurch uses rebuild to get money from cruise liners’, TV3 News (2012) reported that Canterbury tourism operators were now ‘turning to the rebuild for inspiration’. The report quoted Tim Hunter, the Canterbury Tourism chief executive, as saying, ‘It’s about hearing the local story about how they are putting their lives back together after the quake’. A local punting boat operator also was quoted, saying, ‘This (punting on the Avon river) is a very unique way of being able to view one of the largest construction sites in the southern Hemisphere’. Further to this, from mid-2013 onwards, what previously was named the Red Bus ‘Red-Zone Tour’, discussed above, was renamed the Rebuild Tour. Upon the launch of the new rebuild tour, The Press reported Red Bus chief executive Paul McNoe as pointing out that the tour was intended mainly ‘for tourists, although residents should like it as well’ (Turner, 2013). Turner, The Press’ reporter writing the story on the new tour, decided to take the tour herself in order to see what tourists were experiencing through such products. She described the tour guide as being very informative and chatty and quoted her as pointing out that the tour’s emphasis was on ‘looking to the future rather than the past’ (Turner, 2013). Canterbury Museum director Anthony Wright was quoted in the article also as saying that the tours were designed to ‘help visitors learn about where we’ve come from and give them an insight into what lies ahead’ (Turner, 2013).

A tourism of transition

This idea of showing visitors ‘where we’ve come from and what lies ahead’ is indicative of the strong sense of Christchurch being very much a city in transition, which has begun to be presented through tourism. Indeed, interest in the development of ‘transitional servicescapes’ (Finsterwalder and Hall, 2016), or ‘temporary urbanism’ (Wesener, 2015), in Christchurch following the major earthquakes has already been shown both in the fields of urban studies (e.g. Brand and Nicholson, 2016; Wesener, 2015) and disaster recovery management (Finsterwalder and Hall, 2016). Referring to the many ‘transitional projects’ in Christchurch, Brand and Nicholson (2016) point out that while ‘theorists have focused on the role of the “creative classes” in urban regeneration, Christchurch has provided a literal hotbed of creative activity catalysed by natural disaster’ (p. 173). Similarly, Finsterwalder and Hall (2016) discuss how ‘the transitional servicescape in the Christchurch CBD allowed a reengagement of people with the (lost) spaces of the city as well as providing for continued consumption in what was the retail, nightlife and business heart of the city’ (p. 243). The Christchurch central business district (CBD) was, and is still, also the tourism heart of the city, and so it is important to consider how the ‘transitional servicescapes’ and other transitional projects have become framed within tourism narratives.

The Re:START Mall, described above, was one of the many examples of transitional projects developed in the city following the 2011 earthquake. So too were the Geo Dome – a large tent structure built in North Hagley Park as a post-quake ‘gig venue’, the Pallet Pavilion and other ‘pop-up’ projects such as Gap Filler, Greening the Rubble and Life in Vacant Spaces. Perhaps the most iconic of the temporary ‘replacement’ buildings has been the ‘cardboard cathedral’. In September 2013, a tourism-related blog offered, ‘“Christchurch Cardboard Wonder”: Traditional or cardboard Anglican Cathedral? Take your pick’ (Welcomeaboard, 2013). The intention to build a temporary cardboard replacement cathedral was initially met with scepticism. Examples of this include articles entitled: ‘Rain leaves cathedral tubes soggy’ (Gates, 2013); ‘New Zealand Cathedral to be built with cardboard – Seriously’ (Newcomb, 2011). However, as well as being a functioning church and performance venue, since its opening in 2013 the temporary cathedral, comprising 98 cardboard tubes some 20 m long, has steadily become one of the city’s top post-quake tourism attractions.

Indeed, over time the ‘cardboard cathedral’ has contributed to a growing interest, a celebration even, of temporary or transitional, buildings and other projects (Getz, 2012). A particular highlight of this celebration of the transitional and the creative energy around it has been the new FESTA mentioned above. The FESTA programme of the 2013 event stated,

The first and only festival of its kind in the world, the annual Festival of Transitional Architecture is a free, public event that engages with the city of Christchurch by exploring urban regeneration through large-scale collaborative projects and interventions … FESTA responds to the conditions and possibilities of the extraordinary situation that has arisen post-quake. A new culture dedicated to grassroots urban recovery has emerged – this movement has adopted the label ‘transitional’ to reflect the intention that these projects would not only offer immediate renewal but also inform and influence the long-term ‘permanent’ recovery of the city … We invite all the people of Christchurch and visitors to the city to fill the streets and the city’s new spaces … and become part of the making of this place. (FESTA, 2013)

The ‘pop-up’ happenings, during the FESTA and at other times, are examples of ‘transition attractions’ and they show that, since the city is constantly, significantly and noticeably changing, change itself is the tourism attraction. The September 2012 edition of Lonely Planet’s New Zealand Travel Guide demonstrates this point in stating, ‘nowhere in New Zealand is changing and developing as fast as post-earthquake Christchurch, and visiting the country’s second-largest city as it’s being rebuilt and reborn is both interesting and inspiring’ (p. 480).

