How does tourism move during the COVID-19 pandemic?

Abstract This article discusses the dichotomies of physical and visual mobilities emerged during the COVID19 pandemic, drawing on the analysis of the tourist flows restrictions contained in health barriers and tourist communications, which, while alerting to the need to restrict tourism, promote its attractions in the perspective of a tourism recovery. For that, a context analysis was made from images (typology, representation and discourse/interpretation) circulated in press and DMOs of the Costa do Sol/Região dos Lagos and São Paulo/Litoral Norte Tourism Routes. The empirical contents are brought as examples, since the essence of this study lies in the dynamics and processes of the mobilities that characterize and transmute them. The findings corroborate the argument that physical and imaginative dimensions of tourism might become crucial to rethink the notion of tourism mobilities. Thus, the contribution of this paper is twofold: first, in the theoretical-methodological field of mobilities as it broadens the discussion on tourism beyond the physical mobility of the bodies, building upon New Mobilities Paradigm; second, it highlights contradictory dimensions on tourism practices nowadays, and may guide future management of tourism activities according to the unfolding of the pandemic.