A rhizomic approach to tourism destination evolution and transformation

•This study illustrates how tourism destinations also grow informally.•The 100 year evolution of the Waitomo Caves illustrates change as like a rhizome.•Change occurs anti-hierarchically through spontaneous connectivity.•Transformation occurs through the local connections which becomes 'volume-filling'.•Empty space is therefore possibility for knowledge creation through collaboration.

This paper critiques linear models of tourism destination evolution through exploring change as anti-hierarchical, self organising and locally inspired. Based upon the Deleuzian concept of networks as rhizomic, the longitudinal qualitative case study shows 100 years of evolution and transformation. The data demonstrated that through collaboration, network connections could be made in endless and unpredictable ways that then formed complex bundlings of network-based capabilities (multiplicities). These knowledge repositories emerged through the non-linear, heterogeneous and volume-filling connections inspired by the informal activities of everyday life. The data demonstrated that network transformation is a result of collaborative connection, and confirms Deleuze's imperative that all creative possibilities exist and new novelty is limited only by the absence of positive acts.