Conclusion : the pandemic and future directions

The birth of this book project occurred in late 2019 at the Australian New Zealand Association for Leisure Studies (ANZALS) conference in Queenstown, New Zealand. The editorial team, along with some of the other book chapter authors were all, unknowingly, attending what was to be our last in person, face-to-face international conference for some time. Indeed, as we write this final chapter of the book we are all yet to attend a ‘real’ conference again. The cause of this curtailing of in-person engagements is of course (from the perspective of 2022) the global public health emergency triggered by the emergence of a miniscule but deadly virus, named Covid-19. A phenomenon that in our first planning of this book and its focus was totally unanticipated.