Tour guides and the hosting of policy tourism : Show and tell in Vällingby and Växjö

Introduction Policymakers and practitioners often cast curious glances at what’s happening elsewhere, looking for inspiration as to what works and what to do next in their own working practices. This is conducted through several methods. Sometimes this is at a distance, through for instance reading newspapers or policy documents, searching online, or communicating via telephone, email, Skype and so on. Sometimes it is through visiting ‘best practice’ places, being there to see, hear and experience what is happening. Such visits often take the form of study tours – that is, organised visits usually focused on work-related learning. These are often associated with a niche form of tourism: policy tourism. Study tours and policy tourism are widespread and long-standing practices, and are therefore worthy topics of academic exploration. As such, they have been the subject of a growing body of academic literature (González, 2011; Ward, 2011; Cook & Ward, 2012; Cook et al., 2014; 2015; Hudson & Kim, 2014; Wood, 2014; Cook, 2017; Ma, 2017; Montero, Tour Guides of policy tourism