ABSTRACT
Meme tourism is a new phenomenon in the tourism industry, in which individuals are motivated to visit a destination by viral Internet memes, and once on location, visitors recreate and reenact elements of the meme before sharing the results on social media. The study seeks to define meme tourism by examining instances of the phenomenon which meet the criteria for the newly proposed definition. The study examines the phenomenon of meme tourism through case studies. While seeking to define meme tourism, the chapter also aims to identify sustainability issues. Though each case described in this chapter faced different problems to different degrees of community acceptance, they are united by a common issue: it is assumed that like the memes that spawned them, attendance at these locations will be somewhat short-lived, as the next meme captivates Internet users. In all cases, destination stakeholders benefited or suffered as a result of the sudden increase in visitors. Behind the discussion of visitor management concerns, the chapter elaborates the differences between meme tourism and pop-culture tourism and discusses emerging transformations taking place behind the scenes.
