While tourism can trace its origins back to the elite excursions of Western European travellers in the colonial era, as far as modern examinations of the field are concerned, it has strayed very little from this origin. Mainstream understanding of “tourism” remains grounded in the colonial histories, imperial projects and societal changes in Western Europe and North America. Current tourism research practice reflects an enduring Anglo-Western centrism and neo-colonialisation of knowledge to some extent. This presentation will be based on our reflections as guest editors of a special issue on Redefining Asian Tourism, and how this collection of papers has challenged or contributed to the redefining of Asian Tourism. Our systematic literature review of journal articles revealed that the burgeoning Asian market has become more popular as an area of focus, though their exploration has largely centred on travel behaviour and destination attributes with little attention paid to the theoretical and perceptual differences in experiencing and examining tourism. This is similarly reflected in books and special issues published about Asian tourism, which continues to use Asia as context with only a nascent and recent increase in criticality in relation to Asian scholarship. As an exploration into the process of pivoting away from established scholarship to accept voices and scholarship from Asian perspectives, we noted the fluidity and ambiguity of these alternative perspectives. These characteristics lent themselves to non-traditional styles, such as first-person narratives, which have come under intense scrutiny in the traditional review process. Breaking beyond the narrow confines of what is considered ‘good scholarship’ by Western standards, we present a collection of research and scholarship explorations to carve an ontological and epistemological space for alternatives and, in this case, Asians’ (plural form was used intendedly to recognise the diversity within Asia) ways of thinking, knowing and being.