Abstract

The World Health Organization has estimated that globally, over 2.2 billion people live with some form of visual impairment. However, research into the tourism experiences of this large group of people remains limited. This paper employs embodiment theory and sensory compensation theory to examine aspects of the tourism experience from the perspective of visually impaired tourists. The analysis was based on travel notes written by Chinese visually impaired tourists. Seven unique types of tourism experience were identified including “Sensory Compensation” and “Barrier-free experiences”. The findings highlight opportunities to build a more comprehensive understanding of the tourism experiences of visually impaired tourists.

RAS ID

56562

Document Type

Journal Article

Date of Publication

3-31-2023

Volume

99

Funding Information

National Social Science Fund of China (No. 21BGL282)

School

School of Business and Law

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Publisher

Elsevier

Comments

This is an Authors Accepted Manuscript version of an article published by Elsevier in Annals of Tourism Research. The published article is available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2023.103542

Qiao, G., Song, H., Prideaux, B., & Huang, S. S. (2023). The “unseen” tourism: Travel experience of people with visual impairment. Annals of Tourism Research, 99, article 103542. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2023.103542

Available for download on Tuesday, March 31, 2026

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Link to publisher version (DOI)

10.1016/j.annals.2023.103542