Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic that caused unprecedented havoc on global tourism industry will all blow over, however whether the tourists' real-time on-site emotional experience in the reopened tourism destinations is higher or lower than that of the period before the pandemic outbreak has not been studied. Since this is an important basis for managers to design tourist win-back strategies, this study empirically examines the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on tourists' real-time on-site emotional experience using geo-tagged check-in user-generated content data in China's National 5A scenic spots from November 7, 2019 to April 8, 2020. Results show that although the COVID-19 pandemic doesn't destroy the tourist attractions, tourists' real-time on-site emotional experience after the outbreak of COVID-19 is significantly lower than that of the period before the COVID-19 outbreak, suggesting that tourism destinations should not only focus on the recovery of tourist arrivals, but also pay attention to the tourist experience recovery during the tourism recovery stage. Results also provide empirical evidence and practical implications for destinations in tourist experience management during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.
RAS ID
36577
Document Type
Journal Article
Date of Publication
9-30-2021
Volume
48
Funding Information
National Natural Science Foundation of China
Sichuan University Ministry of Education of China
Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities
School
School of Business and Law
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.
Publisher
Elsevier
Comments
This is an author's accepted manuscript of: Yang, Y., Ruan, Q., Huang, S. S., Lan, T., & Wang, Y. (2021). Impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on tourists’ real-time on-site emotional experience in reopened tourism destinations. Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management, 48, 390-394.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhtm.2021.07.014