COVID-19: potential effects on Chinese citizens’ lifestyle and travel

By Jun Wen, Metin Kozak, Shaohua Yang, Fang Liu. The Tourist Review, 2020

618 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Purpose The 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak is projected to have adverse consequences on the global tourism and hospitality industry. This paper aims to examine how the outbreak may alter Chinese tourists’ lifestyle choices, travel behaviour and tourism preferences in the short and long term. Design/methodology/approach This paper is based on the synthesis of news broadcasted by several media outlets to be supported by an overview of the related literature on tourism marketing, tourism management and tourist behaviour. The authors’ experiences investigating trends in tourism and hospitality at the local and international level have also contributed to the study. Findings This paper predicts that COVID-19 will likely affect Chinese travellers’ consumption patterns, such as the growing popularity of free and independent travel, luxury trips and health and wellness tourism. New forms of tourism including slow tourism and smart tourism may also drive future tourism activities. Such changes are likely to force businesses to reconsider their service designs and distribution channels. Research limitations/implications While Chinese and other potential visitors rethink how they travel, professionals, too, should reflect upon how to bring positive or negative changes to the tourism industry following this pandemic. Subsequent research should also consider how to mitigate the effects of similar public health crises in the future. Practical implications Recommendations for industry practitioners and policymakers focus on tailoring travel arrangements to tourists’ backgrounds. The suggestions may help to alleviate outbreak-related stress, offer travellers newly enriching experiences and partially mitigate the effects of COVID-19 on the tourism and hospitality industry. These recommendations can also apply more broadly to global tourist markets. Social implications The COVID-19 outbreak has already brought significant impacts to nearly every society and industry. Tourism scholars and practitioners should carefully consider this tragedy and how it may inform industry and social practices. This and other public health crises represent sterling opportunities to view the industry holistically in terms of its effects on the environment, climate and travellers themselves. Originality/value This paper presumably represents a frontier study, critically examining the possible impacts of COVID-19 on Chinese travellers’ consumption patterns and how the tourism and hospitality industry may respond to such changes in the future.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/483dbe6a566b1dddbd126bcda175fb0519785e13

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Citations in the corpus

Can corporate social responsibility protect firm value during the COVID-19 pandemic? (2020, background): “As mentioned earlier, hospitality firms are in the spotlight during the pandemic and are expected to be more socially responsible than before when it comes to public health (Jiang and Wen, 2020).”
The good, the bad and the ugly on COVID-19 tourism recovery (2020, neutral): “The study by Williams and Kayaoglu (2020) may be used to illustrate the impact of an epidemic outbreak on the tourism industry and the supporting sectors to the tourism product and service delivery.”
Rural tourism: A systematic literature review on definitions and challenges (2021, positive): “Many studies highlight a shift of tourist travel demands towards more mindful and meaningful tourist activities after the pandemic (Seraphin & Dosquet, 2020; Stankov et al., 2020; Wen et al., 2020; Zhu & Deng, 2020).”
Impact of the perceived risk from Covid-19 on intention to travel (2020, background): “As things currently stand, there is still scant research on intention to travel in an environment of pandemic risk (Wen et al., 2020).”