Kelly Stock, the CCT Communications Manager, also expressed this notion of change-as-attraction when she said in a media interview: ‘People can come here, be part of history, and see what’s happening now, and then come back in a year’s time and it will be really different again’ (Harper, 2014). This ‘transitionality’ is present not only due to the new temporary and permanent buildings always under construction, but due also to old, damaged buildings having been in a temporary state since the earthquake. This was expressed in an article in The Press published 1 year after the major earthquake:

In the year since the February 22 earthquake Christchurch has changed almost beyond recognition. In another year, the transformation could be equally as dramatic … Heading into the Square … there is very little left of the church [Cathedral] but it is still attracting a steady stream of curious tourists, spilling from the nearby Heritage and Millenium hotels. (Heather, 2012)

The ruins of the Cathedral continue to be a major tourist attraction visited on city tours. Not only does the site represent the ‘narrative of loss’, as discussed earlier, but also it represents ‘transitionality’, as it is viewed and captured in photographs by tourists in its current temporary state, that is before it is, one day, either demolished or restored. This sentiment of wanting to view the Cathedral in its current temporary state was captured when, in 2014, it was broadcast on TV ONE News that a pair of photographers known as The Wildboyz from the United Kingdom had snuck into the cathedral to take photos of the cordoned-off site. Calling themselves urban explorers who find ‘beauty in decay’ (urbanexplorers.net), The Wildboyz enter historic abandoned sites, frequently illegally, in order to photograph them and post the photos online. Besides being slated as ‘lunacy’, because of the danger of entering the partially collapsed building, there was an air of heroism inflecting reports of the incident, particularly given the fact that the men had managed to get the first, and possibly the last, pictures of the inside of the building in its current state. The men pointed out that what they had done was in order to ‘help preserve a record of the cathedral’ in its current state (Vezich, 2014).

Indeed, the ongoing debate surrounding the damaged Cathedral’s future encapsulates the tensions which inevitably exist between the post-disaster narrative of loss and the narrative of renewal, both of which have arisen in relation to post-earthquake tourism in Christchurch. Together with its ‘temporary’ replacement ‘cardboard cathedral’, the damaged Christchurch Cathedral embodies the contradictions and tensions existing between a ‘tourism of tradition’, which rejects change, and a ‘tourism of transition’ which has begun to emerge in this post-disaster tourism context. While built heritage ‘is often seen as a means for recovery in post-disaster contexts’ (Amore, 2016: 201), it seems that in Christchurch it is as tourism attractions that both the damaged Cathedral and its temporary replacement ‘cardboard cathedral’ have become symbols of what the city once was, what it has been through, and what it is now in the process of becoming. Perhaps, then, it is the tension between the narrative of loss and the narrative of renewal in tourism which has given rise to a ‘tourism of transition’. The strong sense of ‘how you see it right now, you will never see again’ interestingly manifests as a ‘last chance to see’ opportunity which is celebratory of transition, rather than the usual fear-filled anticipatory ‘last chance to see tourism’ which has been discussed previously in Lemelin and Stewart (2012) and Tucker and Shelton (2014).

Although the concept of ‘transitionality’ has been discussed, albeit briefly, in the tourism studies literature (see, for example, Hollinshead, 2009; Ivanova, 2011), the notion of transition itself is seldom considered as a potential object of tourist interest. Referring again to the Lonely Planet’s (2012) sentiment, ‘nowhere in New Zealand is changing and developing as fast as post-earthquake Christchurch’ … it is ‘both interesting and inspiring’, transition appears to have become a key tourism ‘product’ in itself; one which celebrates creativity and innovation along with change. This ‘tourism of transition’ not only highlights the flexibility of tourism, and indeed the level of flexibility which would allow Lonely Planet’s top 10 listing of Christchurch just 2 years after the major earthquakes, it adds also a further dimension to the concepts of ‘renewal’ and ‘hope’ in their challenging of the conflation of post-disaster tourism and ‘dark’ tourism. Referring back to Hall’s (2016) discussion of concept transfer of ecological terms, also, the focus on ‘transition as tourism object’ challenges the assumptions underpinning much of the literature on tourism, disaster recovery and resilience. This is important because it is the assumptions that are usually implicit ‘in considering the pre and post states of a system following a major disturbance’ (Hall, 2016) which ‘frame how resilience is understood’ (p. 284). In other words, a ‘tourism of transition’, delivered by the performance of narrative, sits outside of any notion of ‘succession’ as long-term stability, and rather fits within ‘dynamic understandings of resilience’ (Hall, 2016), which Hall (2016) argues, are consistent with a ‘more complex understanding of (ecological) system dynamics’ (p. 280).

