Tourist Studies is a multidisciplinary journal that provides a platform for developing critical perspectives on the nature of tourism as a social phenomenon through a qualitative lens. The journal explores the relationship between tourism and related fields of social inquiry. Consumption of tourism and tourist styles is not only symbolic of many characteristics of contemporary social change, such as mobility, restlessness, the pursuit of authenticity, and the desire for escape, but also increasingly central to economic restructuring, globalization, the sociology of consumption, and the aestheticization of everyday life.

The journal analyzes these features of tourism from a multidisciplinary perspective and seeks to evaluate, compare, and integrate approaches to tourism from various disciplines, including sociology, socio-psychology, leisure studies, cultural studies, geography, and anthropology.