Conclusion

The narrative analysis here has highlighted the role tourism has played, and plays still, in the aftermath of the Christchurch earthquakes of 2010/2011. Although the earthquake events were initially viewed as disastrous to tourism, it was not long before the disaster itself was promoted as a tourism product, suitable for gazing upon while on a coach tour of the cordoned-off, army-controlled Red Zone. Further on still, tourism’s involvement in post-quake Christchurch was seeded by the city self-consciously deciding to embrace a metaphoric narrative position of ‘re-birth’ and renewal and, promoting this on Twitter and Facebook, redirecting its rehabilitative objectives to include renewal of its legacy and culture. Indeed, studying Christchurch’s post-earthquake tourism through narrative has shown how, while natural disasters are frequently associated with Žižek’s (2010) sense of ‘living in the end times’, visiting post-earthquake Christchurch has come to give one a sense of being very much in a time of beginning.

While this move from loss to renewal induced a tension between tourism of tradition and tourism of transition, the self-consciously temporary architecture and novel, celebratory public events have become key tourism attractions in the city, thus rendering the phenomenon of ‘transition’ itself a tourism attraction in its own right. Thus, in Christchurch’s post-disaster tourism, while the ‘almost too much to comprehend’ (Miller, 2008) devastation in the city did become a tourism spectacle in itself, it was also the constant, very visible, transition which ensued following the February 2011 earthquake which became a prominent and important aspect of tourism experience there. Re:START, FESTA and the Cardboard Cathedral are all examples of how the city showed, and continues to show, a forward-looking mindset and a welcoming of novel cultural phenomenon. As well as helping to develop a new social culture and local identity for the city, these events and locales are being visited not only by the local residents but also are drawing people on a global scale.

The continuation for several years of the earthquakes and aftershock sequence in and around Christchurch has resulted in a continuous state of uncertainty in relation to rebuild processes, business and employment (Hall et al., 2016). Perhaps the focus on, and celebration of, the transitional is in part a consequence of this uncertainty. The acceptance and embracement of this ‘tourism of transition’ also fits well within what Miller (2007) identifies as the ‘ludic challenge’ (p. 6). This quinticentially postmodern notion proposes the architectural production of a ‘space of play and games’ (Walz, 2010). Drawing on postmodern narrativity, then, the transitional architecture that has ‘popped up’ since the Christchurch earthquakes, including the cardboard cathedral (Barrie, 2014), represents such an aesthetic and, when set alongside the other various spectacles, produced a narrative of hope, manifest as play and games, which has become a tourism product powerful enough to drive other aspects of the city’s recovery. Indeed, while there are inevitable tensions between the narratives of loss, renewal and transition, the narrative of hope deriving from the narratives of renewal and transition has been sufficiently powerful to encompass any narrative of loss and mourning, which has been performed periodically utilising sombre commemorative spectacle.

Post-earthquake tourism in Christchurch has not only demonstrated the high level of flexibility of tourism but it has also further questioned any over-simplified conflations of disaster tourism with ‘dark tourism’. The multiplicity of narratives available to be performed by tourists highlights the proliferation of meanings generated in association with the earthquakes. Indeed, as well as the narrative of renewal, it is perhaps the notion of ‘transition’ which led to Christchurch appearing on Lonely Planet’s list of top 10 cities to travel to in 2013. This publication acknowledged Christchurch as ‘… A vibrant city in transition, coping creatively with the aftermath of NZ’s second-worst natural disaster’ (Atkinson, 2012b). The claim that ‘people can come here, be part of history, and see what’s happening now, and then come back in a year’s time and it will be really different again’ (Harper, 2014) serves to unsettle the usual narrative of loss that is generally associated with the ‘dark’ product which frequently develops in ‘disaster zones’. At any point in time in Christchurch, there is the opportunity, indeed the only opportunity, to see the city as it is now, this instant, before the next element of an inexorable transition to citywide regeneration changes the nature of the available tourism product offering.

While this study is limited to focusing only on the post-disaster tourism narratives in Christchurch, it also offers broader lessons regarding tourism, resilience and disaster recovery. Regenerating the city centre has created opportunities above and beyond merely replacing old buildings and has produced a ‘tourism of transition’ which potentially has created a new niche for urban tourism. Of course it remains open to question whether the focus on and celebration of transition will continue long-term or whether a new state of stability will begin to settle in once the official, institutional rebuild is more complete. Therefore, research on tourism as well as many other aspects of post-earthquake Christchurch should be ongoing. A forward-looking note to end on is a comment from Brand and Nicholson (2016) on the meaning in urban design terms of the transitional projects in Christchurch:

… the possibility now exists of making public space the playground of the city rather than a receptacle for institutional symbolism or marketing imagery. Public space in Christchurch is set to become larger, greener, more creatively expressive of collective identities, and flexible and transformative. (p. 174)

This sentiment would appear to bode well for tourism generally in the city, including an ongoing ‘tourism of transition’.